Bill Laitner | Detroit Free Press

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comments from former City Council Member Kelly Colegio.

It’s the kind of last-second, secretive move that politicians weren't supposed to do anymore — not with demands everywhere for government transparency.

Yet, old-time politicking seems alive and well in Warren.

City of Warren

The seven members of the Warren City Council on Sept. 10 voted themselves lifetime health care benefits, just before several members were to be term-limited off the board. The unanimous vote, for what critics call a golden parachute, would saddle taxpayers with untold future costs. But it wasn’t even on the night’s agenda.

And it was kept under wraps long enough to exceed the 72-hour limit for a mayoral veto, Mayor Jim Fouts declared Monday. The costly benefit was worded so as to apply to anyone who'd ever served on the City Council. That includes Fouts, who served 26 years on the council before being elected mayor, although he said he was adamantly opposed to the plan.

"I'm absolutely not going to implement this," Fouts said, almost shouting into the phone.

Referring to the council members, he said, “If they want to sue me, they can sue me. I’m still going to send them a veto message” even though the deadline for doing so under Warren’s city charter expired in mid-September. Fouts said it's a warning sign when elected bodies pass something unanimously, because “when you see that happen, like Harry Truman said, watch your wallet.”

Rachel Woolf, Special to the Free Press

Fouts singled out the term-limited members of the City Council, who voted themselves the sweetheart deal just before ending their city service, including Kelly Colegio, who failed this month in her race to unseat Fouts. He was reelected mayor with 57.5% of the vote to Colegio’s 42.5%.

“She accused me during the campaign of waste and fraud and corruption. Now I’ll ask the voters, what direction would our city be in if she’d been elected mayor?” Fouts said.

Colegio, who could not initially be reached for comment on this story, sent out a statement Tuesday in which she said she was unaware of the "secret amendment" hidden in the documents. She said she voted for what she thought was a "routine continuation of health insurance for city employees."

"No one brought the significance of the amended resolution to my attention," Colegio said. "For the record, I always sign off and do not accept the medical insurance provided to city council members because I am covered under another policy."

Colegio said she would have voted against the resolution had she known what the amendment contained.

Colegio also blasted back at Fouts, who she claims is often provided "political cover" by his "select team of insider council members."

"Either the mayor was aware of this or he failed to have the proper procedures in place to prevent this," Colegio said.

No city official had spoken of the new benefit plan until reporter Norb Franz at the Macomb Daily exposed it in Sunday's edition.

Colegio's recollection of the vote appears to differ from that of City Councilman Ron Papandrea, one of several incumbents who voted for the measure and remains on the council. Reached Monday, Papandrea said he regretted his vote.

“I made a mistake. I want to do whatever I can to correct it,” said the former assistant Warren city attorney. Papandrea, 71, said he receives Medicare coverage and doesn't need the lifetime city benefit for which he voted.

“I’m the only one talking who knows exactly what happened,” he said. Recalling the Sept. 10 council meeting, Papandrea said: “Councilman (Robert) Boccomino approached me with a paper in his hand and said, ‘I’m going to lose my health benefits.’ Kelly Colegio was listening in. We both felt sorry for him.”

Boccomino, 55, is a retired teacher who, Papandrea said, depended on his city income and the health care coverage given to council members while in office. Warren council members earn $31,400 per year.

“I never read this thing myself. But stuff gets added at the last minute, and it was added because Boccomino asked for it,” Papandrea said.

A few days later, Papandrea said he said he visited Warren City Hall and was called over by a tense-looking human resources director.

“He said this is going to cost the city millions of dollars (and) ‘we can’t afford this — we’ve gotta stop this.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that.’ So then, I didn’t think anything more of it because I thought they were taking care of it.

“Now I hear the city attorney is going to issue an opinion saying this can’t stand,” Papandrea said. He added: “In the good old days, councilmen got all kinds of stuff, but I realize that’s over.”

Boccomino, who had been council secretary and handled the paperwork for years, could not be reached Monday. The disputed measure passed in about 30 seconds, without debate or discussion, according to a video of the council meeting.

The council's newly elected president said he is determined to “unwind this action” in a news release issued Monday.

“We did not create this mess but we will absolutely see it resolved,” said the release, signed by Council President Patrick Green. The release said that the council would bring the issue up at its next meeting on Nov. 26, and that it would demand action from Fouts, calling him “complicit” and “asleep at the switch” when the measure passed.

Fouts said Green was “trying to blame me for what the (previous) council did.” He said he’d heard about the sweetheart deal “several weeks ago” and told his staff, “Research this and find out if we have to implement it.”

He said he believes that because the new perk did not receive a review for financial soundness by an actuary prior to the vote — a requirement of state law for public-sector benefits — the vote by the council was invalid. The measure, passed as a resolution, called for parts of a previous benefit package to be rescinded and replaced with the new lifetime benefit for anyone with eight years of elected service with the city.

Fouts also said that he'd launched an internal investigation to find out who, “either staff or an outside contractor,” drafted the secret resolution and then passed it along to the council for the September vote.

“When we find out who was the author of this illegal resolution, we will deal with the person severely including termination,” he said.

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