Gordon lesson: Loose Lips indeed sinks ships

Now that there is a settlement deal with Council member Cathie Gordon, is there anything to be learned?

The council treaded on new legal ground in deciding whether to disqualify Gordon on the accusation that she was not truly a resident of the city.

Gordon tempted fate with a flip comment to a television reporter several weeks ago. In that interview, Gordon was asked what she would do if GM closed the Poletown plant. Gordon said she would be forced to sell her Sterling Heights home and move into her bar, the New Dodge Lounge.

There was already enough suspicion that Gordon never lived up to her word that she would move into her mother’s house on Norwalk St. in 2007 when she filed to become a candidate.

To hold office in Hamtramck you have to be a resident. It doesn’t get any more simple than that.

Gordon insisted all you have to be is a registered voter. But guess what, to be a registered voter in Hamtramck you have to live here. If that’s what Gordon was going to rest her defense on, she would have had a rude awakening.

It’s galling that as a city official she answered a very serious question about the ramifications of GM closing the Poletown plant with a “sarcastic” – as she put it – answer.

As an elected official representing Hamtramck, is that the kind of response you want to give to all of metro Detroit?

A sarcastic comment?

These are serious times, people are losing their jobs and their homes. What does Gordon do? She makes a goofy comment about being forced to sell her Sterling Heights home and move into her bar.

You’d expect to hear something like that in, well, a bar.

As a city official, Gordon needs to put on a more serious face when out in public. As the old saying goes, loose lips sinks ships.

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