City hall critic is next in line to fill council vacancy

Carrie Beth Lasley

 

By Charles Sercombe
It’s official.
At a special meeting, prior to the regular council meeting on Tuesday, the council officially accepted Councilmember Ian Perrotta’s resignation, and declared his seat vacant.
What the council did not do was name his replacement.
That offer will go, through the city administration, to the runner-up in the last council election, which is Carrie Beth Lasley.
Lasley told The Review that she will accept the appointment.
Perrotta’s letter was over 2,200 words long, and outlined a number of grievances he had with some fellow councilmembers – particularly Councilmember Mohammed Hassan.
Last year, Hassan started a recall petition against Perrotta, and claimed he had more than enough signatures to trigger a recall election.
However, he never followed through, and he has not returned repeated phone calls to comment on the matter.
In a press release issued by Hassan last September, he explained the reason for the recall.
“As a matter of principal, elected officials do not support recalls,” Hassan said in his press release. “But Mr. Perrotta is a special case. He had shown, repeatedly, an inability to contain his anger. This has created an unsafe environment in city hall, and in our community.”
Perrotta had this to say about the recall effort, in his resignation letter: “It was almost as if the whole thing was a sham, a nasty calculated move designed to denigrate my name and reputation …”
He also said that there have been ongoing attacks on his reputation, and that it had come to a point where enough was enough.
He had previously been censured twice by a bare majority of councilmembers – the first time for allegedly threatening a councilmember in a closed meeting, and the second time for his verbal attack on a city employee with whom he was having a heated discussion about a private zoning dispute he had.
Perrotta denied ever threatening anyone, but did admit to using “cuss” words while talking with the city employee. That employee has since moved on to another job in another city.
The sting of the censures and the recall effort had apparently taken their toll.
“Sometimes when life hands you lemons the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. The fruit of this poisonous tree that is Hamtramck politics has soured my taste for public service and proven too toxic to continue to tolerate,” Perrotta said in his letter.
Perrotta is the second councilmember to resign in recent months. Last December, Andrea Karpinski resigned abruptly after a number of her resolutions were rejected by a bare majority of councilmembers.
Perrotta’s replacement, Carrie Beth Lasley, has been a vocal critic of the city administration and public officials.
While she says she will fill the vacant council seat, she did not file to run in the primary election, in which there are three wide-open council seats.
At the Tuesday meeting, she said she will concentrate on “progressive police reforms,” and “making document requests.”
And, she added, she will not be like Perrotta and “talk and talk and talk.”
Posted April 30, 2021

4 Responses to City hall critic is next in line to fill council vacancy

  1. Mark M Koroi

    May 1, 2021 at 5:54 pm

    Progressive police reforms are needed.

    Lasley has also criticized the increasing amounts of legal costs the City of Hamtramck has spent in recent years.

    Can she make a difference in eight months left in 2021?

  2. Nasr Hussain

    May 2, 2021 at 12:31 pm

    @Mark
    Are you an attorney?
    If so, do you think that you can lower the city’s legal budget significantly if you were put in charge?

  3. Mark M. Koroi

    May 2, 2021 at 6:49 pm

    Absolutely.

    You are not the first person who considered me for the City Attorney position – but that is someone the City Manager appoints.

    The late Bob Zwolak had felt there should be someone reviewing the costs expended by the law firms representing the city for reasonableness.

    In the 1970s thru 1990s the City Attorney was Ed Torsenelli, who was a city employee. That fellow did a fine job.

    Create an in-house legal department and the City of Hamtramck will likely reduce legal costs significantly.

  4. Mark M Koroi

    May 3, 2021 at 4:06 pm

    One aspect of “document requests” needs to be settlement agreements of federal lawsuits – and a public accounting of legal fees and costs, claimant payouts and insurance contributions to these legal cases.

    The Fieger Firm represented Jibreel Amin Montalvo in his federal suit arising out of the Officer Ryan McInerney incident in which McInerney eventually pled guilty to federal civil rights criminal charges.

    Jibreel is a Yemeni-American and was a Hamtramck resident at the time of the incident.

    How much was Montalvo paid to settle the case? How much did the city pay and its insurer pay toward claimant payout? This information needs to be publicly revealed.

    The City of Hamtramck financed the legal defense of Ryan Inernney in the civil rights suit even after he was indicted by a federal grand jury. Why did the City do this? Were they under an obligation under a collective bargaining agreement with the police union to provide such a legal defense – or did they do so gratuitously?

    City Attorney John Clark initially appeared as McInerney’s defense counsel in the Montalvo civil rights suit – but later the McGraw Morris law firm defend McInerney at city expense.

    McGraw Morris specializes in police misconduct defense:

    http://www.mcgrawmorris.com

    McInerney had initially been placed on administrative leave after the Montalvo incident but later resigned from the HPD and found subsequent employment as a railroad police officer.

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