Detroit — Our municipal novella—“Guess Who’s Ruining Dinner”—has become a real shovel turner.
The Plot: Change has come to Detroit City Hall. The current mayor is running for governor. The current council president was elected as the next mayor. And a horde of hacks and cronies is lining up for jobs and handouts.
Everybody was supposed to feast.
Except the supper party was ruined by a character named Brian McKinney, a notorious demolition contractor accused of poisoning the city with toxic soil.
The Leading Man: McKinney is a murky character who matriculated at state prison only to become Mayor Mike Duggan’s go-to minority contractor after Duggan’s hand-picked white contractors got ensnared in a federal bid-rigging and price-fixing scandal.
The Leading Lady: McKinney went on to become the part-time love interest of Councilwoman Sheffield. The two vacationed together at the Four Seasons Miami. Sheffield voted to award her paramour millions of dollars in demolition contracts. And he, in turn, was named a board director at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The Back Story: McKinney grew fabulously wealthy under Duggan’s umbra, getting at least $65 million in contracts. With influence stretching from Duggan’s executive suite to Sheffield’s hotel suite, McKinney was untouchable. He rotated in high society, often photographed in black tails and bow ties. He was, in short, Detroit’s Sidney Port-a-John.
That is, until McKinney was accused of dumping the contaminated remains of the old Northland Mall into holes in the city. He charged the city for clean dirt and pocketed the difference, the allegation goes.
It’s so bad that 60% of his holes tested were found to be so toxic that they aren’t safe for human contact. In Flint, people couldn’t drink the water, but they could at least bathe in it. In Detroit, children can’t even touch the dirt.
The city’s inspector general temporarily banned McKinney and his company from work pending its final report.
The Scene: The City Council on Tuesday convened a special appellate session where McKinney’s three lawyers pleaded with them to keep the champagne spigot flowing.
McKinney was a no-show, as was outgoing Mayor Mike Duggan. Council President Mary Sheffield came but curiously refused to recuse herself on ethical grounds. Those in the overflowing gallery included an angry group of contractors who claimed McKinney had stiffed them on millions of dollars in work.
“We talked three years ago that the demolition process was a disaster,” Arthur Edge, retired supervisor of demolition, told the city council. “And he (McKinney) was made the mayor’s poster child.”
McKinney’s lawyers argued that the city approved the offensive soil, and so the mass poisoning wasn’t McKinney’s fault at all. It was the city’s.
Councilman Coleman A. Young II, whose portrait you will not find hanging in the Genius Hall of Fame, may have put it best: “I can smell the lawsuits from here!”
The Resolution: The council voted 9-0 to uphold the suspension of Sidney Port-A-John, casting a cloud over Sheffield’s administration, seven weeks before she was even sworn in. The gubernatorial hopes of Duggan are starting to sink like a cement dirigible.
The Cliffhanger: McKinney filled thousands of holes. Other contractors filled tens of thousands more. How much might it cost to fix them if the city really looks into things? $2 million… $20 million… $200 million? Would the city go broke? Might Detroit be more poisoned than Flint?
Which begs the question. Can it be called environmental racism if both the perpetrator and the victims are African-American?
“The only thing black and white in all of this,” said former City Councilman Roy McAllister “is the black numbers on the white paper.”
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
