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Over at Detroit Uncovered, blogger John Bennett goes H.A.M. on former Detroit City Councilman Gary Brown, who announced yesterday that he's leaving the council to become chief compliance officer under emergency manager Kevyn Orr:
Walking away clean is something Brown has become very adept at and we are once again seeing it as he departs the city council to join the overseeing of Detroit. While on city council Brown didn’t exhibit any skills that would warrant such a high level job; he only needs to be loyal. He somehow influenced his fellow council members to vote in away that has lead to takeover and now has joined the takeover -- classic Gary Brown.
This is not a Kevyn Orr move, it couldn’t be. Orr has made it clear to many that he wasn’t fond of Brown but Orr has a boss too. Orr arrived in Detroit talking about fixing the police department, boosting the morale of officers and maybe, just maybe increasing the pay. The hiring of Brown is destructive on so many levels and will serve to tamp down the enthusiasm for Orr and his new chief James Craig. It would not stand to reason that Orr would pick James Craig to be his chief of police then turn around and choose Brown to oversee Craig. They will say that Brown is in charge of the restructuring of the entire city government but how could that be so when he does not have the skill set to justify that position.
Whilst Big John's take clearly includes a healthy portion of personal disdain for Brown, he raises a relevant and critical point that even objective observers should consider: Little about Brown's career suggests that Detroiters should consider him ideal for any important and substantive oversight job within the EM's office.
After a middling career in the police department, where highlights included Brown's embarrassing dust-up with rap icon Dr. Dre (Brown lost) and his role in the Kilpatrick scandal (Brown won big), Brown parlayed his fame -- and newly minted image as the vindicated "good" cop who helped bring down a corrupt mayor -- into a council seat.
Bowing Down to Snyder
Brown was the most conservative voice on a council representing one of the most liberal U.S. cities. He was always the first to embrace knee-jerk positions, such as his stance against a millage to buttress the police department. He was always the first and most eager to genuflect before Gov. Rick Snyder's political agenda.
While it may be a stretch to say, as Bennett does, that Brown was "by far the most hated person in the city of Detroit," it's not hyperbole to say many political observers saw Brown as the council's most polarizing figure.
Of course, many of those outside the city saw Brown differently. Some embraced him precisely because of his willingness to do Lansing's bidding. One pollster in Lansing called Brown "a bulldog about trying to make Detroiters realize it could no longer be business as usual."
Polarizing or not, though, Brown deserves his biggest criticism for his utter lack of political imagination. He's a hack who, for all his fluffy talk about wanting to "make Detroit strong again," never came up with a single good idea or did a single proactive thing during his time on the council. Gary Brown was the ultimate reactionary, an unqualified presence whose only response to the city's crisis was to constantly holler out "cuts" like some parrot with a one-word vocabulary.
Responding to Brown's resignation from the council, former school board member Marie Thornton echoed Bennett and summed up the incredulity of numerous residents at word of Brown's new gig: “How in the world was Gary Brown selected? Is it because he sued the city and he gets a pension? What is he managing financially to be working with Kevyn Orr?
Payday Again
Nonetheless, Brown cashes in yet again, stepping away from a $70,000 council seat to take a $225,000 job in which he's likely to do little more than get on people's nerves -- especially the cops -- as he continues to chart his political rise. (After all, if not DPD, then what other department is Gary Brown even remotely qualified to "oversee?") It's no secret that Brown has thought of himself as the ideal man to lead the police department, so I can only imagine the sort of headaches his "oversight" power, combined with his naked ambition, could cause for the new chief.
Some observers have called Brown the governor's sycophant and have deemed his move from the council to the EM's office a pay-off for his help with the consent deal. Others have characterized it as treachery, painting Brown as a turncoat on the same order as the douchebag office drone in the first "Die Hard" movie who smugly sold out his co-workers and tried to join up with the terrorists who'd taken over his building. Even Brown's friends, such as political consultant Greg Bowens, seemed dismayed by the move, with Bowens calling it a "dance with the devil."
But despite contentions that he's only too eager to help Orr draw a shape knife across the throats of city workers and pensioners, Brown seems oblivious to the criticisms. After all, he's getting paid big no matter what.
Sure, the city may be falling down around him. But Gary Brown, qualified or not, keeps finding ways to fall up.
