Our Featured Editor's Notebook Column

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

I have been a journalist for more than 50 years, and the Mundy Township Circus has shined with incompetence over the past year or so in a fashion unmatched by any other governmental body I've ever covered.

I use the word "incompetent" to paint the bad actors as dumb instead of outright calling them corrupt.

Enough listeners to my radio show are already doing that anyway.

It's a line I borrowed from State House Oversight Committee Chairman Jay DeBoer. He used it on the Michigan Attorney General's Office when exposing during a mid-December investigative hearing that an elderly woman had been abused and ripped off by a friend of AG Office top dog Dana Nessel. A friend of the Governor, Big Gretch herself, according to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charlie LeDuff of Detroit's No BS News Hour. He waged a three-year campaign to expose their corruption. 

Once evidence was unveiled to state legislators out in public, Kent County's prosecuting attorney took notice and slapped handcuffs on the former Treasurer of the State Democrat Party —  lawyer Traci Kornak. She's now facing 15 years in the slammer. So what she counts the Governor as a friend. So what if she's friends with Dana Nessel and served on her transition team when she was first elected. So what that Dana ignored friend Kornak's illegal deeds while a journalist in Detroit kept hollering about public corruption. So what if her powerful friends allowed her to get away with it for three years. 

Soon she will be trading in her fancy clothing for an orange jumpsuit.

She broke laws written in Michigan's criminal statutes.

But when it comes to politicians thumbing their noses at state law, and doing as they please — I’ve never witnessed so many laws being broken as happens in Mundy Township.

I appeared before this Board of Trustees out in southern Genesee County in July of 2024 about an election stunt where police cruisers were zipping all over private roads within the Gateway Center off Hill Road. Any cop who passes his  MCOLES (Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards) certification to be licensed knows police can’t patrol on private roads. It’s against the law.  I cited the law to Township Attorney Jack Belzer during my July visit. 

Right from the very microphone I stood in front of Tuesday night.

It was a special meeting called to make an emergency decision to remove someone from the Metro Police Authority's governing board. It's a joint department that polices Mundy Township and the City of Swartz Creek.

Video of the July 2024 meeting shows Belzer acting as if he was being punched with piercing blows as a list of items I cited made him flinch as I yelled about how they were illegal. 

I guess he figured I’d go away and he would just tolerate me yelling about him every so often on the radio or ranting about him in this space from time to time, whenever more laws are broken out there. The front page story on The Daily Gazette today still up since last week details a 4-month investigation by Bridge Michigan reporter Paula Gardner and everything she found out about the public corruption associated with the proposed advanced manufacturing plant for the Mega Site in Mundy Township.

A $261 million investment by state officials, Paula says led by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, with nothing to show for it in the way of new jobs.

In case any of the township officials don’t read English very well, which perhaps they don’t the way they incorrectly interpret state laws, let me summarize what it really says. 

The story points out how lots of people should be going to prison. Lies, cover-ups, deceptive practices. All stuff politicians in other places do. Not our town.

But it's all real.

It’s an election year. And it's my bet this issue is big enough that you can bet a candidate for Governor in 2026 could ride the public firestorm to the state's top job who first adopts this cause to put people in prison over this mess out there. Illegally taking so many millions of our tax dollars just doesn't sit well with voters. Add a few billion more in wasted money for other destinations around the state to place factories with absolutely zip to show for it and well, you have an election winning campaign. 

Big Gretch wanted to help President Joe Biden's push to turn us into a country using electric vehicles. I think Big Gretch was once hoping to ride the wave to the White House by establishing Michigan as the epicenter for supporting the EV push by creating battery factories and semi-conductor chip factories. But then America shouted loud and clear to the auto makers that they're not buying electric vehicles in massive droves needed to rid us of gas powered vehicles by Big Gretch's deadline before the end of this decade.

Although Belzer, Township Manager Chad Young and their gang of supporters out in Mundy Township haven't seen my face at one of their board meetings since July 2025, rest assured I’ve been quietly assembling evidence to assist in my role as a watchdog over tax dollars. 

Some of the board members think of their jobs as a little part-time gig to pick up a few bucks. 

They don't seem to understand they are charged with spending millions of taxpayer dollars when elected to those seats. That’s serious business. There are serious consequences in being complicit with illegal activity. I told them so on Tuesday night when I went to the podium at their special meeting.

I'm talking about all the little illegal items, too, like on Tuesday. State law says committee appointments are proposed by the Township Supervisor, Village President or City Mayor. Then the board or council votes it up or down. You don’t get to pick your own person.

It's the same way in Congress. The President proposes picks. They get to vote on them, not pick who they want. It's part of the separation between the legislative and administrative branches of government.

King Chad doesn't get to rule his  way.

A planning commission pick was done this way last month. King Chad explained away Tuesday how the Metro Police Authority Board is governed by rules and procedures established several years ago when the two municipalities combined their police departments as one.

I informed smarty pants, slick talking King Chad that he can't go around state law to pick committee members because of how the lawyers wrote up their rules and procedures. I've pointed out continuous errors by Belzer over the past few years in interpreting Michigan law. I asked him to risk his law license on calling me wrong Tuesday night when I yelled at the Clown Show actors of Mundy Township about all their illegal deeds.

Belzer sat mute.

The city attorney over in the City of Swartz Creek? He's a guy who couldn't even beat the late Eric Mays in court when Mays once fired prominent defense attorney Frank Manley and represented himself to get a not guilty verdict on all four counts brought against him by the City of Flint when accused of famously driving his vehicle the wrong way on I-475.

If Belzer and Michael Gildner wrote up rules that say Swartz Creek's Mayor and Mundy Township's  Supervisor can't propose picks for the Metro Police Authority board — consider all their rules null and void. That's because the contract doesn't include such language that if one clause is found to be wrong, all others within the contract shall remain in effect.

Act 3 of 1895 under Michigan law clearly states: "The township supervisor of a township, with approval of the township board, shall appoint the members representing the township."

Even the very notice to call their special meeting on Tuesday was done in illegal fashion.

Treasurer Danelle Barker wrote an e-mail at 5:45 pm to King Chad that she wanted this special meeting a day later. It was to Chad Young with a "cc to an office employee.

So please explain to me how Clerk Cory Bowwick posted it at 5:30 pm. ESP?

Supervisor Jennifer Arrand Stainton asked them that question.

They did a Belzer on her, and sat mute.

Hey, they complied with the law on the 18-hour "notice" rule by dropping it in the mail boxes of Supervisor Stainton and Trustee Leah Davis — even though they knew they wouldn't see it until the next morning when going to retrieve the day's mail. Not exactly 18 hours notice of a special meeting.

But you would think they should know also that delivering it to those mail boxes is a duty of the US Postal Service. Using their mail boxes is a federal crime. 

But obviously they have demonstrated over and over that they don’t care about following the law.

Since today is still April Fool's Day, I sincerely wish this entire column was an April Fool's Day joke and all this garbage out at the Mundy Township Circus really didn't happen.

But it did. No joke here tonight.

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Mike Killbreath appears on Metro Flint News/Talk Radio via The Morning Gazette Radio Show weekday mornings from 8 am until 10 am. He's an award-winning newspaper columnist and investigative reporter who is the former long-time owner of the local Metro Flint area chain of 14 community newspapers. This past fall marked his 50th year as a journalist. He also hosts a new weekend national TV show known as The American Crusaders on cable TV and various OTT TV live streaming platforms.

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