Oversight missing

Let it not be overlooked that the Flint City Council in 2001 blithely signed on to a $1.2-million loan to businessmen who are now accused of stealing it.

The council legitimately makes much of its belated scrutiny of former Mayor Woodrow Stanley's administration, which bears a larger responsibility for this bad deal. But council members also missed opportunities to check spending, a lapse that contributed to Flint's financial ills.

In this instance, the council went along with loaning federal money to ex-convict Joseph Giacalone and his business associate Daniel Robin. Giacalone promised to build a vinyl plant that would employ more than 100 on a site he owned on N. Saginaw Street.

There never was a hint of work carried out toward it, according to Genesee County Prosecutor David S. Leyton. Without elaborating on details, authorities say Giacalone spent the money on his OK Industries and personal expenses.

This week Giacalone and Robin were accused of larceny by conversion, while former city grants manager Alexander J. Thomas Jr. is charged with misconduct in office on allegations he did not monitor the loan, made to Giacalone's Lennon-based company.

Perhaps the entire matter would have been forgotten, but for the intervention in 2002 of then-emergency financial manager Ed Kurtz, who began seeking answers to what became of the loan. Kurtz went to legal authorities around the same time the council ended a long fight to prevent a state takeover following Stanley's recall.

If the council had been equally motivated to oversee finances during Stanley's entire tenure, including the Giacalone loan, and if Stanley had been more forthcoming on finances, perhaps the city's financial emergency could have been avoided.

Granted, Giacalone's promise of a flourishing industrial plant sounded like just what Flint most desperately needed at the time - all the more so on the impoverished north side. But Giacalone should never have easily passed city scrutiny, at least not in light of his past convictions for armed robbery and gambling, as well as other blemishes.

But instead of asking obvious questions, the city let federal resources designed to help spur a much-needed financial turnaround slip away through the hands of people making alluring but ultimately false promises.

***
 

© 2005 Flint Journal. Used with permission