Wayne County contractor's arrest on domestic violence charges raises questions

An "essential" Wayne County contractor and former right-hand man to County Executive Warren Evans was charged with domestic violence last month, raising questions about "Who knew what, when?" and whether taxpayers should continue to foot the hefty bill for someone accused of beating a woman.

The case of Tony Saunders is a complicated one. Saunders is a respected turnaround expert and former wunderkind credited with helping Wayne County avoid bankruptcy when he served as chief financial officer from 2015 to 2017. He is, of course, also considered innocent until proven guilty. And domestic violence prosecutions sometimes fall apart because the victim declines to cooperate or testify after the cops have come to their rescue.

But Saunders' legal problem — he is scheduled to appear on Friday in 36th District Court in Detroit for a pretrial conference — got me thinking about other aspects of his relationship with Wayne County that have nothing to do with whether he committed a crime.

For starters, why is the county paying Saunders $425,000 over 17 months for a part-time job helping top county officials do much of the work he helped hire them to do? Why did the Evans administration violate county rules by allowing Saunders to do $75,000 worth of work before commissioners approved the deal? Why does the county continue to turn to Saunders for help after becoming aware of his business deals that even the most generous observer must concede created, at best, the appearance of a conflict of interest? Finally, why won't county officials — including county spokespeople paid to speak — discuss this?

While the wheels of justice turn, let's take a closer look at Saunders' meteoric rise through local politics and lucrative relationship with the county he helped save from financial ruin.

A man in demand

Few 37-year-olds can match Saunders' rapid rise.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2007, Saunders started WYLD Marketing Group. In 2009, he got involved in Detroit politics, handling social media for Charles Pugh's city council campaign. After the election, Saunders joined Pugh's city council staff. He told Crain's Detroit Business in 2011 that this was when he began to focus his efforts on his passion for "budget, finance and pensions." By then, he was working as chief of staff to Detroit Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins.

Somewhere along the way, he worked for Conway MacKenzie, a turnaround and restructuring firm that worked on Detroit's bankruptcy. In 2013, Saunders became the emergency financial manager for Benton Harbor. In January 2015, a month before his 29th birthday, Saunders became Wayne County's Chief Restructuring and Chief Financial Officer. Over the next two years, Saunders helped the county avoid bankruptcy.

“We don’t get where we are today in Wayne County without Tony Saunders," Evans said in April 2017, after Saunders announced he would resign to start a turnaround and private equity firm. "His work stabilizing our finances has been remarkable."

"Wayne County is in its best financial shape in years and we’ve restored stability," Evans added. "We knew once we did, a young, passionate guy like Tony would be out there seeing where else he could deploy his talents.”

But Saunders didn't wait until he stepped down from his county gig to "deploy his talents" elsewhere.

In 2015, the same year he was being paid $158,000 to help save Wayne County from financial ruin, Saunders also was working as a consultant to the city of Pontiac's Receivership Transition Advisory Board. He was paid $10,000 and deemed so valuable to Pontiac's turnaround that the board won approval to pay Saunders another $15,000.

WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) investigative reporter Ross Jones also reported that in 2015 Saunders' consulting firm pitched its services to Shelby County Schools in Tennessee and Prince George's County in Maryland. The firm made $95,000 in Tennessee and about $35,000 in Maryland. A Wayne County spokesperson told Jones that Saunders' side hustles were approved in February 2016 but said the county couldn't find the original paperwork, so it "re-created" the approval form.

In 30 years as a reporter, that's the first time I've heard of paperwork being "re-created."

Saunders raised more eyebrows back home with some of his other entrepreneurial efforts.

In 2017, Jones reported that Saunders, while still on the county payroll, had a side job working with a businessman who managed some county buildings. Jones later reported that Saunders was part of the county team working to find an alternative to its failed jail project on Gratiot and that he was working for Rock Ventures, which eventually reached a $533 million deal with the county to build a jail and criminal justice complex just off Interstate 75. Spokespeople for Evans and Rock told Jones that Saunders stopped working on the jail deal after he started working for Rock Ventures, where he became chief operating officer.

If that doesn't sound fishy, consider that Saunders' consulting deal with the county paid him $49,900 — or $100 less than the amount that would have required the deal to go before the county commission. (Somehow, even after shenanigans like this, the county now allows Evans to give out contracts worth up to $150,000 without commission approval.) Jones also reported that Saunders didn't file the required conflict of interest forms with the county that should have disclosed his role with Rock until days after Jones started asking about Saunders' job with Rock.

A watchdog awakening

Despite Jones' fine watchdog work, I confess I didn't pay much attention to Saunders until his arrest for domestic violence. As I dug into Saunders' role with Wayne County, I uncovered what may be his most startling deal of all.

In 2022, Evans gave one of Saunders' companies a contract paying him $25,000 a month to help the county manage its finances and find a new chief financial officer. County officials were either so happy or so desperate for Saunders' help that they allowed him to keep working even after hitting the contract's $100,000 maximum. This was a violation of county rules, which forbid officials and contractors from doing work that isn't approved and budgeted.

But county commissioners knew nothing about this until county officials asked them last summer to approve a $325,000 contract extension so Saunders could continue to help with the budget, revenue forecasts and labor negotiations. And once commissioners started asking questions, some details you may find troubling began to emerge.

