A blast from the not-so-distant-past: Ward’s $5.5 million gift to a developer from the taxpayers

This is from today’s Daily Press & Argus. To answer the question in the lead, “Would the dual roundabout at Lee Road and U.S. 23 have looked any different if a tax-capturing downtown development authority would have been approved for the area, providing more money for the reconfiguration of the interchange? “

I don’t know. However, what I do know is that it would have cost you and I, the taxpayers, $5.5 million. It’s time Mr. Ward stopped representing rich developers like Wixom-based Quadrants and started representing the 66th District.

The DDA law was established in 1975 to halt the decline of property tax values and deterioration in downtowns. It was also intended to give downtowns a weapon to fight huge shopping malls, like the $100 million Village Place Mall, that were just coming on line in 1975 that had uniform hours, lots of free parking and everything within walking distance. In other words, the law was made to combat the very thing Mr. Ward wanted to pervert the law to benefit.

In 2004 Mr. Ward changed the law – for just one person mind you – that allowed a DDA to expand its boundaries if it was a $100 million project and it did away with the requirement that the property had to have declining property values.

The end result would have been a 20-year bond would have been sold, and the rest of the $5.5 million – not including interest – would have been paid for by the taxpayers.
Only when Brighton City officials found out about the stealth amendment and complained and after the resulting bad publicity did he changed the law back.

When was the last time you had the opportunity to talk to a legislator one-on-one let alone get one to pass a law just for you that would have gotten the taxpayers to help for your project out to the tune of $5.5 million? I’m guessing never.

Mike Craine said 17 other highway interchanges in this county do not work as they should. Why aren’t these getting any money and this one would have?

These are the so-called “missteps” the newspaper skips over. Good job here by Dan Meisler. Mr. Ward’s supporters do not want you to remember these $5.5 million missteps. They will again, cry that we are using dirty politics and personally attacking Mr. Ward because they want voters to forget these missteps. And again I challenge them to show a personnel attack and to refute what has been written on this blog.

I’m still waiting.

Would the dual roundabout at Lee Road and U.S. 23 have looked any different if a tax-capturing downtown development authority would have been approved for the area, providing more money for the reconfiguration of the interchange?
The issue has come up in the campaign between Republican incumbent state Rep. Chris Ward, R-Brighton Township, and Democratic challenger Mike McGonegal of Green Oak Township, but there's no clear answer to how the hypothetical DDA-funded interchange would have looked.
Bill Clark — CEO of Quadrants Inc., the developer of the nearby Green Oak Village Place mall and funder of the road upgrades — said a new off-ramp from northbound U.S. 23 would have been built, and the two roundabouts on the west side of the highway would have been farther apart.
Mike Craine, managing director of the Road Commission, said there may have been enough money to widen the bridge taking Lee Road over U.S. 23, which is potentially a bottleneck point.
Regardless, McGonegal is sticking with his criticism of Ward for pushing through a bill to allow the DDA, and then getting other legislation passed nullifying the original bill once the Livingston County Board of Commissioners nixed the DDA.
McGonegal said Ward used "surreptitious, stealthy and sneaky" methods to get the original bill through, and that it would have cost the county and townships a lot of revenue that is used for police and fire services.
"It was put in there in kind of a way that nobody would be able to know what was going on. That's what a lot of people were angry about," McGonegal said. "It was not a small amount of money. That would have been a lot of money for a lot of years that would not have been available to the township or county."
But Ward said the extramoney — over and above the $6 million Quadrants spent — would have allowed a "full interchange" to be built.
Does he still think that would have been a good idea?
"Absolutely," Ward said. "If the county commissioners had decided to move forward with it, there would have been additional money available to create a better interchange there."
As it is, the roundabouts are very close together, making for tougher navigation; and the original off-ramp is still there, which takes motorists in a 180-degree loop into the interchange instead of going straight in as the new one would have.
Clark said the additional work on the off-ramp and roundabouts would have cost about $2 million more.
Ward said one of the reasons he rewrote the statute with the second bill was to ease tensions between the city of Brighton and Green Oak Township.
"One of the things I felt bad about at the time was the bad feeling between the township and the city," he said.
But he added that he would have kept the language intact had the Livingston County Board of Commissioners approved the DDA.
McGonegal said the episode is one of several times Ward has tried to sneak bills through, and then reversed himself. McGonegal cited a bill allowing a land swap at the Island Lake State Recreation Area as another example.
"He's got a history of doing this," McGonegal said. "It's a pattern of this stuff."
Ward said he was led to believe that the county board would approve the DDA, and that's why he introduced the original bill in the first place.