A dark cloud once again is hanging over Troy City Hall.

It was supposed to go away once former City Manager Brian Kischnick pleaded guilty to bribery. Kischnick went off to prison in March after admitting that he accepted cash plus a free driveway from Troy’s main paving contractor.

Yet, the cloud persists. Last week, it mushroomed anew at a City Council meeting that had flashes of anger, profanity and insinuations of more corruption, leaving a question hanging over City Hall: Who else is hiding something?

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With cable TV cameras running, the meeting on June 3 managed to gain smiles and approvals for several resolutions and a big housing project. Yet, in five key moments, it repeatedly turned to the specter of the disgraced city manager:

Troubled vote: Elected officials voted 6-0, after voicing reluctance, for a new contract with the same paving contractor involved in Kischnick’s bribery and free driveway. Council members cited a memo assuring them that, according to auditors, the paving firm fully cooperated with the FBI. And so, DiLisio Contracting got the $1.8-million deal. The firm's lawyer rose from his front-row seat and left, missing what was to come. Mayor's driveway: Troy resident John Kulesz, a lawyer and civic activist, brandished a sheaf of photographs that Kulesz said showed that Mayor Dane Slater had gotten a new driveway poured, apparently without a building permit, at “around the same time” that DiLisio Contracting provided the free driveway to Kischnick. Slater made no reply. Finger pointing: Councilman David Hamilton, an auto engineer at Ford who has been at odds with the mayor over the Kischnick saga, said he might request an ethics investigation of all Troy elected officials, because "we hear that the mayor’s driveway was done at the same time” as Kischnick's. “The residents of Troy deserve to know … if any elected officials were involved," Hamilton said. Barbed replies. Mayor Slater and Councilman Dave Henderson turned in their seats to castigate Hamilton. Henderson, a real-estate agent running to succeed Slater as mayor, told Hamilton and the council, “This is an election year. I’ve done a great job for the city of Troy. I have a stellar reputation. … I don’t owe you or anybody else anything.” Slater, a retired Troy police captain and mayor of Oakland County’s biggest city since 2012, complained of “ambush questions.” Staring at Hamilton, Slater said: “I agree with Councilman Henderson. I don’t answer to you. I answer to my family.” Leader's brushback. With the meeting adjourned and cable TV cameras off, both Slater and Henderson stood in succession and spoke to Hamilton, out of the media's earshot. Hamilton said both directed profanity at him, and that Henderson even added a shove to the shoulder, witnessed by Kulesz.

Henderson “grabbed me on the shoulder and said, ‘Go f--- yourself,’ " Hamilton said after the meeting.

"And then the mayor took the papers (that pictured the mayor’s old and new driveways) and threw that at me, and said, ‘You can have my copy, chickens---.’ So I felt threatened.

"I know that the mayor and Mr. Henderson both carry (handguns) during meetings, which is legal. But my reaction was, I didn’t feel safe. So I went and sat right down next to the police chief" until the room was empty, Hamilton said.

He added: “When I hear elected officials say they only answer to their family, to me that isn’t enough. We answer to the people who pay taxes and entrust us with these council seats.”

In response to a Free Press request after the meeting for a comment about his driveway, Slater texted:

"I followed all proper procedures as I do with any project that is done to my residence. (Kulesz) is motivated for political reasons, along with some council members that want to expand their slate on the City Council by dirty tactics.”

During the meeting, Kulesz, who co-led the successful election campaign that recalled former tea-party mayor Janice Daniels, said he’d requested copies from city records of all building permits issued since Jan. 1, 2015 to Slater’s residence. There were five, including permits for a dozen new windows, a bathroom renovation and a new water heater. None, however, was for a new driveway at Slater’s 4,000-square-foot home.

After the meeting, the attorney for DeLisio Contracting, John Freeman, said he was "not in a position to comment" about the mayor's driveway because he had "no light to shed on that." The owners of the company have referred all questions to Freeman since the Kischnick scandal became public.

Henderson was also in the sights of the mayor’s critics. Kulesz reiterated a question at last week's meeting that Hamilton had asked in April: What city official or officials were in attendance during a holiday gathering on Dec. 21, 2017, at a Brazilian steakhouse near City Hall? At his guilty plea in federal court in Detroit, Kischnick testified that he had asked Dino DiLisio to pay for the holiday lunch gathering, which, including alcoholic drinks and food, had cost $1,287.30, according to court documents. While at the party, Kischnick obtained a $1,000 bribe from DiLisio, who, at the time, was wired by the FBI to record Kischnick's bribery demand, court records say.

The sentencing memo for Kischnick's case states that several people from city government were at that holiday party. Hamilton had pressed the issue at the April 23 City Council meeting. At that time, Henderson said, "I've never been invited to a Christmas party," and Slater said, "I don't even know anything about a Christmas party."

Those weren't clear enough denials, their critics maintained. Kulesz, during the public-comment period, told the council he would seek more about Henderson's involvement in FBI documents. Henderson shot back, in his closing comments, "You won't find anything."

This week, Henderson confirmed that he carries a handgun "for personal protection — I don't threaten anybody."

He declined to comment about his words and actions involving Hamilton at last week's meeting, although he said Hamilton had been disrespectful to him and Slater at a meeting last year, calling them "a joke."

"I'm a fence patcher. I don't want to have animosity with David Hamilton. But he keeps bringing up old news," Henderson said.

The City Council fired Kischnick last year, although not for the bribery charge, which came months later. Instead, his firing occurred during an emergency Sunday meeting of the council, held one day after Clawson police arrested Kischnick for assaulting his executive assistant. The assault occurred just as Kischnick and the assistant, a woman half his age, stumbled toward her home and argued following a night of drinking together, according to a police report.

The cloud over Troy City Hall seemed ready to shrink in March, when Kischnick left his apartment in Bloomfield Township to begin serving his sentence at the federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia.

During last week’s council meeting, Slater and Henderson pushed for the cloud to evaporate. They urged other members of the council, as well as city staff and residents, to put the Kischnick affair behind them.

Slater said that, instead of “ripping a scab off an old wound,” all should focus on the fact that Kischnick was serving time 30 months in a federal prison. Henderson echoed that, saying “the one person that did something wrong in the city of Troy is serving 30 months in prison.”

But is he? Not according to the federal prisons’ inmate locator system and not according to his defense attorney.

Although U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds pronounced the sentence of 30 months on Jan. 23, while two dozen city residents and employees sat in the courtroom, the federal inmate locator system says that Kischnick's expected release date is Nov. 11, 2020. That gives him a sentence of just 21 months and four days from the date of March 7, when he reported to Morgantown.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit said it’s unclear what formula was used, but she said sentences are automatically reduced at their outset, in the expectation that a prisoner’s behavior while behind bars will be exemplary. And perhaps it will get even shorter. Kischnick's lawyer, Anjali Prasad of Royal Oak, said this week: "I am expecting more positive news on this front in the next few months," although she would not elaborate.

The prison where Kischnick is confined is nicknamed Club Fed because of its many educated, white-collar inmates and for its upscale amenities, which include a college-like campus, movie theater, basketball court and other sports facilities. Still, it’s unheard of for anyone to turn down a sentence reduction, criminal defense attorneys said.

With Kischnick set to leave prison on Nov. 11, 2020, or perhaps even sooner, Troy residents can wonder whether the dark cloud over their former city manager may lift sooner than the one hanging over Troy City Hall.

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Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com