Deadbeat treasurer ordered to leave office, but what about the home city helped her buy?

It's a pretty good sign you're not qualified to be a municipal treasurer — you know, the job that requires collecting money owed to the city — when one of the debts you've failed to collect is the 90 grand YOU owe the city.

Still, it took a gadfly and a Wayne County circuit judge to finally end the disgraceful tenure of Highland Park Treasurer Janice Taylor-Bibbs after nearly 25 years in office.

I can't speak to the first 13 years of Taylor-Bibbs' tenure as treasurer in the perennially struggling enclave located about a mile north of Boston-Edison within Detroit's borders. Given Highland Park's long-standing failure to pay more than $20 million in water bills it owed to Detroit and, later, the Great Lakes Water Authority, I think it's safe to say she was not able to meet all of the challenges her job presented. Then there was her failure to either detect or stop her former classmate, Arthur Blackwell II, from cheating the city out of hundreds of thousands of dollars while serving as emergency manager nearly 20 years ago. As treasurer, Taylor-Bibbs may have even signed some of those checks.

But there's little question Taylor-Bibbs has not been serving her neighbors well since December 2012. That's when she bought a new home built with federal funds administered by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, also known as MSHDA. The neighborhood stabilization program provided funds to repair homes and build new ones.

Taylor-Bibbs closed on her heavily-subsidized home on Dec. 19, 2012.

Two days later, MSHDA notified Highland Park that Taylor-Bibbs may not be eligible for the program because federal conflict of interest rules forbid city employees from participating.

Over the next six months, Highland Park and state officials argued over whether Taylor-Bibbs was entitled to what amounted to a deeply-discounted new home built with taxpayer money. State officials told Highland Park to repay MSHDA the more than $90,000 they gave Highland Park to build the home, and ordered the city to essentially boot Taylor-Bibbs so Highland Park could make the home available to someone who was entitled to new, taxpayer-funded digs. Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ruled in MSHDA's favor.

Taylor-Bibbs' next move should have been to move. As in "vacate the premises." If she had, that might have been the end of our story. Alas, gentle readers, it was just the beginning.

Taxpayers pay, the treasurer stays

In January 2019, more than five years after Taylor-Bibbs should have started packing, MSHDA demanded $90,619 from Highland Park to repay the money used to build Taylor-Bibbs' home. Two months later, the Highland Park City Council approved sending $90,619 to MSHDA. The council also gave Taylor-Bibbs 30 days to pay Highland Park $90,619.

And then ... nothing.

At least that's what the public record shows. On Jan. 6, 2023, Robert Davis sent Highland Park a Freedom of Information Act request for any record showing that Taylor-Bibbs repaid her debt to the cash-strapped city. Davis is a longtime Highland Park resident, government watchdog, former school board member and general pain in the keister to anyone he thinks is trying to get over on residents and taxpayers. He's not perfect, having spent a little time in federal prison for his own caper, but he knows his way around government. More than three weeks after receiving Davis' request for any evidence Taylor-Bibbs paid Highland Park anything, the city told him they could find no record that the treasurer made any payment on her $90,000 debt.

"That’s quite egregious, considering the financial state of this community," Davis told me last week.

In September 2023, under oath during a deposition in which Davis did the questioning, Taylor-Bibbs confirmed that she never entered into a payment plan with the city and hasn't paid Highland Park a cent of the more than $90,000 it had to send back to the state for helping Taylor-Bibbs buy a brand-new home she wasn't eligible to receive.

While that has been a problem for Highland Park taxpayers for years, it only recently became a problem for Taylor-Bibbs.

That's because, armed with proof the treasurer was a deadbeat, Davis went to the Michigan Attorney General and then the Wayne County Circuit Court asking them to remove Taylor-Bibbs from office. The AG passed, which is a shame. But Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Hegarty agreed with Davis that Highland Park's city charter quite reasonably says anyone who owes the city money is not eligible to serve as an elected official.

