Eddie Said, Kwame Said

Interesting front page story in the Star on Saturday. About a trip Kwame may have taken to Niagara. It will be the story du jour for a few days. Yet, on page 4, is a story where our Mayor and his lawyer are revealing information because some may think they are liars. They wanted to clear the air.

I wonder why the positions of the stories were not changed in a WINDSOR paper given the startling revelations made in the Eddie/Sutts story.

As a Windsorite, the Detroit Mayor story is titillating but not crucial. What my Mayor says and how he acts is fundamental to me and essential for trust in Government. Why wasn't this story given the prominence it deserved.

A Pandora's box has now been opened up. Mayor Francis and Cliff Sutts have no choice but to make their entire files available for examination, and not just the parts they have selected. Contrary to closing this matter down and ending it, as far as I am concerned, it may only be the beginning with more possibly to come. There may well be serious credibility questions that have arisen after what Mr. Sutts has disclosed that may require further investigation.

It would not suprise me to see both of them asked to testify in Detroit along with someone from the Star! They both must have understood that risk given they are both lawyers. And will the Star be forced to reveal the name of its source if push comes to shove? I hope the unnamed business person understood the risk too.

Liar, liar… mayoral pants on fire! Which Mayor is telling the truth? Or perhaps they both are depending on the date chosen to start and what they each took from conversations.

This Tunnel deal is growing by leaps and bounds and who knows where it is going to end. As Cliff Sutts rightly stated:

• "We are negotiating a tunnel deal -- and now we are involved in a criminal case. It's absurd."

Now it looks like we are into a “He Said/She Said” type situation as to who is telling the truth about who called whom about the secret meeting. Or should we say it is an “Eddie Mayor Said/Kwame Mayor Said” matter now.

The clip above is taken from a video dealing with the hearing in the Kilpatrick bail matter. Kwame was obviously quite agitated as you can tell when the Prosecutor claimed that he was not telling the truth about the meeting in Windsor. Kwame’s lawyer stood by their story about who called whom. That clip sets out Eddie's position and Kwame's quite nicely.

I had suggested that a timeline might be appropriate so that we could try and figure out what was going on. Well if you don’t believe in the Power of the BLOG, you better do so now:

• “Sutts said he has put together a chronology of events after he was contracted by prosecutors.”

I am certain that our Mayor, Mr. Sutts’ client, was agreeable. Otherwise, the lawyer could not provide the information given to the Detroit Prosecutor nor could he give the detailed information that was outlined in the Star. Now of course since solicitor-client privilege has been waived in this matter, I shall file my Municipal Freedom of Information request for certain documentation. I am certain that it will provided in a very timely fashion without any objection.

But the troubling part to me is the additional reason given for disclosing all of this information:

• "We feel it's necessary to put the record straight…
  
  People in Windsor are even wondering if we are being truthful," he said. "We feel we need to reveal the facts, notwithstanding it may cause more difficulties for the mayor in Detroit…"
  
  We are not going to lie or appear that we are not being truthful. The facts are the facts -- and they can't change them.”

But wait a minute...what if Kwame is right and Eddie is wrong? Does what was revealed cause problems for OUR Mayor? What are we in Windsor going to do then? Since this is a matter of credibility, would the Mayor be forced to resign or rather would he tender his resignation forthwith.

In effect, if it can be shown that Eddie is not telling the truth, he has no choice but to leave office. Eddie decided to make this an issue, to make himself part of this. He has to live with the consequences now.

The issue for me is not the Kwame story but is Eddie telling the truth!

I'm rather shocked to be quite honest about it that a timeline has even being issued. You see, I worked on one too. Of course, I did not have access to anyone's legal files or lawyer dockets to help me. I just relied on media stories to try to figure out what was going on.

While the Star story talks about Sutts starting "with Detroit council's month-long flip-flopping, it appears that his chronology focused on the period starting July 17 and following. July 17 was the day that Detroit Council took their "nebulous" action not to set up an Authority for their half of the Tunnel and the Detroit Mayor said as quoted in a news story that

• "his staff has meetings planned with Windsor on Friday, and he expects the $75 million deal will go forward. "

I on the other hand focused on the time period beginning a week before. I started on July 10 the date of the Windsor Council/Windsor Tunnel Commission joint meeting when Council seemingly pulled the plug on the deal. I thought that this meeting caused the greatest consternation since it seemed like the deal was all over and that I should begin there.

From reading my timeline, [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/4653272/tunneltimelinetest ] it would appear that there were many, many discussions between people in Windsor and Detroit. With whom exactly and about what is essential to know.

