City councilwoman's election cash is diverted to kin
Tinsley-Talabi loans thousands of dollars to husband; pays for birthday party.

David Josar and Lisa M. Collins / The Detroit News


Detroit City Councilwoman Alberta Tinsley-Talabi has made loans from her campaign war chest to relatives and failed to provide full documentation for those and other transactions, raising questions about her use of political donations, according to a Detroit News review of campaign finance records.

Tinsley-Talabi says she has done nothing wrong, and Michigan election law gives candidates substantial leeway in how they can use donations that aren't spent on campaigning.

But her use of campaign funds for personal expenditures and transactions with family members far exceeds that of her peers on the City Council, according to a review of five years of campaign finance reports.

For instance:


Her disclosure statement said she gave a $200 loan to her brother, and a $4,000 loan to her husband, which were not fully documented. Although candidates frequently make loans to their campaign war chest and use donations to pay themselves back, state law says that "a Candidate Committee is not permitted to lend funds to the candidate or to any other person."


Her husband and campaign treasurer, Bamidele A. Talabi, wrote the councilwoman nine checks that totaled more than $18,500 last year from her re-election committee, checks that were noted as loan repayments although no paperwork was filed that indicated Talabi had ever loaned her campaign any money.


Talabi, who was first elected to the council in 1993, used campaign cash to reimburse herself more than $12,500 for unspecified "incidental expenses" over the past four years and spent $8,000 for a 50th birthday party for herself at the Roostertail in 2004.

No other council member has paid family members, given loans to family members or used campaign money for parties not connected with a victory celebration. Other candidates also have their committees write them checks for "incidental expenses" like Talabi does; but no one else is being reimbursed for an undocumented loan.

A spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office, which oversees candidate committees, said Tinsley-Talabi's filings raise questions about how the councilwoman is using her campaign funds.

"She really has some explaining to do," spokeswoman Kelly Chesney said.

Wayne County Director of Elections Candace Jenkins said any loan a candidate makes to the campaign must be documented, and every finance disclosure statement must record the status of the loan and whether any payments have been made.

In Tinsley-Talabi's case, Jenkins said it's possible her campaign committee was mailed a letter telling it to correct discrepancies, but there is no record of such a notice being sent.

In an interview, Tinsley-Talabi was uncertain about details and documentation for loans she said she'd made to her campaign from her own funds, and other loans paid out by the campaign fund.

"All that money was repaid," Tinsley-Talabi said concerning loans to her husband and brother, and she then added her brother "worked off" his loan.

She did not recall how he did that. Tinsley-Talabi could not produce documents for the loans to her brother and husband or for the loans she claims she personally made to her campaign committee that are now being repaid to her.

"My treasurer could but he is out of the country for five weeks," Tinsley-Talabi said. "I looked through the records, and this is what I could get."

Tinsley-Talabi also was reimbursed $22,500 in nonspecified "out of pocket expenses" in the past five years.

Under state law, any expense over $50 must be made either by check or money order from the campaign committee.

She did produce a two-page, hand-written, list of more than $10,000 in personal checks she had written last year to churches, nonprofits and other groups and individuals. Tinsley-Talabi said she writes too many checks to document each as an expense, and simply pays herself back from her campaign fund in bulk payments.

Tinsley-Talabi said she receives about four requests daily from groups for financial help. Her strategy on deciding what gets her support is this: "It boils down to where will the donation do the most good, touch lives, further a good cause, ease some amount of suffering, accomplish my political goals and objectives which are to further good government."

Loans made by other council members, by contrast, are meticulously documented.

For instance former Councilman Alonzo Bates, who lost his re-election bid in November, documented more than $33,655 in loans he gave his campaign for everything from a $16,025 bulk mailing to $600 to pay a campaign worker. In all, Bates recorded 17 loans he'd made to finance his campaign.

In November, Bates was named in a 13-count indictment that charged him with using city money to pay the person who cut his lawn and falsifying time cards for a family member on his payroll.

The indictment made Bates the second person charged in a wide-ranging, three-year federal investigation. Councilwoman Kay Everett was indicted last year but died before the case went to trial.