While Highland Park officials sleep, Sheriff Rob is on the job

In my 30 years as a reporter, I've found that when someone says "no comment" even before you've asked your first question, the odds are there will be no subsequent meaningful exchange of information.

My brief encounter with Taylor-Biggs on Thursday was no exception to that rule.

I arrived at "her" home on Midland, a tidy street lined with a mix of older homes as well as new construction MSHDA built in 2012 as part of its neighborhood stabilization program, a few minutes before 9 a.m. I rang Taylor-Bibbs' doorbell and, as soon as I identified myself, heard my first "No comment" of the day.

As you can hear in a recording of the conversation we've posted at freep.com, I told the treasurer I was writing about Davis' lawsuit to remove her from office. She again declined comment. I persisted.

Me: "So, are you going to pay Highland Park back?"

Taylor-Bibbs: "No comment. Do you understand 'No comment?' "

Me: "Do you understand you owe Highland Park $90,000?"

Taylor-Bibbs: "No comment."

Me: "Are you going to pay it back?"

Taylor-Bibbs responded by closing the door.

She was more forthcoming on Sept. 29, 2023, when Davis questioned her during a deposition. A deposition, for those of you who have never had the pleasure, is a court-ordered session in which an attorney typically asks a person — sometimes a reluctant one — questions under oath. The interviewee can have a lawyer present, and that lawyer can object to the questions. But, generally, the subject has to answer.

Under questioning by Davis, Taylor-Bibbs harkened back to 2011 or 2012, when she said the housing program was advertised to city employees and an information session was held.

"They told me I qualified for the program," Taylor-Bibbs told Davis. She said she didn't learn that state officials ruled she was ineligible until "months later, after I moved in."

Taylor-Bibbs also said no Highland Park official ever asked her to move out. She acknowledged learning in 2016 or 2017 that the city had lost its bid to let her keep the house and said she knew Highland Park sent state officials the $90,619 the city received to build her home. She admitted that, as treasurer, she might have even signed the city's check. And she said she knew the city put a lien on her house, but copped to never challenging the lien or her debt to the city.

An attorney representing Highland Park after Davis sued to have Taylor-Bibbs removed from office said Highland Park sued the company that marketed the neighborhood stabilization program to recoup the $90,000 the city had to send to the state for giving the treasurer a house. But the city was never able to get the money from the company.

Davis is outraged that Highland Park officials have made no effort, beyond putting a lien on Taylor-Bibbs house, to make the treasurer pay her debt.

"You have city officials essentially trying to cover this up," he said last week. "It’s quite alarming when you have a struggling community and you have individuals possibly attempting to cover up a crime dealing with federal and state funds that are badly needed by some residents."

Davis wants Highland Park officials to get Taylor-Biggs to pay off her debt, leave the house and make it available to one of the city's many needy and more-deserving residents.

Highland Park Mayor Glenda McDonald, through her assistant, declined comment. And that's a shame, because Highland Park residents deserve to know not only what city officials plan to do to replace their treasurer, they deserve to know how city officials plan to recoup $90,000 in a town where needs far outstrip means. McDonald can hardly claim she was surprised by the treasurer's dilemma. She acknowledged when Davis deposed her last year that she was on city council in 2019 when councilmembers decided to give Taylor-Bibbs 30 days to pay up.

Highland Park's attorney also declined to comment on the case. Taylor-Bibb's attorney Mary Yancy did not return multiple messages left for her. Unless someone appeals the order Hegarty signed Thursday, the treasurer has until Feb. 22 to clear out of city hall.

The pathetic passivity of city officials who have shown no interest in holding one of their colleagues accountable for her debt leaves us with another troubling question: It took a judge to throw her out of office, but who's going to kick her out of the house she has effectively been squatting in since 2012?

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Judge: Highland Park treasurer who owes city $90,000 must leave office