45% of high-ranking officials in Duggan's office don’t live in Detroit, analysis shows

The leader of Detroit’s public transit system lives in a different time zone, roughly 300 miles away from the city in a Chicago suburb.

The official overseeing city property assessments resides with his wife more than 100 miles from Detroit, outside of Lansing.

And the home of Detroit’s second-in-command, the deputy mayor , is in Farmington Hills.

Mayor Mike Duggan has spent the last decade in office promoting Detroit as a thriving, comeback city that’s attractive to both new and existing residents, including pinning his own success on growing the city’s population.

But a Free Press analysis has found more than 4 out of 10 of Duggan’s high-ranking officials do not live in Detroit. And it’s not a new phenomenon: In 2020, almost half of Duggan’s appointees lived elsewhere, records show.

While a few of these employees with distant addresses say they have second homes in the city where they spend most of their time, some critics say the percentage of Duggan’s staff who aren’t full-time Detroiters undermines the mayor’s narrative.

"If Detroit is so great, then why are folks in your administration deciding not to live here?" said Theo Pride, a Detroit resident and leader of Detroit People's Platform, a local nonprofit pursuing racial and economic justice.

"I think it's a huge problem. I think it says a lot about who the administration serves."

Duggan, who lives in Detroit but previously faced his own residency criticism after moving to the city about a year before he filed to run for mayor, defended his appointees. A spokesman said job performance trumps living in the city officials serve.

"This administration recruits the finest talent from across Michigan and from across the United States,” John Roach, a Duggan spokesman, said in an emailed statement. “The talent and commitment to deliver services for Detroiters has always been the single overriding requirement for being part of this team, and we make no apology for that.”

In 2023, 59 of 132 administration officials did not list a Detroit home address on city-required conflict of interest disclosures for executive branch appointees. The forms were obtained by the Free Press through the Freedom of Information Act. In 2022, about the same percentage of officials who filed disclosures reported living outside Detroit.

Most of these officials are Duggan appointees, but some are nominated by the mayor and need formal approval from city council or another public entity before they can start in their new roles. Others are hired by Duggan-appointed board members.

Among other cities where staff lived last year include four who reported living in Farmington Hills and Livonia, respectively, with another three each in Dearborn and Southfield. Two listed out-of-state addresses and a handful of others had Michigan homes more than an hour’s drive from Detroit.

While a state law bans local residency requirements, the Duggan appointees the Free Press tracked are at-will employees. That means they could be fired by Duggan for any reason — including not living in Detroit, said Chris Johnson, a lawyer with the Michigan Municipal League.

"While following the law strictly says you can’t be forced to live in the city, obviously, if you’re not making the appointer very happy, you may not have a job tomorrow," Johnson said, adding this is a legally gray area.

Roach told the Free Press employees should not be forced “to uproot their family from their neighborhood or uproot their children from their schools in order to work for the city.”

But the idea that it's a burden for Detroit leaders to live in the city they help steer is dispiriting, said Donna Givens Davidson, a Detroit resident who is president and CEO of the Eastside Community Network and cohost of the "Authentically Detroit" podcast.

"Are we hiring people to lead us who don't love us? Who don't know us? Who don't have a real understanding of us?" she said.

"Even if some of them do, when some of them don't, it still provides a level of imbalance."

'Copper canyon' and a fight

Historically, whether city employees lived in Detroit has been a long-standing flashpoint, reflecting the often-fractured relationship between the state’s biggest city and its suburbs.

For decades, Detroit mandated all employees live in the city, including police and firefighters.

In 1968, Detroit City Council unanimously approved a new law mandating city employees live in Detroit. It was already a department rule for police, but the move came on the heels of the 1967 riot and the ongoing racial reckoning that followed. Detroit officers — many of whom were white — violently clashed with protesters — most of whom were Black — who were participating in a march advocating for social and racial justice the same month council voted, according to the Detroit American newspaper archives.

At the time, elected officials and city activists alike argued the best way to ensure community trust in policing and governing came through leaders who lived in Detroit.

“It is important that those we hire to protect us and enforce our laws be part of us, a part of our community, that they live among us sharing our anxieties and hopes,” reads a 1968 policy statement from Detroiters for Police Residency , a coalition of community groups. The document is included within a series on the 1967 riot published by the University of Michigan.

“If they, too, share our concern for our neighbors and properties, they will be sensitive to those concerns because of their own vested interest as residents.”

The Detroit police union fought the law in court, taking the challenge all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before ultimately losing. But it and others did not stop advocating against it, as city leaders investigated allegations of officers and other employees living outside the city — and against the law.

In 1999, the Michigan Legislature passed a law largely banning such local requirements.

So while the mayor and others elected to Detroit offices need to live in the city, there's no similar legal or regulatory requirement for employees or the bureaucrats in the mayoral administration.

Even after the 1999 law change, mayoral administrations touted it when their top lieutenants lived in Detroit and took heat when they did not. After Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s second term election, he vowed that all his appointees would be Detroiters, according to Free Press archives.

The residency law does allow for cities to, in some circumstances, require employees live within a certain distance of the city boundary. Detroit does not have such a requirement.

Duggan has publicly supported bringing back the residency requirement and his administration previously enacted policies that encourage employees to live in the city. But he has taken no public action to actively push lawmakers for a change.

Other large cities nationally have residency requirements. Chicago requires all city employees to live in the city. New York City requires "positions in the Executive Office of the Mayor and senior-level positions in Mayoral agencies" to live in the city.

