Are Hackel, Board ready to bicker in court again?

(Hackel)

Just when it seemed that the long-running feud between County Executive Mark Hackel and the Board of Commissioners had subsided, it appears they’re headed for another noisy spat.
Let’s hope this is all in the family and doesn’t lead to irreconcilable differences.

(Flynn)

Though the board scored a resounding court victory over Hackel and now seeks to exercise its right, after the fact, to review and approve government contracts, the executive's office is ignoring — and, in fact, belittling — the commissioners.

When the board met last week to retroactively scrutinize 124 contracts — worth $82 million — that were signed by Hackel during the yearlong legal battle, the Macomb Township Democrat refused to send any of his top aides or department heads to the board meeting.

At issue here is this: Is the Hackel administration committed to government transparency, or is the board simply using the spending and budgeting process to hold onto control of county government?

In 2011, the 13-member board passed a reasonable ordinance and policy that gave them final approval over contracts and purchases in excess of $35,000, and any construction projects with a price tag above $100,000.
The ordinance/policy was vetoed by Hackel, the veto was overridden by the bipartisan board, and then the executive filed a lawsuit. He won at the circuit court but lost badly at the appeals court.

When the commissioners attempted to backtrack and get a good look at all those financial agreements Hackel signed since he initiated the legal tussle, their requests were ignored. Until April 30, when a computer disc arrived at the board office at 4:50 p.m.

The disc contained more than 2,000 pages of electronic material but it was not indexed, and no list was attached. As county board Chairman Dave Flynn remarked at the time, it was like dumping a bunch of paper documents in a box and forcing the commissioners to sort it all out.

If taxpayers believe that this is no more than an internal struggle, a political soap opera playing out within the upper floors of the county Administration Building, consider this: The electronic files contained details about $60 million in sheriff’s patrol contracts for local townships; $11 million in road improvements; several million dollars for jail inmate meals and various services for those on probation or awaiting trial; nearly $1 million in contracts for county Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz; and an allocation of $550 per meeting attended for a contractor tied to sewer/drain issues.

What’s all that about? We may never know because no one from the administration was on hand to answer questions.

The April 30 “document dump” painted the commissioners into a corner. Under its own ordinance, the board has 21 days to accept or reject a contract once it is supplied by the executive’s office. That meant that two board staffers and one part-timer spent countless hours for three weeks sorting through the electronic material — all written in legalese — of 124 contracts.

When the commissioners met on the morning of May 21, they were under the gun. Because of the 21-day deadline, they had just hours to accept or reject each of the contracts that had been previously hidden from them.

As a result, the commissioners declared a victory for government transparency while they reluctantly, frantically approved — on a retroactive basis — nearly all of the contracts because no information from the administration was forthcoming.

Hackel and his top aides say that the contracts are a done deal and no one has complained about any of the details within those documents. Fair enough. But it’s also abundantly clear that Hackel, the former county sheriff, and Assistant Executive Al Lorenzo, the former community college president, have a long memory of hours-long county board meetings in the past where commissioners berated department heads, micromanaged their agencies, and engaged in political pettiness and dysfunction. The pre-charter board, for decades, was a model of inefficiency.

Because the commissioners’ reputation precedes them, Hackel and Lorenzo agreed last week that they did not want department heads sitting for hours in a board meeting, waiting for their time at the lectern so the commissioners could get their pound of political flesh. The subject up for discussion was old contracts, some of which have already expired.

That’s somewhat understandable, but equally dysfunctional. The executive branch of our new government treats the legislative branch with disrespect and disdain.

We have now degenerated back to the tensions of early 2011, shortly after Hackel took office as Macomb’s first executive, when the administration refused to allow department heads to appear before the board or its committees. A bunker mentality in the Administration Building may soon resurface, similar to the long period in 2012 when the board office on the 9th floor and the executive’s office on the 8th floor never communicated, except through emails.

Once again, it must be pointed out that the one major flaw in the county charter is that it provided no oversight duties for the board.
When Macomb voters approved the charter in 2009, they expected two co-equal branches of government, power sharing, give and take, checks and balances. Instead, they have a legislative branch that has been marginalized — some say the board’s powers have been gutted.

When angry unionized workers for the Department of Roads and the crew of jail guards wanted to vent about the new labor contracts imposed upon them, they packed into Thursday’s board meeting. But the administration, not the board, now controls labor negotiations and no public forum exists to wage an effective protest.

Despite the board’s checkered history, Hackel and Lorenzo need to put their personal sentiments aside and put a priority on transparency. Flynn needs to pull back and engage in a collaborative approach. If not, the same disputes that have plagued our new county government for nearly 2 ½ years may bubble to the surface again in the coming weeks as board Chairman Flynn proposes an ordinance that will mandate much more budget detail from the administration — on pay, benefits, overtime, pensions — than has been provided to the commissioners so far.

Watch for talk of a potential Hackel veto to percolate to the surface soon.

In January, Flynn was selected as the new board chair and he and Hackel promised that a new day had dawned. But the cooperative spirit and the good will of the past four months disappeared in an instant when the board asked to retroactively review and approve contracts, just as the court said they should.

Flynn once talked of new personal bonds and mutual trust but now, after the administration for months declined to supply the budget details the board demanded, the Sterling Heights Democrat seems ready to dare Hackel to veto another matter that appears to center upon government transparency.
I would suggest that this should not be about dares and bluster and I-Told-You-So’s.

Hackel and the commissioners may never get along. But this issue should be about good government and maintaining an open door to the taxpayers who foot the bills.