Here is what bugged me at the Council meeting on July 21 if you remember. The comment re "face-to-face." I Blogged previously:

• At Council on Monday, the Mayor told us that Mr. Sutts is following Council’s directions and he has had no “face-to-face” meetings with people from Detroit on the Tunnel deal. When we see the legal bills, if the Deputy Mayor of Detroit is telling us what happened, we will note that the City’s lawyer has spoken to people from Detroit.
  
  How can that be you might ask? Did the Mayor not tell us the truth? Of course he did. There is a very simple explanation… a telephone conversation as an example is not “face-to-face.” So what the Mayor has told us is the truth. He can say with a clear conscience:
  
  "I did not have face-to-face Tunnel relations with that Detroit Mayor..."
  
  I wonder how much time it took to think up that one. It was not just a chance, off-hand remark in my opinion considering what happened on Wednesday. I find the fact that there was a face-to-face meeting only a few days later very interesting although the Mayor did say that there were to be some meetings subsequently. If there was nothing to hide about the Wednesday meeting, why was it "secret?"

Here is the clip from that meeting courtesy of Chris Schnurr's BLOGsite. Listen to it very, very carefully:

And the transcript from Chris as well. Read it carefully too:

• Councillor Marra:
  
  Thank you, Mayor.
  
  Last week, um, Detroit City Council once again reversed their decision as it relates to the creation of the, uh, authority in order to take the Detroit side of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel and presumably flip that asset into the authority, so, my question is, ah, is that, um, stopped the negotiations formally between the City of Windsor and the City of Detroit?
  
  Mayor Francis:
  
  I can share with you that Mr. Sutts has been following the direction of City Council and, ah, I don’t believe there have been any face-to-face meetings since then.
  
  There may be some scheduled this week, as Mr. Sutts tries to respond to council resolution."

Have citizens ever seen that Resolution by the way?

Here is the dramatic, new information outlining what Mr. Sutts said took place that had never been revealed publicly before. It needs to be read with care too:

• “He started with Detroit council's month-long flip-flopping on supporting the proposed tunnel deal that eventually led to a statement by Kilpatrick on Thursday, July 17, 2008, that he would travel to Windsor the next day to meet with officials and salvage the tunnel proposal.
  
  The next morning at around 10 a.m. Kilpatrick's office called Windsor and the two mayors spoke on the phone, Francis said.
  
  "He says this deal is very important and we need to keep it on track, that we need to get in a room and finalize all issues of the deal," Francis said.
  
  "I said I would welcome the opportunity and our teams should get together."
  
  Kilpatrick wanted to travel to Windsor that Friday, but Francis told him he had previous commitments.
  
  The Detroit mayor then asked about the following Monday, which conflicted with Windsor's council meeting. On Tuesday, Francis had to travel to Toronto for a municipal association meeting.
  
  "Then we said, 'OK, Wednesday morning.'" Francis said.
  
  Added Sutts: "Eddie called me right after that call and said they were requesting a meeting."

If you read what was written in the Star story, and just this conversation, who called the meeting? Was it Kwame who said "we need to get in a room" or was it Eddie who said "our teams should get together" and then Ok'd the Wednesday meeting to fit his schedule. As you will see below, it appears that staffs had already been talking about meeting on the Friday before the Friday call between the Mayors.

In passing, I was rather disturbed by the smarminess tone I thought I detected in this statement made by Mr. Sutts:

• “Sutts and Francis also disagreed that it was an emergency meeting.
  
  "If the meeting was established on Friday for the following Wednesday, is that an emergency?" Sutts said. "I guess it's in the eye of the beholder."
  
  This is just after he had explained the reason for the delay: Eddie’s schedule.
  
  He must also have forgotten what he had said previously in another interview:
  
  “I suppose he could have picked up the phone, but he realized by coming over it makes an impression he really wants the deal. Going to the trouble of coming over makes you believe they are serious.”

After all, Eddie thought the deal was so important that he snubbed meeting with John Tory a week before to talk about Windsor’s key priority: jobs, jobs, jobs!

Let's get to the heart of this right now.

I would be absolutely furious if I was a Windsor Councillor after reading what Mr. Sutts’ statement. I was absolutely correct in what I guessed on the use of the words “face-to-face” by the Mayor. It was a “Gotcha!” Technically, there was nothing done "face-to-face." There was a telephone conversation that was not disclosed by the Mayor.

In fact it is worse than I thought. It was not Mr. Sutts who spoke with people from Detroit; it was our Mayor who spoke directly with the Detroit Mayor!

Note as well, that the Mayor's statement in the Council clip only discussed Mr. Sutts. Again, he chose not to mention his conversation with the Detroit.