Tinsley-Talabi has acknowledged she is under FBI investigation for hiring Bates' daughter.

and this wont make major news like kwame did im sure.

but good work Fool. might as well show some the people ignorant to the detroit government's set up the councils many shady deals that are killing this city IMO.
heres a background piece that suggest that possibly this was a trickle down effect from decades ago.

Battle for ‘good government’ spurred early charter reform
Weak council springs from effort to end corruption
By Cameron McWhirter / The Detroit News

DETROIT — Today’s ineffective city council is an unintended result of a hard-fought battle for “good government” that took place nearly a century ago in Detroit.

Back in the 1890s and early part of the 20th century, Detroit had a council of aldermen who were elected to represent political wards. But by all accounts the system was a cesspool of fraud and vice.

The corruption spurred civic leaders, including editors of The Detroit News, to join the Progressive movement, which was sweeping the country at the time, aimed at cleaning up city governments.

“You had just profound levels of corruption in Detroit city government,” said Lyke Thompson, urban politics professor at Wayne State University. “It was Detroit’s and Michigan’s attempt to clean things up.”

The widely popular Hazen Pingree, mayor from 1890 to 1896 and later governor, made his career in part by exposing corruption. But graft and bribery persisted.

By 1910, Detroit had 18 wards, each with two elected aldermen. The Common Council, as it was then called, was an unfocused confederacy of saloon-keepers and machine politicians who were chiefly out for their own financial gain.

Like other major cities, Detroit was run by politicians who consolidated power through payoffs, bribes and favors. The aldermen controlled voting in their wards and awarded lucrative city contracts to favorites. One of the most powerful among them was Eddie Schreiter, clerk of the Common Council.
In 1912, a local businessman, Andrew Green, spent $10,000 of his own money to hire detectives to catch aldermen in a bribery scandal. Each alderman was invited into an office in the Ford Building. With hidden dictographs—early recording devices—planted in the room, the men were offered bribes by private detectives, ostensibly to vote for a specific contract. After exiting into the hallway, those who had accepted bribes were arrested by waiting police.

On July 27, 1912, the day after the arrests, The News ran a front-page editorial entitled “The Lovers of Good Government,” which praised Green for funding the sting.

“Let Detroit citizens show their appreciation, their gratitude, by coming together and, with small contributions and large, repay the cost of trapping and catching the betrayers of their interests,” the editorial urged.

The immediate results of the sting ran against Green and his backers. Twenty-six of the city’s 36 aldermen were arrested and charged with taking bribes. However, because of questions of entrapment, only one alderman — Council President Tom Glinnan — ever went to trial. In his 1914 trial, a jury found that Glinnan, too, had been a victim of entrapment. He was acquitted. An effort to revise the city charter in 1914 failed.

Nonetheless, the bribery scandal proved a watershed for Detroit. Momentum from the trial and the newspaper coverage encouraged “good government” leader John C. Lodge and civic groups to campaign for a new city charter written by Detroiters. Previous city charters had been written by the state legislature.

In 1918, voters approved a new charter that destroyed the political machine. The ward system was abolished, and members of the new city council were to be elected at large. The council was reduced to nine from 42 (two aldermen from each of the city’s then 21 wards). And the new charter specified a nonpartisan ballot.

The 1918 charter was designed to weaken the authority of the city council while retaining a strong mayor. This plan differed from the reform plans in other cities, according to Wayne State’s Thompson. The new council was intended to become mostly a policy-setting body, handling less of the day-to-day operations of government.

Thompson said Detroit civic leaders wanted reform but believed a strong mayor would still be important because the city was growing dramatically, with migrants and immigrants coming to work in the burgeoning auto industry. “You needed a strong mayor to manage all the conflicts arising for the different ethnic groups in the city,” Thompson said.

The 1918 charter has since been amended hundreds of times. It was substantially revised in 1974 and in 1994 (by law now it must be revised every 20 years). But the basic framework — a weak city council focused on broad policy, with a strong mayor handling day-to-day management — hasn’t changed.

Recent efforts to get Detroit voters to reconsider how their council members are elected and whom they represent have failed, partly because of aggressive opposition by sitting council members.

You can reach Cameron McWhirter at (313) 222-2072 or cmcwhirter@detnews.com .