Catastrophe - Dick Morris [114]
So buried was this apparent corruption that Bill Richardson ran for president in 2008, participated in all the debates, and was actually nominated by President Obama to be secretary of commerce before these scandals emerged. Imagine how it would have affected the country if Richardson had been confirmed—as secretary of commerce, of all things!—or even been elected president!
GOVERNOR JENNIFER GRANHOLM (D-MI)
Now that Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been impeached and removed from office, there’s no doubt in our minds as to who the worst governor in America is. Hands down, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan gets the nod. Under her, Michigan has racked up a notable pair of firsts: in 2007, it became the first state in the nation to enter the current recession/depression, and with a February 2009 jobless rate of 12.0 percent it ranks first in unemployment nationwide.424
And that’s not all: when she faced a huge budget shortfall, Granholm threatened to shut down state government unless she got a huge tax increase—a levy that pushed Michigan further into deficit and depression.
But it’s not just her intellect that falls short. Her integrity leaves a lot to be desired also. She and her husband, the consultant Daniel Mulhern, received nearly $300,000 in no-bid contracts from Wayne County government in the months after Jennifer left as the county’s corporation counsel to become Michigan attorney general.425
Mulhern claims that there was no ethical conflict because he “did not work for the county while Jennifer was there.”426 But the six contracts he got right after she left, and while she still had plenty of clout as the incoming state attorney general, certainly make one suspect that politics might have been at work.
A month after Jennifer left, Mulhern solicited a contract from one of Granholm’s “top allies,” Airport Director David Katz. He got a no-bid $7,500 gig to provide “management coaching” for the director.427
Even when he had to bid for a contract, Mulhern could rest content in the knowledge that even if he lost the bid, he’d still snag the contract. A few months after his wife’s departure from the county government, Mulhern’s firm, Pioneering Management Possibilities (PMP), bid $140,000 for a contract to train airport personnel.428 He lost the bid. In fact, he was the highest bidder. The competing firms bid between $30,000 and $74,000. But, no matter, the airport evaluation team, headed by his reliable friend David Katz, chose PMP anyway.429 (Katz later surfaced as the campaign manager for Granholm in her successful race for governor.)
When his wife ran for governor, Mulhern decided the PMP contract could be politically embarrassing for her and he pulled out of the project. But Mulhern’s other contracts with Wayne County followed fast and furious:
A two-day, $15,000 gig at a retreat for a hundred of the county’s executive staffers.430
An eight-month contract for $64,000 to put on a Leadership Development Program for forty county executive staffers.431
A monthly leadership program for three top county officials costing $14,000.432
Nice work if you can get it!
ACTION AGENDA
It’s time for change. Don’t think that this kind of corruption is inevitable and can’t be stopped. It can be and in a very important—and formerly corrupt—field it has been. Stopped cold.
The single most corrupt area of state and local government used to be the awarding of lucrative contracts to underwrite bond issues. The underwriters got huge fees. Historically, they had usually been selected by competitive bidding, but in the late 1980s and early ’90s, more and more of these underwriters won their contracts without bidding, Increasingly, they got their contracts from the elected state comptroller or treasurer. These state officials went out of their way to avoid competitive bidding, citing the complexity of the bond issues or their urgency to justify awarding them without bidding.
Alert to the opportunity, banks, underwriters, accounting firms, and law firms that wanted