On that Friday, the Mayors agreed that there would be a Wednesday meeting. Obviously, our Mayor did not want anyone to know about it and wanted it to be secret. His wording at Council was again very deliberate. Note the use of the word “may.”

Again if one looks at what was said, one could make a very strong argument that it was in fact Eddie who wanted to have a meeting. He was the one who said:

• “our teams should get together”

And was he using the Royal “we” again as he seems to like to do these days when he said:

• “Then we said, 'OK, Wednesday morning.”

I really have no intention in writing this to help out the Mayor of Detroit. He has his own lawyers to assist him and they can do what they want with what the Star story says. I am writing this because I have to have trust in what my Mayor is telling me as a Citizen of Windsor.

Since Kwame has already been dealt with re coming to Windsor, Citizens no longer need scripted answers to legitimate questions that say nothing.

• “Reached Thursday by the Free Press, Francis said: Whatever comments have been made by our lead legal adviser in the past are comments that I stand behind.”
  
  
• “Any comments I made previously, I stand behind,” Sutts said Thursday.”

As I said, I prepared my own timeline. You can read it all by clicking on this link http://www.scribd.com/doc/4653272/tunneltimelinetest I have emphasized some of the key sections in bold.

Based on the comments made by Mr. Sutts, I have formed an impression about what our Mayor did in answer to the question asked by Councillor Marra. I am sure that you have as well, dear reader. We need to see the entire file to know if our impressions are true or not.

There are a host of other questions that arise out of what took place in the week before July 17, the date that Mr. Sutts emphasized, even just based on media reports. Who knows what we will see once we get access to all of the relevant files in this matter.

Here are a few of the events that I found from checking the media. What actually happened durignthis period:

• July 11. the meeting was called off because the mayor informed Tory he was too busy dealing with the tunnel deal situation with Detroit.
  "He seems fully consumed with the tunnel matter which I guess has taken a turn," Tory said.
  
  
• July 11, 2008 Free Press Sutts said he still has authority to continue speaking with Detroit officials and negotiations would resume if Detroit council members state their support for finalizing the sale. In fact, he spoke today with Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams and attorney William Phillips, who has represented the City of Detroit in negotiations.
  
  
• July 11 In fact, he said attorney William Phillips, who has represented Detroit in the negotiations, spoke with Sutts as recently as Thursday night, and Sutts asked for Phillips to provide him Detroit documents on the deal.
  Adams said Francis told Kilpatrick as recently as last week that the deal was on and he was excited about the Detroit council finally taking a first step toward a sale.
  
  
• July 12, 2008 Sutts said negotiations would resume if Detroit council members state their support for the sale. He spoke Friday with Detroit Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams.
  
  
  
• July 17 The [Detroit] mayor said his staff has meetings planned with Windsor on Friday, and he expects the $75 million deal will go forward.
  
  
• July 17, 2008 Later, Adams and William Phillips, negotiating on behalf of Detroit, said they talk to Sutts several times a day
  
  
• July 17, 2008 Windsor Star Sutts said it may be next week before he really understands the impact of what transpired Thursday.

Because of the actions of our Mayor and the release of information to put the “record straight,” the Mayor has invited us to see all of the information so that we can make informed decision and finally determine “if we are being truthful.”

Will I be forced to do a MFOIA application or will the Mayor and Mr. Sutts release their files voluntarily?

It has become more important now for the Star and other media outlets to have their reporters do some investigative journalism to uncover what happened in Windsor rather than to try to deflect attention from our situation by focusing on Detroit! Will the Star and others start asking the tough questions and demanding the facts. Let us find out what they are made of as a responsible journalists.

And as for Council, it is time to stop being wusses! Perform your legal duty!

One final matter that you may find interesting.

Right now Governor Granholm has advanced a hearing to September 3 to determine if she should remove Kwame from office. The matters she is hearing now are limited to:

• “The Detroit city council has presented the governor with charges that Mayor Kilpatrick misused public funds for personal gain and failed to obtain the council’s informed consent to settle a lawsuit involving public funds.”

She is NOT dealing with the criminal proceedings.

But what if the Eddie/Francis chronology and the Star story re Kwame in Niagara Falls result in Kwame being jailed because of a breach of bail conditions.

I assume that Detroit Council might add that matter and ask the Governor to remove the Mayor for “official misconduct” or “wilful neglect of duty.”

If that happened, then would Ken Cockrel Jr, President of Council become the new mayor?

If so, the Tunnel deal would still be on…Cockrel supported the setup of the Tunnel Authority in Detroit and did NOT vote to rescind it. He also said:

• "I'm willing to see what they come up with. I've always liked the idea of a joint management agreement, but the idea has to make sense for both cities."