DETROIT – In most places that have major ports on the Great Lakes, including Toledo, Chicago, and Monroe, Michigan, they are run by port authorities that are themselves public property.
Monroe’s port, for example, is owned by that city. The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority was created by the state of Ohio in 1955, to operate water, air and rail facilities for the public good.
But in Detroit, the Detroit Wayne-County Port Authority has been essentially controlled by one family since 2005, when Detroit’s infamous crooked mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, forced the port into a sweetheart deal with Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun.
Under terms of the deal, the Ambassador Port Company loaned the port $2.1 million to pay off a debt on its dock on the Detroit River, but under terms that made it impossible to ever pay off the loan.
Moroun died last year, but his son Matthew and wife Nora still run their empire, which includes a fleet of trucks and has an estimated net worth of at least $1.5 billion.
For years since then, port officials have complained that they not only couldn’t pay off the loan, they were blocked from any new initiatives or badly needed infrastructure improvements.
Now, the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority’s board has voted for a new deal that would get them out of the century-long contract they signed with the Morouns. And the Moroun family is more than willing to let them out of it.
That’s because the new deal calls for the Port Authority to sell all their land and everything on it — to the Morouns.
If that sounds absolutely outrageous, that’s because it is. Nevertheless, the five-person port authority board voted 4-1 last month to sell the port’s 35 acres with a fully developed marine terminal, warehouse, offices, access to rail facilities and more to the Morouns for what amounts to a mere $1 million in cash.
Though the deal was officially for $5 million, the rest would go towards forgiveness of the loan to the Morouns or “blight removal and upgrades to the port. Those who know the most about the issue are absolutely outraged. Gregg Ward, who owns and operates the Detroit-Toledo Truck Ferry and is an encyclopedia of information about anything related to bridge and port operations in the state, notes the shadowy and suspicious way the deal was rushed through.
“The big question is why do this rushed, backroom Port ‘deal?’ he wrote in an email. “Why the resistance to sharing the agreement with the public and elected officials?”
Ward said Tom Lewand, a noted expert on state asset and land valuation estimated the true worth of the property at about $12 million. He noted also that the sweetheart deal Kilpatrick gave the port “provided Moroun a tax shelter … which has denied the city more than $7.5 million in property tax revenue – probably a lot more.”
State Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit) who represents the area in the legislature, has mounted perhaps the strongest opposition. In a long letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on March 26, she pleaded with the governor to consider using the state’s powers of eminent domain. “There is a better option than privatizing the public port terminal in Detroit,” she pleaded. “The use of eminent domain by the state or the city so as to retain this very important transportation asset in public hands should be considered.”
Chang urged the governor to do whatever she could to help delay a vote by Detroit City Council, the last thing needed before the deal selling the port to the Morouns can go through.
As of now, however, those trying to save the port for the public seem to be the clear underdogs. The Moroun family, who have donated lavishly to many Michigan politicians, are believed to be pressuring the city council for a speedy vote.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running for a third term this fall, is also seen as close to the Moroun family.
Senator Chang said that if the Morouns are allowed to buy the port, the long-term economic consequences for the city and region could be devastating. “Billions of dollars of transportation investment are coming to Southeast Michigan in the form of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, (and) the logistic-focused businesses that will encircle it,” she said. “All these projects would benefit from a competitive, robust, multimodal transportation system.”
That might be less likely to happen if the Morouns own the port. They also own the Ambassador Bridge, and fought for years to try to prevent a new, publicly owned bridge from being built.
When it comes to being good public citizens, the family is not held in high regard by most officials in either the United States or Canada. In 2012, a judge in Detroit jailed the late Matty Moroun and his CEO, Dan Stamper, for repeatedly violating court orders to finish a road project connecting his bridge with I-75.
Now, if the port deal does go through, the Moroun family will own and control what is now the major international crossing between Michigan and Ontario and the state’s most important port.
A few years ago, I asked U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) if, after almost half a century in politics, anything still surprised him.
He nodded. “The incredible power of Moroun,” he told me. More than ever, the senator is not the only one.
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