For starters, the county agreed to pay Saunders $425,000 over 17 months. That comes out to $300,000 a year — almost twice what Wayne County paid Saunders when he was its chief restructuring and chief financial officer. When you consider that the contract only requires Saunders to work an average of about 20 hours a week, it turns out that as a part-time worker, he will be paid about four times what he was paid as a full-time employee.

The commission's fiscal analysts highlighted another concern: Saunders is being paid to act as a financial adviser and labor negotiator even after he helped the county hire a new CFO, a chief deputy CFO and an interim director of labor relations.

"Why the need to spend additional monies on an outside counsel?" an analyst wrote to commissioners after reviewing Saunders' deal.

Evans' management and budget officials told commissioners in August that Saunders is "essential" because he has "in-depth knowledge of and expertise" with county operations and "as such, he is uniquely qualified to provide guidance and other support" to the finance and labor departments. They said the CFO and deputy CFO Saunders helped recruit still needed "time to get well acclimated with the County's vast and complex financial operations" — even after they'd been on the job for three months. The management and budget officials also said the county needed Saunders' help negotiating union contracts because the new labor relations director is "the only member of the County's labor relations team due to vacancies."

Commissioner Glenn Anderson, a Westland Democrat, was the only member of the commission's Ways and Means Committee to vote against recommending the contract to the full commission.

"I think the amount of what he's getting on that contract is excessive for the amount of time that he's going to spend working for the county," Anderson told me last week, adding that the officials Saunders helped hire should be able to do their jobs without his assistance.

Proceed with caution

After examining Saunders' conduct as a public official, we've come to the unpleasant and unavoidable subject of his alleged conduct as a man. Some of you may want to stop here because I'm going to report what police said happened on a winter Wednesday evening before they arrested Saunders at his home in Jefferson Chalmers' exclusive Shorepointe Village subdivision.

Neither Saunders nor his attorney would discuss why police were called on Jan. 10 to his 3,600-square-foot home — built right on the edge of the Detroit River. The following account comes from the police report.

It was about 7:45 p.m. when Saunders walked into his home and accused a woman making dinner of cheating. After throwing his car keys at her — and missing — the woman asked Saunders to go upstairs to "finish the argument."

"Once in the bedroom," police said, Saunders "stated, 'I told you not to mention his name' and starting pushing the complaintant around in the room causing her to fall on the bed and floor." ("Complaintant" is the term police use for people they believe to be victims of a crime. The Free Press generally does not name people believed to be victims of domestic violence.)

Saunders "grabbed the complaintant by her legs and threw her off the bed and got on top of her and held her down. (Saunders) struck the complaintant in the face and about the body several times with a closed fist causing her head to bounce off the floor. The complaintant tried to gather her things and pack a suitcase when (Saunders) grabbed the suitcase and threw it at her (hitting her) and said 'You not going nowhere.' The complaintant further stated that at one point (Saunders) threw her on the ground and pinned her between the bed and nightstand and repeatedly slammed her head on the floor. (Saunders) took the complaintant's cell phone and threw it on the balcony to prevent her from calling the police. Once the assault stopped (Saunders) told the complaintant 'Now you can leave and then I'm going to off myself.' "

Saunders was charged with domestic violence, which is a misdemeanor. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on Jan. 24.

Executive silence

When I asked Anderson, who has been critical of Saunders' contract and apparent conflicts of interest while working for the county, what he thought of Saunders' alleged conduct, he said he would reserve judgment until he knew all the facts. But he was concerned.

"I think someone in that position, there should be some consideration about their conduct," Anderson said.

Like Anderson, Commission Chairwoman Alisha Bell said she had not heard about the criminal charge against Saunders until I called to ask the Detroit Democrat whether she was concerned taxpayer money was being paid to someone accused of domestic violence.

"I don't think it's wise to speak of something I'm not aware of," Bell told me Wednesday. "I think that's unfortunate and I'm sure the executive will speak to it."

Evans does not have a long track record of commenting on questions about Saunders' conduct beyond praising his performance as CFO. Nevertheless, I asked two of Evans' communications team whether they were aware of the charges against Saunders and whether they would affect his deal with the county.

After 24 hours, interim director of communications Kimberly Harry sent me an email that said: "Mr. Tony Saunders previously served as Wayne County Chief Financial Officer and is a contractor for the County. We were made aware of the situation late last week and have no further comment."

Unfortunately, this feeble response failed to address virtually all of the questions I had, so I wrote back: "I am reiterating my request to speak to a county official who can address Mr. Saunders’ role with the county, as well as how it may be impacted by these criminal charges.

"If no one is available to speak to these matters," I added, "I will note that in my column."

One hour and nine minutes later, Harry sent me an email that said:

"Sharing again —

“Mr. Tony Saunders previously served as Wayne County Chief Financial Officer and is a contractor for the County. We were made aware of the situation late last week and have no further comment.”

If saying the exact same thing again in italics was an elegant way to impart some subtle wisdom, I'm afraid it eluded my simple mind.

What, if anything, will come of the criminal charges against Saunders will be decided in a courtroom. But the spotlight those charges cast on Saunders illuminated some other questions about his conduct as a county employee and contractor and whether taxpayers are getting their money's worth out of his continued partnership with Evans.

Situations like these require reporters to ask questions that make people uncomfortable. It's a part of this job I don't relish. But as extraordinary as these circumstances are, they highlight a problem that has become all too common these days: Officials who refuse to answer questions about how they conduct the People's Business.

That's why, however this case ends, we should all continue to demand answers to the questions it has raised.

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: Wayne Co. contractor Saunders' domestic violence case raises questions