DJ Weiser

Disgraced Demo Contractor Blames Duggan for Detroit's Poisoning I was invited for an exclusive interview with Lover Boy, but he chickened out, so here's what I would have asked him By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff Lover Boy left me standing in a monsoon. I had been invited to his press conference for an exclusive interview to hear former Gayanga CEO Brian McKinney’s side of things regarding the mass poisoning of Detroit. Then, thinking better of it, Lover Boy had me put out on the street. I was standing on Jefferson when the heavens opened. The bums at the bus stop scattered. My papers got drenched. But that’s okay. I had the subject matter memorized. Good thing I'd brought a bullhorn. I shouted my questions over the howling winds while Lover Boy was six floors up, spinning the media with tales of woe and done-me-wrong. I hoped they could hear me up there. McKinney, the former consort of Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield, is being investigated by a host of law enforcement agencies—including the FBI—for faking receipts for clean dirt, charging the city top dollar for it, and then dumping the toxic garbage into the neighborhoods when it should have gone to a landfill. This bad dirt could cause cancer. McKinney agrees that the city has been poisoned. But he blames former Mayor Mike Duggan and his cronies for supplying him with the toxic dirt. The clean up could cost more than $100 million and send the city spiraling back into bankruptcy. And $100 million is exactly the amount McKinney is suing the Detroit Inspector General for. He claims the Inspector defamed him for inspecting his work. That’s like O.J. Simpson suing the LAPD for investigating a break-in. There’s little doubt O.J. did it. But I don’t know if McKinney did. I’ll leave that to Johnny Lawman and the courts. Sheffield, Duggan, and the City Council are all hiding in their badger holes, leaving concerned citizens in the dark. So in the interest of public health, I shouted what I thought were a few important questions through the purifying rains. - Did McKinney remember Mike? Mike was his former foreman in charge of writing up the questionable dirt receipts. Mike reached out to me last week claiming the receipts were forgeries. Mike sent me copies of tickets written in his own hand, showing truck drivers allegedly being in two different places collecting dirt at the same time. Was McKinney aware of this? Mike claims he was. - Or what about McKinney’s former bookkeeper who alleges there was a forgery mill going on in the back office? - Or what about the Northland redevelopment job in Southfield, where the contaminated dirt allegedly came from that went into Gayanga’s demolition holes? Does McKinney know that the prominent contractor on that site is cooperating with the authorities? - Did he discuss business with then-city councilwoman Sheffield while they were “getting to know each other” at a Miami hotel underneath 350-thread count sheets? Sheffield told the public last fall that she never voted on a contract for Gayanga while she was canoodling with McKinney. But that turned out to be a lie. - How did McKinney meet Mayor Mike Duggan? How did he become Hizzoner’s preferred minority demo contractor? Why was he allowed to work without construction insurance? Did Duggan appoint him to the Detroit Institute of Arts board of directors? - What about the millions of dollars subcontractors claim McKinney owes them? Who’s going to pay them? Who’s going pay for this massive clean-up? - And how did McKinney link up with Bobby Ferguson’s old crew? While Bobby was doing time in federal prison for Kwame-related things, McKinney became business partners with Bobby’s ex-wife. He hired Bobby’s cousin. He used Bobby’s equipment and staging yard. I had more questions, but the tropical winds were really buffeting by then. Dirt was blowing in my eyes. No telling where it had come from.