Warren mayor's enforcer uses campaign bucks to spy on political foes

Ghanam

For decades, Michigan’s third-largest city, Warren, served as the Wild West of local politics, where no-holds-barred campaigning ruled.

Perhaps the most shocking example was the hurled toilet seat that smashed through the window of a mayoral candidate’s headquarters. Or the home vandalism of those who chose to display a particular candidate’s election lawn sign.

Beyond the cyclical campaign season, we have seen a rubber chicken tossed at the city council in the middle of a televised session. Anonymous flyers making down-in-the-dirt allegations against city officials have been secured to countless windshields.

Fouts

 

But we now see a new level of political unseemliness, with Mayor Jim Fouts’ right-hand man, Gus Ghanam, hiring a private investigator to snoop on anti-Fouts political activists. Ghanam, of course, has been on the other side of the coin, with federal authorities investigating him last year, allegedly for corruption involving city trash contracts

According to a probe last month by the Secretary of State’s Elections Bureau, it appears that as the last city elections approached in 2011, Ghanam’s political action committee used campaign money to hire ASAP Backgrounds and Investigations in Washington Township. The investigator secretly dug into the personal matters of three outspoken critics who had become a thorn in Fouts’ side.

 

Who are these three renegades who so worried Ghanam’s Macomb Business United PAC, which is a key player in Warren elections?

One is an 82-year-old gadfly, Henry Krzystowczyk, known for outbursts at council meetings. Another is Christopher Pasternak, 34, a failed candidate for council in 2011. And the third is Tomasz Bania, a 21-year-old college student who has hounded the Fouts administration by shooting video in odd circumstances.

In retrospect, the big mistake by Ghanam, a Fouts appointee as the city’s $90,000-per-year deputy public services commissioner, was his failure to include the private investigator expenses on his final tri-annual finance report of 2011, which was submitted to the Secretary of State.

But, as Ghanam knows from past experience, the system makes that omission easy to gloss over every step of the way.

 

Political observers might argue that Ghanam, who denies any wrongdoing, purposely hid the ASAP spying costs. But in Warren, a city so politically divided that it’s become the Land of Leaks, secrets eventually surface. The investigator’s written report to Ghanam mysteriously appeared nearly two years later at the doorstep of one of the activists.

Here’s where the lack of government transparency and accountability become painfully obvious.

The elderly target, Krzystowczyk, filed a complaint with the state Elections Bureau last summer asserting that the leaked documents he received reveal clearly that Ghanam and his PAC had violated state election law by concealing expenses. If so, they would face fines of up to $2,000.

Ghanam’s attorney, Jack Dolan, responded in a convoluted way, insisting that a private eye’s report is confidential and leaking it is a criminal offense. Dolan never addressed the main issue -- that Ghanam failed to disclose a significant campaign expenditure.

 

The most bizarre aspect of this story is that state officials never considered whether using campaign money to hire a private eye to snoop on political enemies is a legitimate election expense.

Instead, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s team responded by offering the equivalent of a plea bargain – a “conciliatory agreement” – to Ghanam. That pact, the details of which the state refuses to reveal, allowed Ghanam to avoid any fines if he listed the ASAP clandestine operation after-the-fact as an “in-kind” contribution.

Ghanam has since quietly revised his PAC reports to indicate that he paid ASAP $750 to probe three individuals. Case closed.

 

What’s confounding is that Ghanam’s PAC and his similarly named Michigan Business United PAC have a long history of: failing to file required campaign reports, shoddy bookkeeping, significant errors, improperly accepting corporate contributions, and engaging in numerous amendments after reports are filed. That’s according to state campaign documents.

The state Election Bureau has hit Ghanam’s two PACs with $4,225 in fines over the past three years. Twice state officials threatened to garnish Ghanam’s wages or seize his income tax refunds after he repeatedly declined to pay fines owed.

Even the name of Ghanam’s main PAC, Macomb Business United, raises questions. Many business people who have contributed to the committee (including infamous Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Maroun) hold tenuous ties to Macomb County. Many other donors are Fouts appointees – a virtual who’s who of City Hall.

 

In the end, it’s rather astonishing that state officials generously agreed to allow the innocuous in-kind label for a PAC -- especially one with such a shoddy track record -- that sought out and paid a hired gun to conduct secret investigations. That’s a straightforward expenditure.

 

It should be noted that the octogenarian who was targeted, Krzystowczyk, served as Fouts’ chief of staff early in his first mayoral term in 2007-08. A retired Chrysler Corp. employee, Krzystowczyk quit the $65,000-a-year city job after about six months.

The quirky mayor has developed quite a track record of parting ways with key appointees.

One reason for this melodrama within City Hall, according to people familiar with the situation, is that Fouts berates and bullies his people. He may look like a frail, retired professor but leaked audio recordings of the mayor demonstrated that he talks like Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas.”

Add to that behavior the mayor’s barely concealed paranoia and we get big, burly Ghanam as the enforcer, using his PAC to defend Fouts by any means necessary, even taking the Nixonian step of trying to dig up dirt on three hapless City Hall critics.

 

Fouts, of course, denies any connection to the Ghanam’s political activities. But I wonder how many contributors to the PAC, including Warren Police Commissioner Jere Green and Macomb County Sheriff Tony Wickersham, believe that denial. How many contributors are disturbed by the way their campaign dollars were spent?

The mayor claims those trying to link him to Ghanam’s PAC are political foes attempting to ruin his 2015 re-election chances. I wonder, after all of the mayor’s controversies, how many of the current and former Fouts appointees will actually cast their ballot for the mayor in 2015?

 

Of course, that assumes that Ghanam is not somehow spying on them within the privacy of the voting booth.