Update: Duggan’s chief of staff made ‘egregious’ misconduct mistake, report shows

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan provided preferential treatment to a prenatal health program run by a woman with close ties to him and his chief of staff ordered emails related to the program deleted, an explosive Detroit Inspector General report released Monday morning concludes.

Alexis Wiley, one of Detroit's highest-ranking officials, abused her authority by twice ordering city staff to delete their emails related to the program, known as Make Your Date, as the mayor’s ties came under scrutiny by the Free Press and others. The revelation that Wiley was behind more than 200 pages of mysteriously deleted emails was one of several instances of misconduct cited in the report surrounding the city’s relationship with Make Your Date.

After reviewing more than 400,000 pages of documents and interviewing several city officials, Detroit Inspector General Ellen Ha concluded Make Your Date received preferential treatment from Duggan because he picked the program to lead the city’s fight against infant mortality without a competitive selection process.

“Based on the evidence gathered, the OIG concludes that the selection of MYD lacked fairness, openness and transparency,” Ha wrote.

The inspector general launched its investigation into Make Your Date in April following a Free Press report about Duggan’s relationship with Make Your Date and its director, Dr. Sonia Hassan. Duggan worked with Wayne State University officials to create the program, handpicked Hassan to lead the initiative and ordered city staff to raise money for Make Your Date. The city also directed more than $358,000 in federal grants to the program.

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Ha’s report confirmed details in numerous Free Press’ investigative reports and included new information about additional city resources provided to Make Your Date. General fund money was earmarked for Lyft rides for Make Your Date participants and the city’s health department was expected to perform an inordinate amount of work for the program. Workers in the department felt pressured by the mayor’s office to recruit women to Make Your Date, the OIG found.

If there was ever a problem with the health department, Make Your Date “would go directly to the mayor’s office and the mayor would call the DHD Director who would, in turn, scold the DHD staff regardless of fault,” one health department worker told the inspector general.

Eli Savit, who serves as Duggan’s chief legal counsel in the law department, disputed the inspector general’s findings, indicating they are not supported by facts or applicable legal standards.

“The draft findings, moreover, threaten to impose severe, unwarranted damage to the reputation of several public servants — and further threaten to stymie effective governance in the City of Detroit,” Savit wrote in his 32-page response.

Savit’s response, dated Oct. 14, was also on behalf of Wiley and two others involved in deleting emails. Savit requested that the inspector general reverse her findings, but it appears Ha maintained her position: “We believe both the OIG’s report and the joint-written response speak for themselves,” she wrote in the report.

The inspector general interviewed Duggan but did not investigate the nature of his relationship with Hassan. The city's ordinance prohibiting officials from making decisions for financial gain only requires them to disclose personal relationships such as those with a spouse or domestic partner. The inspector general determined Duggan's relationship with Hassan was irrelevant to the investigation.

In assessing her findings, Ha determined that Wiley’s orders to delete city emails about Make Your Date were “more egregious” than the preferential treatment shown to Make Your Date.

“The deletion of emails only serves to undermine the public’s trust in an open and transparent government,” Ha’s report reads. “The very fact they were ordered to be deleted alone casts a shadow over transparency.”

Wiley’s actions were an abuse of authority and she should be disciplined, the inspector general concluded.

The report paints a troubling portrait of Wiley, the former Fox 2 reporter who became Duggan’s chief of staff shortly after he took office in 2014.

Known as a fierce Duggan loyalist, Wiley acted swiftly to conceal information about the city’s ties to Make Your Date just as Duggan’s relationship with Hassan was coming into public view late last year.

The city employees who carried out Wiley’s orders — Chief Development Officer Ryan Friedrichs and his deputy, Sirene Abou-Chakra — also abused their authority and should be disciplined, the inspector general wrote.

It is illegal in Michigan to destroy public records, but the inspector general’s report did not determine whether Wiley or any other staffers involved in deleting the emails broke any laws. That could be determined by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s public integrity unit, which also is investigating the matter.

Savit, the mayor’s attorney, defended Wiley’s actions as an “error in judgement” that doesn’t rise to the severity of an abuse of authority. The order was only given “to protect junior staffers from unsavory media attention” and it would be unfair to suggest it was a cover-up, Savit wrote in his response to the report.

In an interview Monday morning, Ha stood by her findings despite the response on behalf of the mayor.

"When a public official, especially somebody from very high up, when that person orders his or her subordinates to delete certain emails, we believe that's contrary to open government," Ha said in an interview with the Free Press. "She (Wiley) did have an intention to make those emails disappear which we find egregious because the whole point of open government is so that people see what went on. And to have have those records disappear is just not only a violation of spirit of openness but quite frankly it really puts a shadow over the government that's supposed to be transparent."

Joe Guillen has been covering city governance and development issues for the newspaper since 2013. He has covered Detroit city hall, been a member of the investigations team and previously worked at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer covering county and state government. Contact him at 313-222-6678 or jguillen@freepress.com.

Kat Stafford is the Detroit government watchdog reporter for the Free Press, covering city issues and the community. A Detroit native, Stafford is vice president of the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She was recently named an Ida B. Wells Fellow, a national investigative reporting fellowship. Contact her at kstafford@freepress.com or 313-223-4759.