by P.D. Lesko

In September 2011, former Ann Arbor News reporter Tom Gantert did what he does best: published the truth. In point of fact, writing for Michigan Capitol Confidential, Gantert published information about the pay of staffers at the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. Gantert published his piece after the Board of the AATA had passed a deficit budget that moved the tax-payer funded entity $1 million dollars ino the red, for no reason other than Board members felt they couldn’t give up consultants, money for a non-existent train (the WALLY), and mile-high salaries for AATA managers, including the CEO, Michael Ford.

Gantert’s piece opens with the panorama of a proverbial bus wreck. It’s an ugly sight which AATA’s Board of Directors and Ford himself have kept hidden by making it necessary to use Freedom of Information Act requests to secure simple financial information from AATA (such as salaries and benefits). Gantert writes:

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority has a nearly $1 million deficit projected for fiscal 2011-12 at a time when its top executives are among the highest paid transit bosses in the state.

The AATA has eight employees making $90,000 or more, according to a Freedom of Information Act request. The AATA has 171 employees and a $21.4 million operating budget.

Grand Rapids, which has 308 employees and a $31.9 million operating budget, had four employees making $90,000 or more. Flint, which has a $21 million operating budget, has two employees making $90,000 or more.

Jackson Transit Agency’s highest paid employee is the general manager, who makes $75,524.

The Kalamazoo Metro Transit has one employee making $90,000 or more. The executive director made $102,861 in 2010.

Michael Ford (left) earns $183,895. The head of the AATA also gets a $10,000 car allowance. Dawn Gabay, deputy CEO of AATA, takes in $116,289. Life is large for those managers lucky enough to work for AATA, which takes in approximately $8-$10 million dollars per year from a perpetual millage levied on Ann Arbor homeowners. Michael Ford, evidently, knows which side his bus is buttered on, because in response to marching orders from both the Board of Directors (who take their marching orders from John Hieftje), Ford has jumped on board the push to get rid of his own job. Michael Ford is going all over Ann Arbor and the county explaining why AATA should be dissolved, and a county-wide transportation authority established.

One can’t help but wonder if Michael Ford has been promised the job of heading any newly established county-wide transportation authority at an even more generous salary and maybe a car allowance large enough to buy, well, a bus.

In fact, Michael Ford is so hot on dissolving his own transportation authority and putting himself and the other six-figure salaried employees there out of work that he sent out an email on January 17, 2012 urging recipients to attend a January 23, 2012 City Council public hearing on whether Ann Arbor should join a 4-party regional transportation group. Of course, Ford doesn’t just want people to attend. He wants them to attend and speak in favor of Ann Arbor’s elected officials getting rid of his own transportation authority. The email could be construed as positively saintly, but for this niggling detail Michael Ford puts in ALL CAPS: “THERE ARE MANY FOLKS WHO ARE TRYING TO STOP THIS PROCESS, EVEN AT THIS PRELIMINARY STAGE. PLEASE COME AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR REGIONAL COOPERATION AND IMPROVED TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS.”

So why would a taxpayer-funded entity controlled by elected officials be attempting to undermine the will of very people who pay the bills, and for whose benefit and use, one presumes, AATA exists in the first place? Could it be that Ann Arbor’s elected officials, as well as the AATA Board and Michael Ford don’t give a rat’s bahookie what the public have to say at the City Council hearing scheduled by elected officials to get public input concerning AATA and whether Ann Arbor should dissolve it?

Did Michael Ford just show John Hieftje’s hand in a mass email Ford sent on January 17th. Did he show the hands of the Hieftje Hive Mind members who have already decided that they intend to give over $8-$10 million in millage money to help fund a county transit authority regardless of public opposition and without a public vote that represents the will of the majority of the electorate?

This is the third time in as many years that Ann Arbor’s City Council and its mayor have worked to thwart both public input and, literally, to keep taxpayers from voting on how their money is spent and public lands used. Michael Ford’s email shows clearly that public input is a sham in this process to “decide” whether Ann Arbor should join a county-wide public transportation initiative, and give over property tax money fund transit for those outside of the city.

Ford even goes so far as to mislead the recipients of his email. Ford writes:

/*Myth*/*:*The proposed transportation agreement would require that Ann Arbor turn over the tax millage that supports our buses to a new Transit Authority.

/*FACT*/*: Ann Arbor’s millage CANNOT be used to subsidize out-county services.***The Public Transportation Agreement protects Ann Arbor from losing any existing service if a new transit agency is created.

The truth? Ann Arbor’s millage already subsidizes out-county services. It is subsidizing the Canton Express, for example, and the proposed service to Metro airport, both in Wayne County. AATA also paid for the latest consultant’s report for the TMP/Act 196 process (the process by which AATA would be dissolved and a county entity formed). To say the millage cannot be used to subsidize out-county services ignores reality, and is a denial of the truth.

Ford also writes:

/*MYTH*/*:*Ann Arbor will not be able to unilaterally withdraw from the Public Transportation Agreement.

/*FACT*/*: Ann Arbor is NOT obligated to join or participate in the transit authority.***The Public Transportation Agreement merely provides a transparent framework for discussions to continue and sets clear goals that must be met before a new transit authority can be created. Nothing else.

It is true that the 4-party agreement provides Ann Arbor with an opportunity to opt out in the 30-day period after the Articles of Incorporation are filed. However, once the Act 196 authority is incorporated, Ann Arbor will not be able to withdraw its funding or its participation.

That Michael Ford is prepared to be so openly deceptive in order to persuade people to attend a public hearing and speak in favor of a county-wide transit authority plan is disturbing. In his email, Ford diminishes his credibility as the head of an organization that exists to provide a service, and becomes, instead, a highly-paid propagandist ready to distort the truth on behalf of his handlers.

Obviously, Ford’s email is a direct response to the email sent out on January 15, 2012 by Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin. Anglin speaks in favor of the current transit millage being used to fund our current city-wide transit authority. In that email Anglin writes: “At the last Council meeting Mayor Hieftje presented a proposal that could have a detrimental effect on the bus service in Ann Arbor….The Mayor’s proposal calls for the City of Ann Arbor to continue to collect this property tax, but in the future it would be transferred to the new County Transit Authority. At present the county does not fund any transit service. Only the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti have transit millages. Ann Arbor collects far more tax revenue than Ypsilanti. Ann Arbor will have representatives on the County Transit Authority, but we will not have a majority. Most important, we will not be able to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement.”

He also writes that Second Ward Council member Jane Lumm and Third Ward Council member Stephen Kunselman favor city-wide transit funded with Ann Arbor taxpayer dollars, as opposed to county-wide transit funded with Ann Arbor taxpayer dollars.

Michael’s Ford’s email is a classic example of a highly-invested tail trying desperately to wag the dog.

“THERE ARE MANY FOLKS WHO ARE TRYING TO STOP THIS PROCESS, EVEN AT THIS PRELIMINARY STAGE”: In other words, Mike Anglin, Jane Lumm and Stephen Kunselman realize that “many folks” in Ann Arbor prefer their property tax money fund transit services in Ann Arbor as opposed to being given over to a county-wide authority for use county-wide.