Mayday, mayday: DTW Metro airport board gets it wrong again, judge says

Can the geniuses on the Wayne County Airport Authority Board do anything right?

First, they by-pass qualified outside candidates to offer the job of CEO to County Executive Bob Ficano’s hand-picked successor, Turkia Awada Mullin. Second, the furor over a $200,000 walking-away bonus from the county culminates in the board firing Mullin — without, it should be noted, offering the public a legitimate reason for her ouster (beyond the obvious one of towering embarrassment). Third, the board chair, Renee Axt, abruptly resigns because of an apparent conflict of interest — which, it should be noted, appears to be a pre-requisite to sitting on the airport board.

Now? Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Colombo said today that the airport board violated the Open Meetings Act in hiring Mullin, a move that is blowing the lid off the pay practices and incestuousness of Wayne County government as it’s run by Ficano and his  machine.  ”Inside job” doesn’t begin to describe the hiring of Mullin, the outrageous good-bye bonus in a county pushing to cut the pay of public-sector union workers by as much as 20 percent and the cynicism implicit in the Mullin appointment.

Does anyone believe the hiring process — quarterbacked by a search firm ironically named “Trustinus,” whose principal Jack Krasula was an investor in the failed Pinnacle project on airport land — was fair or conducted in the interests of county taxpayers and the traveling public? Colombo’s remarks suggest the answer is a resounding no.