Rainmaker

By Joel Thurtell

Well, well. So Abe Munfakh, the “self-made man,” is running for state senate.

Seems just yesterday that his $10 million inside deal — the no-bid contract his engineering firm received from the Western Townships Utilities Authority while he was a member of the Plymouth Township board — got him run out of office.

Munfakh, an incumbent on the Plymouth Township board in 1992, placed last in a field of seven candidates.

The voters smelled the deal a crowd of cronies cooked up to enrich lawyers, engineers and public relations hucksters in the scandal that came to be known as Sewergate.

On a website, Munfakh’s profile describes the retired chief of the Ann Arbor engineering firm of Ayres, Lewis, Norris and May as a “rainmaker.”

Rainmaker, indeed.

Eighteen years ago, plus a couple months, the Detroit Free Press published my articles about the back-room dealing that created WTUA. It was an arrangement, now in the ground and operating, that called for piping sewage from Canton, Northville and Plymouth townships across watersheds to the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority near the Huron River for processing, then pumping a like amount of fluid back to the Lower Rouge in Canton.

While the insider-trading stories brought down such politicians as Munfakh, Maurice Breen and Georgina Goss, they also looked like opportunity to a Livonia lawyer few had heard of. Sewergate opened a career in politics to a greenhorn candidate named Thaddeus McCotter, who won Breen’s seat on the Wayne County Board of Commissioners and now is a Republican congressman from Livonia.

Abe Munfakh waited a while, then got himself elected back on the Plymouth Township board.

Guess memories are short.

Here’s the story I wrote on election day, August 5, 1992, about the trouncing of the WTUA gang. It ran on August 6, 1992. On May 29, 2010, I posted my main sewer story that ran in the Detroit Free Press on Saturday, February 22, 1992.

Published with permission of the Detroit Free Press.

Headline: ANGER OVER SEWER DEAL SWEEPS OUT INCUMBENTS
Sub-Head:
Byline:  JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Pub-Date: 8/6/1992
Memo:  ; MICHIGAN PRIMARIES;  CAMPAIGN ’92
Text: “This is a clear message,” said Plymouth Township resident Mike Stankov.
“Business as usual will not be tolerated anymore. . . . “
Stankov was among the voters who contributed Tuesday to sweeping political changes in western Wayne County linked to fallout from a $94.5-million sewer project.
The Free Press detailed the project on Feb. 22, including how millions of dollars in contracts were  awarded without bids to people or firms connected to WTUA — the Western Townships Utilities Authority.
One local newspaper subsequently dubbed it “sewergate,” and the area saw a bumper crop of  candidates run for local offices, using the sewer project as an issue against incumbents.
In Tuesday’s primary:
* Veteran local politician Maurice Breen, a former Plymouth Township supervisor  who was a founder of WTUA, lost in the Republican primary for the Wayne County Commission to Thaddeus McCotter, a Livonia lawyer. McCotter said the Free Press report prompted him to run.
“The discontent  was  obvious. Now, the hardest part is to . . . channel it into constructive change.”
* State Rep. Georgina Goss, R-Plymouth, a former WTUA board member, was defeated by Plymouth City Commissioner Jerry Vorva. With no Democrat running, Vorva’s primary victory assures him a seat in Lansing.
* Northville Township Supervisor Betty Lennox, a WTUA member by virtue of her elective office, was defeated by Karen Baja, chairwoman of the township’s board of zoning appeals. No Democrat ran there, either.
* Plymouth Township Trustee Abe Munfakh, whose engineering firm received $10 million for sewer design  work without submitting bids, finished last in a field of seven candidates.
Also in Plymouth Township, Supervisor Gerald Law did not file to run.

Headline: ANGER OVER SEWER DEAL SWEEPS OUT INCUMBENTSSub-Head: Byline:  JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERPub-Date: 8/6/1992Memo:  ; MICHIGAN PRIMARIES;  CAMPAIGN ’92Text: “This is a clear message,” said Plymouth Township resident Mike Stankov.”Business as usual will not be tolerated anymore. . . . “

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