Name: Duggan hires hospital executive and political ally to lead Detroit's long-term coronavirus response
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Duggan hires hospital executive and political ally to lead Detroit's long-term coronavirus response

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Detroit Free Press Mayor Mike Duggan on Friday announced the hiring of Conrad Mallett Jr., a hospital executive whose political heritage includes ties to former Detroit mayors&nbsp;Kwame Kilpatrick, Coleman Young&nbsp;and Jerome Cavanagh,&nbsp;as Detroit's newest deputy mayor.Police Chief James Craig will retain his deputy mayor title, with responsibility over&nbsp;public safety. Craig will fill in for Duggan if the mayor is incapacitated or otherwise unable to fulfill his duties.Mallett, 66, lives in Detroit. He is&nbsp;a former chief justice of the Michigan&nbsp;Supreme Court who left the court at a relatively young age to join a prominent Detroit law firm. He said that less than a year later, he took a job at the Detroit Medical Center. But politics is a tradition in the Mallett family, and he remained a key figure in&nbsp;Detroit's political scene.In the 1960s, his father, Conrad Mallett Sr., worked in the Detroit mayor's office under&nbsp;Cavanagh. The Malletts were part of Young's leadership team in City Hall. And&nbsp;Conrad Mallett Jr. helped manage&nbsp;Kwame Kilpatrick's successful 2001 mayoral campaign, served as head of his transition team and served as his chief operating officer for the first 90 days of his administration.Among Mallett's duties was jump-starting&nbsp;negotiations to get&nbsp;Detroit's three casinos out of temporary digs and into permanent hotel and entertainment complexes.&nbsp;Mallett left for a job as president and general counsel of La-Van Hawkins Food Group, which at the time&nbsp;was the 12th-largest black-owned company in the United States with $246 million in annual sales, according to Black Enterprise magazine.Mallett left about a year later and returned to the DMC.While at the DMC, Mallett worked closely with Duggan, who resigned as Wayne County prosecutor in 2004 to take over the troubled medical center. Duggan said Friday that he put Mallett in charge of Sinai-Grace Hospital,&nbsp;the last hospital on Detroit's west side, which was slated for closure.&nbsp;"What I&nbsp;watched happen was remarkable," Duggan said, adding that Mallett turned around a hospital that was losing at least $40 million a year and had problems with professionalism and cleanliness."Sinai-Grace would not be there today if it were not for Conrad Mallett," Duggan said.The mayor said hiring Mallett will not increase the city's budget&nbsp;because he had a vacancy to fill after&nbsp;Chief Administrative Officer Bethany Melitz&nbsp;left the administration. Mallett&nbsp;will have the same salary —&nbsp;$162,941 a year&nbsp;—&nbsp;as Melitz.Duggan said Mallett will lead Detroit's long-term response to the coronavirus crisis and be responsible for public health, state and federal government relations, community affairs, and civil rights, inclusion and opportunity.The mayor said Mallett was the only person who came to mind when he asked himself: "Who could do the most to help protect Detroiters?"Mallett said he could have remained as chief administrative officer at DMC, but was excited to join Duggan's team.In addition to working with Duggan at DMC,&nbsp;Mallett served as chairman for his first campaign for mayor. That 2013 campaign got off to a rough start when the city clerk removed Duggan from the ballot on a technicality. But Duggan ended up making Detroit history by winning&nbsp;as a write-in candidate.Mallett, a dapper, soft-spoken political insider, has shown a knack for being being close to dynamic leaders, but far away by the time they implode.He left the Kilpatrick administration in April 2002&nbsp;while Kilpatrick was still enjoying a post-election honeymoon, and long before reporters began exposing the mayor's&nbsp;malfeasance.And Mallett was long gone by 2005, when businessman La-Van&nbsp; and fined $25,000 his role in a major Philadelphia corruption scandal. on public corruption charges, when&nbsp;contractor Pratap Rajadhyaksha,&nbsp;who clashed with Kilpatrick pal Bobby Ferguson, said he paid Mallett $5,000 a month to serve as a liaison between his company and the Kilpatrick administration. that&nbsp;Mallett said his company, ABK Development LLC, received a monthly retainer from Karl Kado, a Cobo contractor who later admitted to bribing city officials and became a key witness against Kilpatrick and his father, Bernard.Mallett was never&nbsp;charged or accused of wrongdoing.&nbsp;does not mention his consulting work nor his time with&nbsp;Kilpatrick or Hawkins,&nbsp;leaving a 4½-year gap between his resignation from the state&nbsp;Supreme Court in December 1999 to his start at the DMC in March 2004.He said Friday, after Duggan announced his hiring at the mayor's regular briefing, that he needs to update his profile.His LinkedIn profile also does not include his early employment as a Free Press carrier, a job that made him an eyewitness to one of Detroit's most notorious events.According to the Free Press' "Detroit Almanac," Mallett was a 14-year-old carrier when he left his home on Boston Boulevard around 5 a.m. on July 23, 1967, to pick up his Sunday papers.Mallett, accompanied by his Airedale, Hamlet, was pulling a wagon when, at Twelfth Street, he saw about 500 people milling in the street "which glittered with broken glass."The newspaper's station manager had just been robbed and the father of another carrier&nbsp;advised Mallett to get home — fast."The carrier and Hamlet ran home, burst into the bedroom of his sleeping father," the Almanac recounts, adding that Mallett said: "Dad, I think the riot has begun."Mallett also makes an appearance in "The Quotations of Mayor Coleman A. Young," which quotes Young as saying after Mallett chose to work for a congressional candidate the mayor did not support:“Conrad unfortunately views politics like law. As a lawyer he’s a hired gun, so that’s what he does with his political advice…I don’t think you ought to whore around, be available for anybody who has the price.” &nbsp;Bill McGraw and staff writers Phoebe Wall Howard and Joe Guillen contributed to this report.&nbsp;M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter. Contact him at&nbsp;melrick@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter at .&nbsp;

Detroit Free Press Mayor Mike Duggan on Friday announced the hiring of Conrad Mallett Jr., a hospital executive whose political heritage includes ties to former Detroit mayors&nbsp;Kwame Kilpatrick, Coleman Young&nbsp;and Jerome Cavanagh,&nbsp;as Detroit's newest deputy mayor.Police Chief James Craig will retain his deputy mayor title, with responsibility over&nbsp;public safety. Craig will fill in for Duggan if the mayor is incapacitated or otherwise unable to fulfill his duties.Mallett, 66, lives in Detroit. He is&nbsp;a former chief justice of the Michigan&nbsp;Supreme Court who left the...

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M.L. Elrick

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primarily serves Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Monroe counties.  The Free Press is also the largest city newspaper owned by Gannett, which also publishes USA Today. The Free Press has received ten Pulitzer Prizes and four Emmy Awards. Its motto is "On Guard for 189 Years".

Duggan hires hospital executive and political ally to lead Detroit's long-term coronavirus response

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