Vote4Biz

Mayor of Detroit

Dave Bing is current mayor of Detroit and is founder and chairman of The Bing Group, a diversified base of unionized manufacturing companies housed on 30 acres in Detroit’s North End that employs some 500 people.

Detroit City Council

Saunteel Jenkins is director of the residential treatment program at Mariners Inn. Prior to her current position, Saunteel was National Business Development Director for a private education company, Platform Learning. As an entrepreneur, she started Petite Sweets, a dessert catering company. Saunteel served as chief of staff to Maryann Mahaffey while she was president of Detroit City Council.

Gary Brown is the former Detroit Police deputy chief. During his 26 years of service with the DPD, he served the community as Commander of the 1st, 3rd, 9th and 11th Precincts, and also provided executive direction in a variety of critical areas, including Gang Squad, Narcotics and Internal Affairs. Gary is currently the founder and owner of Brown & Associates, which provides objective and professional case consultant services for law enforcement and private security litigation.

Charles Pugh has worked as a reporter and anchor on FOX 2 News. Pugh was also a host and newscaster on FM 98 WJLB. Pugh left his careers in radio and television and on May 3, announcing his candidacy to run for Detroit City Council.

Ken Cockrel, Jr. is the current president of the Detroit City Council. He served as interim mayor for the city in 2008-2009, is a former journalist for the Detroit Free Press and a former Wayne County commissioner.

Jai-Lee Dearing, in addition to owning a small business, serves as Detroit Housing Commissioner, where he manages his department’s budget and nearly half a billion dollars in federal funds. Brought on to clean up the housing commission, Jai-Lee Dearing was forced to eliminate 80 percent of the department’s workers to wipeout widespread corruption in our city.

Fred Elliott Hall is founder and president of Novatech Computer Services Company and president of H&P Protective Services. He completed an MBA in finance from Wayne State, and in 1989 founded Novatech. It was one of the first computer services companies of its kind, providing computer training and networking. He also co-founded Project Exposure, an African American young male mentoring program.

Detroit City Charter Revision Commission

Jenice Mitchell-Ford is senior counsel in the Detroit office of Foley & Lardner LLP, specializing in Commercial Litigation. Mitchell Ford was a steering committee member for Michigan Lawyers for Obama, coordinating voter protection efforts during the historic 2008 election. She has served on transition teams for elected officials and worked on presidential, gubernatorial and mayoral elections.

Sarah D. Lile served as director of the department of environmental affairs for the City of Detroit from 1995 to 2005. Before coming to city government, Lile was a partner in the law firm of Fink Zausmer P.C., where she specialized in environmental litigation and planning, eminent domain and commercial litigation. In addition to her legal and government experience, Lile served as Assistant Dean and Lecturer in Law at Wayne State University Law School from 1982-84, where she taught employment law.

Patty Fedewa has practiced labor law since 1995, after graduating from Detroit College of Law cum laude in 1994. Since 2002, she has been the bus improvement project chair of Transportation Riders United (TRU). In this role, she has lobbied the mayor, city council, and DDOT to improve transit.

Kenneth L. Harris is the founder, president and CEO of the International Detroit Black Expo, Inc., an economic empowerment agent for African-American businesses in the State of Michigan. Over the last few years, the nonprofit organization has grown exponentially to more than 7,500 African-American business members across the State of Michigan providing a stronghold in the community.

Jonathan Kinloch has served on the Detroit Library Commission and has initiated several programs to increase literacy in Detroit. Kinloch also believes that revising the charter alone is not sufficient if council members are not willing enough or courageous enough to use the provisions of the charter for the best interests of Detroiters, and that it is essential for the City Charter to be a clear, concise and binding document in order to accomplish this.

John Eddings served as Macomb County ombudsman for a year, after having served 10 years as Detroit’s city ombudsman. He believes that the city council should be elected by a combination of district and at-large elections. He also believes that the city attorney needs to be completely independent in governance of the city law department.

Cara Blount retired as deputy chief, Detroit Police Department. She serves as an adjunct instructor at Wayne State University and Wayne County Community College District. Blount believes the city would be better served by having council members elected by district.

Ken Coleman is former legislative assistant to former Detroit City Councilwoman Brenda M. Scott, State Senator Irma Clark-Coleman and State Senator Buzz Thomas. He serves as the director of the Office of Community Relations and Office of Governmental Relations for Detroit Public Schools, as well as reporter and senior editor for the Michigan Chronicle.

The State of Michigan’s October 1 deadline to enact a new budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year is now behind us. Nonetheless, we still do not have a budget plan in place. After a week’s worth of marathon sessions held by the Michigan Senate and the House of Representatives that often ran from the morning until late in the evening , lawmakers and the Governor’s office failed to reach consensus on a deal to address the $2.8 Billion budget deficit. Votes on difficult issues, from a 3% cut in school aid funding to cuts in revenue sharing dollars for local units of government stalled on multiple occasions. The House of Representatives even voted to restore certain cuts without passing a plan to raise the corresponding new revenue as a way to garner adequate support. The end result was the passing of a continuation budget that funds State government, at reduced levels, through the end of October.

While it is disappointing that a full year’s budget was not passed, there are still positive ideas on the table. In September, a deal struck between Senate Majority leader Mike Bishop(R-Rochester) and Speaker of the House Andy Dillon(D- Redford Twp) to fix the hole in the budget with cuts, not taxes, was refreshing news coming out of Lansing. The deal included a reduction in overall general fund spending from $9.71 billion to $7.93 billion and minimized its reliance on one-time funding from federal stimulus dollars. Legislators should accept the necessity of the difficult decision to pare back the size of state government now, lest we be doomed to the chaos that comes with the yearly reprisal of budget crisis and economic uncertainty. The message from the business community must be clear; it is not acceptable to return to the status quo in the days leading up to October 31. Only two short years ago, legislators balanced the budget with tax increases, including the creation of a surcharge on the Michigan Business Tax.

Working with a coalition of 12 major business organizations, including groups representing everything from manufacturers, retailers and other chambers of commerce, the Detroit Regional Chamber has advocated consistently that structural and spending reform measures, not tax increases on job providers, are the only way to get Michigan’s fiscal house in order today and achieve lasting results into the future. Our work to right-size State government has successfully led to a bi-partisan agreement to make significant cost-saving reforms to the Michigan Department of Corrections, whose budget accounts for 20% of all State General Fund spending. We intend to hold policymakers to this agreement as they meet to finalize the FY ’09-10 budget. Go to WWW.VOTE4BIZ.COM to hold the Governor and your elected officials accountable!