Editor’s note: A quote from Leigh Greden in the July 2010 edition of The Ann Arbor Observer about the police-courts building struck The Chronicle as interesting enough to ask Jim Leonard, who wrote The Observer piece, to follow up. At issue is whether mayor John Hieftje was intimidated into not using his mayoral veto to block the police-courts project back in 2007.
Though the new $47 million police-courts building is on schedule to be completed in December, it’s still a major issue in Ann Arbor’s current mayoral campaign.
Challenger Patricia Lesko asserts the project is not just a waste of money; she claims the decision to build it is a prime example of what’s wrong with the current mayor and city council.
“Emails [between council members] came out that show [mayor John Hieftje] was possibly intimidated into withholding his veto by the majority on city council who composed an email saying if you veto this, we will make it so that you can’t get anything passed,” Lesko told The Ann Arbor Observer in a June interview. “It’s like blackmail, right? Extortion? Which is the word we’re using nowadays?”
Hieftje rejected the challenger’s accusation in an Ann Arbor Observer interview shortly afterward. “If you look at the email, you’ll see that it was never sent – at least not to me.”
Leigh Greden, the former councilmember who wrote the 2007 email in question, likewise denied Lesko’s charge that he blackmailed the mayor. “Absolutely not,” Greden wrote in an email to The Observer. “I drafted that email, but the email was never sent to the mayor. The mayor didn’t even know the email existed – and tellingly, it took about a year before the mayor decided to support the project.”
However, a look at the actual email makes it clear that the draft cited by Greden in his recent interview was not of text to be sent by email to the mayor. Instead, it was a draft of talking points for a meeting that Greden wrote should take place between councilmembers and the mayor: “Here’s what I propose. We schedule a mtng with him this week. We say the following: …” [Full Story]