Jeff Horner, an associate professor of teaching in the urban studies and planning unit at Wayne State University, supports residency requirements. He noted before the 1999 residency change, many white first responders lived in a portion of the city nicknamed “Copper Canyon” for the number of police who called it home. Now, though, he and others believe the lack of a requirement plays a role in the city subsidizing growth in the suburbs.

“Large metropolitan areas that have a desperately poor central city and all of the wealth in the suburbs all around, it is detrimental for everybody,” Horner said during a recent phone interview.

“This whole residency requirement is just one big part of why the metropolitan Detroit area is so divided and so sprawled out."

The analysis

Deputy Mayor Todd Bettison is one of the officials living in Farmington Hills. A longtime member of the Detroit Police Department, Duggan appointed him deputy mayor in 2022 after Conrad Mallett left the role to become corporation counsel.

On the first disclosure he filed after his appointment, Bettison reported living in Detroit. But on his 2023 report, he indicated living in Farmington Hills.

Property records show he purchased a home in Farmington Hills in 2017. Voter records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show Bettison registered to vote in Farmington Hills the same year.

Roach, Duggan's spokesman, said in a statement that Bettison leased an apartment in Detroit during his first year as deputy mayor. He said Bettison listed the Detroit address instead of his home in Farmington Hills on the disclosure because “it was the place he was most likely to be.” Bettison did not return an email seeking comment.

While many Duggan staffers reported living in cities throughout Wayne County — like Highland Park, Harper Woods and several spots Downriver — others reported residences slightly farther afield.

Last year, two people said they lived in Ann Arbor, about 40 miles from Detroit. Others reported living in Brighton, South Lyon and White Lake Charter Township, all about an hour's drive northwest of the city.

Then, there are the apparent mega-commuters.

That's a long drive

Jason Watt, the city's airport director, lives in Grand Blanc. The suburb of Flint is about 60 miles north of Detroit.

Watt did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Jay Rising, the city's chief financial officer, lives in Williamston. It's a city just east of Lansing that's roughly 75 miles from Detroit. Before joining the Duggan administration in 2021, he worked as a cabinet secretary for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Rising did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Alvin Horhn, Detroit assessor and deputy chief financial officer, lives in Eaton Rapids. The Lansing suburb is roughly 100 miles from Detroit.

Horhn, whose department faced scrutiny over allegations of overtaxing Detroit residents , said he has lived in Eaton Rapids since he married his wife about 17 years ago. He's not sure whether the mayor knows.

He stressed he maintains a home in Detroit and stays there multiple times a week, in an effort to attend weekend and nighttime events. And he has never asked for any kind of travel reimbursements. But his driver’s license states he lives in Eaton Rapids, he said.

"Once you get used to the back and forth — and I'll be honest with you, it did take me a while to get used to it — but once you get used to it, it's kind of like: This is just my life," Horhn said in a recent phone interview.

"I spend most of my time in Detroit, to be honest. I was born in Detroit, raised in Detroit, I've been there my entire life. I know the city."

Mark Kumpf, who led Detroit Animal Care and Control from 2019 until late last year, reported living in Dayton, Ohio. He was hired at a tumultuous time : The department had three leaders in four years, and a month before he started, three pit bulls killed a 9-year-old girl riding her bike home in Detroit.

But he also was fired from his previous job in Ohio, according to local media reports. The reports in the Dayton Daily News indicated he was fired after a local mauling, among other issues.

Kumpf never responded to a Free Press request for comment. Roach never answered questions about why he was allowed to live out of state during his tenure.

And G. Michael Staley earns the distinction of highest ranking official in Detroit living farthest from the city. He listed Romeoville, Illinois, on his 2023 disclosure, located nearly 300 miles west of Detroit.

Initially hired in 2022 , in August 2023, Duggan named Staley interim Director of Transit. In that role, he oversees both the Department of Transportation and the Detroit People Mover.

Staley did not respond to a request for comment. But Roach said since being hired, Staley has lived "full-time in Detroit's New Center."

"He and his wife still have a home in Illinois, where she lives and he visits every other weekend," Roach said.

Asked why Staley would list his Illinois address if other officials, like Bettison, put down addresses where they were most likely to be, Roach did not respond.

Staley was initially hired to overhaul the city's paratransit system. At the time of his appointment, Duggan indicated he would evaluate Staley's performance after six months to determine whether he should stay on as full-time department leader. About 10 months later, Staley remains interim director.

'We're in a different space today'

Several former high-ranking city officials backed Duggan’s focus on attracting talent, saying telecommuting skills honed during the pandemic are more important than proximity.

Freman Hendrix was deputy mayor under former Mayor Dennis Archer at the time the state passed the law banning local residency rules. In a recent phone interview, he said the administration and those before battled to keep residency requirements, but now he understands there may be a need to cast a wide net for employees.

"We're in a different space today — I mean, this is 2024, not the 1980s or 1990s. Talent is not an easy thing to come by," he said.

"Can they perform their duties? Can they perform the job? Are they qualified? ... Are they able to perform the job at the highest level for which they have been hired to do, irrespective of where they sleep at night?"

Intended or otherwise, Givens Davidson said there's an underlying, darker message in the argument that talent must come from elsewhere in the state or nation: Detroiters are not good enough to lead their own city.

"There is this hidden and unstated suggestion that I and others perceive that Detroiters are not quite as smart as other people, and also that if we're going to get the best and the brightest, it means we have to leave this community," she said in a recent phone interview.

"I think there's a lot of talent here, and a lot of it is underutilized. I would love to see future mayors tap into that.”

Contact Dave Boucher: dboucher@freepress.com and on X, previously called Twitter, @Dave_Boucher1.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 45% of high-ranking officials in Duggan's office don’t live in Detroit, analysis shows