Wayne County Building Authority has canceled every meeting so far this year

In the lobby of downtown Detroit’s Guardian Building, tucked away in an easy-to-miss corner, are bulletin boards with Wayne County public meeting notices. One stands out. It’s the board meeting schedule for the Wayne County Building Authority — and every meeting date for 10 consecutive months has the same word next to it in red capital letters: “CANCELED.”

The Building Authority’s bylaws say a meeting “will be held … each month.” So we got to wondering: What’s up with this board and all these canceled meetings?

What does the Building Authority do?

The Wayne County Building Authority was created to issue bonds for the county to purchase, remodel or construct new buildings and parking lots.

Authority board members serve five-year terms . They are appointed by the county executive subject to the approval of the county commission. The executive and commission can agree to compensate board members for attending meetings, but the board is currently unpaid.

The Building Authority’s webpage has some gaping holes. There is no record of any meetings in the 2022-23 fiscal year. The page shows the last documented date the board met was Dec. 15, 2021. The most recent board meeting minutes posted online are from December 2017. In that meeting, the board looked into whether it should sell jail supplies it could no longer use like toilet paper, towel racks and locks.

For years, the authority was involved in building a new jail, the first iteration of which will be forever known in the county’s collective memory as the “ fail jail ” — after the Gratiot Avenue project went about $90 million over budget and was never fully built. Wayne County sued contractors over the project. In a countersuit, the contractors blamed the Wayne County Building Authority for selling bonds before the project was designed, changing the scope and direction of the project, and failing to make timely decisions. The county ultimately entered into a deal with billionaire Dan Gilbert’s development firm to let it acquire the Gratiot site, Frank Murphy Hall of Justice and three other properties. In exchange, Gilbert’s company built a new criminal justice complex along I-75 that’s set to open next month .

According to James Heath of the Wayne County Corporation Counsel, the authority’s primary function today is to service about $12 million in bonds it issued “years ago” to purchase two properties and lease them to the State of Michigan.

Nothing to (publicly) talk about?

Eileen DeHart, board president of the Wayne County Building Authority, was reluctant to talk to Outlier Media. She stressed that her position as a public servant is unpaid and not a political one. “I prefer not to be interviewed,” she said.

Through email, she told Outlier that meetings had been canceled because the authority hasn’t had anything to talk about. “If there’s no agenda items it’s absolutely senseless for us to have a meeting,” she said.

On the missing meetings beat

Wayne County Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said even though the Building Authority’s bylaws don’t explicitly state it, board members are allowed to cancel meetings “if there’s nothing material or they deem that there’s no real action or real significant update.”

According to the bylaws, “A transaction of any and all business or the passage of any resolution requires a vote by at least three members.” But board member Jimmy Saros and the Corporation Counsel both said the Building Authority can do the business it needs to for the two buildings with outstanding bonds, without formally meeting or voting.

Looking ahead

Kinloch said it’s good to scrutinize a body like the Wayne County Building Authority to assess “whether or not it’s working in a way that is transparent and to the total benefit of the citizens.”

He said there’s discussion of building a new civil court — in which case, the authority would become more active should the county need to issue bonds.

“There’s some future public needs that will be coming down the pipe. I’m sure this is a tool that would absolutely be necessary to help move those projects along,” Kinloch said.

The authority was scheduled to have a meeting on Aug. 21 but it was canceled. Board members say they are planning to meet to approve the budget before the end of the year.

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Wayne County Building Authority has canceled every meeting so far this year · Outlier Media