Detroit City Council approved two measures Tuesday aimed at removing Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick from office.
Council members voted 5-4 to begin forfeiture of office proceedings against Kilpatrick. On a separate 5-4 vote, they approved asking Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to terminate Kilpatrick’s hold on the mayor’s office.
A third vote aimed at censuring the mayor passed on a 7-2 vote.
Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams called the forfeiture vote “another meaningless gesture on their part.”
“They can’t remove the mayor. They have no legal authority,” Adams said. “This goes well past where they need to be. He was elected by the voters of Detroit, not by the council.”
Shekinah Lee, a zoology junior at MSU, agrees that the public should decide his fate.
“I think (the council) should remove him but give him the chance to run again,” she said. “They should let the people decide if they want him back.”
She compared his situation to that of former President Bill Clinton.
“Many people like (Clinton),” Lee said. “If he were to run again, he may win. A lot of people didn’t lose respect for Clinton.”
Lynzi Johnson, a special education post-graduate from Detroit, doesn’t think this vote will hurt Kilpatrick’s public image.
“The City Council members are corrupt in their own ways, too, so I don’t think it will change the view on the mayor,” she said.
Journalism junior Zach McCune agrees that the way people view Kilpatrick won’t change after this vote.
“I think any respect (the public) had for him has already been lost,” McCune said. “As far as winning people over, I think he’s done for.”
McCune agrees with the City Council and would like to see Kilpatrick out of office.
“He’s brought quite a bit of trouble,” he said.
The votes appeared to be in jeopardy in the early afternoon when Councilwoman JoAnn Watson indicated she might reconsider her vote.
The council agreed to reconvene later in the afternoon on Watson’s request, but she decided instead to withdraw her motion to change the vote.
The relationship between the council and the mayor’s office was strained even before revelations earlier this year that he may have misled them to approve an $8.4 million whistle-blowers’ settlement.
Council members say they were unaware of a confidentiality agreement that Kilpatrick signed that kept secret references to intimate and sexually explicit text messages between the mayor and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty.
Excerpts of those messages were published in January by the Detroit Free Press and contradicted testimony Kilpatrick and Beatty gave during the whistle-blowers’ trial, when they denied having a romantic relationship.
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
The Wayne County prosecutor’s office charged the two with perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice on March 24, less than a week after the council voted 7-1 on a nonbinding resolution asking Kilpatrick to resign.
State law allows the governor to remove an elected official from office for a number of reasons, including official misconduct, willful neglect of duty or a felony conviction.
However, Johnson is concerned that getting rid of Kilpatrick may not solve any problems.
“It rubs me the wrong way, I’m afraid if we do get a new mayor, how much better is he going to be than Kwame?” she said. “Maybe Kwame should just finish his term.”
Although Kilpatrick has made the city of Detroit look even worse, he has done some good things, Johnson said, such as renovations to the downtown area, helping to get the homeless off the streets and organizing the annual Winter Blast.
And if Kilpatrick were to stay in office, he would likely be on top of his game, Lee said.
“They’re trying to get rid of him, there’s no way he can do anything wrong or subpar,” she said.
A message seeking comment was left Tuesday by The Associated Press with a Granholm spokeswoman. The governor has said she wants to allow the legal process to play out.
The council’s move to start forfeiture of office proceedings against Kilpatrick could end up in court and be costly – presenting yet another burden for a cash-strapped city which is among the nation’s leaders in foreclosures and unemployment.
The Kilpatrick case has overshadowed city budget negotiations and the proposed sale of Detroit’s half of a busy and lucrative international tunnel linking the city to Canada.
If Kilpatrick is forced from office, council President Ken Cockrel Jr. will assume the mayor’s seat and council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers would take over as council president.
Reporter Allison Bush contributed to this report.
