Brett Harris
Chad Selweski covered state and regional politics for The Macomb Daily for nearly 30 years. He contributes to Deadline Detroit and blogs at Politically Speaking
By Chad Selweski
One of the newest Macomb County officials indicted by federal authorities on corruption charges, former New Haven Village President Brett Harris, is a convicted felon, arrested numerous times on drunken driving charges, who over the past decade has emerged as an infamous figure in the village’s longtime dysfunctional politics.
Harris has spent much of his recent years trying to gain office, avoid getting kicked out of office, evading jail time, or trying to limit his time behind bars.
Brett Harris
On Thursday he was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office with accepting $9,000 in bribes from the Rizzo trash-hauling firm to secure a new garbage pickup contract with the village. The charges stem from an undercover FBI sting operation that also ensnared Village Council Trustee Christopher Craigmiles ,43, for allegedly accepting $5,000 in the same pay-to-play conspiracy.
The feds have now charged five current or former elected Macomb County officials with accepting bribes to assist Sterling Heights-based Rizzo Environmental Services in securing municipal contracts.
Harris, 57, is no stranger to criminal court proceedings. He chalked up alcohol-related driving convictions in 1987, 1991, 1992, 2002 and 2007. The last drunken driving incident resulted in a felony conviction and a 90-day jail sentence.
Yet, Harris has served time in elective office sporadically in New Haven while racking up this rap sheet. The most recent defeat for Harris came in the November elections when he was seeking re-election as a trustee to the village council.
A Strange And Quirky Place
New Haven is a small village (population 4,600) in northern Macomb plagued over many years by government mismanagement, repeated citizen-initiated recall drives against elected officials, a village council constantly in disarray, and a revolving door of officials vowing to right the ship.
It is a strange and quirky place.
Harris landed his first substantial position in New Haven politics after the village council president of 2006 was recalled from office. Harris won the vacant presidency that November with 68 percent of the vote.
Two years later, several of his council colleagues were recalled from their village seats in the August election. Harris was also targeted for ouster, but he resigned just five days before the voters had a chance to kick him out.
In New Haven, a town with a substantial minority population, Harris had unsuccessfully claimed that he was the target of a “lynch mob.” Two years after that, Harris tried and failed to gain a comeback by winning the lesser office of village trustee in the 2010 elections.
While just 2 ½ square miles in geographic scope, New Haven has packed in a pile of problems in a relatively short period of time. In recent years, the village suffered from budget deficits, huge delinquencies in residential water bills, government audits that didn’t add up, and alleged violations of the Open Meetings Act.
Worse yet, some election results were challenged under claims that winning candidates should have been disqualified because they owed back taxes or unpaid water bills – a violation of the village’s election ordinance. In 2014, the village president was defeated at the polls by just 23 votes, after previously winning New Haven’s top post due to a recall, was accused in a municipal lawsuit of engaging in a bitter departure from office by stealing three laptop computers, a cell phone and other items from the Village Hall.
Constant Claims of Dirty Politics
Amidst all the damage incurred by claims and counter-claims of corruption and dirty politics, the merry-go-round of New Haven politics long ago became almost comical. In the 2010 elections, the widespread animosity was so apparent that, at that time, four current or former village presidents were running for the six council seats up for grabs.
Christopher Craigmiles
As for Trustee Craigmiles, who was also charged in the corruption sting Thursday, he is a former Detroit transit police officer who Harris last spring tried to get appointed to one of the constant vacancies on the village council. The process did not go well. It took three council votes over several weeks before Craigmiles won the appointment. But this past November he was the top vote-getter in the council elections.
According to the charges handed down by the feds, Harris allegedly steered Craigmiles toward a consultant for Rizzo, not knowing that the person was actually an undercover FBI agent. The feds claim that Craigmiles accepted $5,000 from the agent over the course of the investigation.
A couple more items fill out the bigger picture.
Upon initially winning election in 2006, Harris was as a janitor for the New Haven schools. When he reached the position as the top union official for his fellow custodians, he threatened to launch a recall drive against two enemy school board members. He was fired from that job after his fifth drunken driving conviction.
Driving 82 mph While Heavily Drunk
That 2008 conviction was particularly egregious as Harris was accused of driving 82 mph on M-59 through Utica (a 55 mph territory) while registering a blood-alcohol level that was more than twice the legal limit, according to police.
Yet, New Haven residents at the time were left to wonder if that fifth arrest was only part of the story. The Macomb Daily had published a report that quoted a 2007 accident victim who said that Harris crashed into his truck while smelling of alcohol in the morning hours.
While still working as a custodian, Harris reportedly drove a New Haven school minivan into the man’s pickup truck while exiting the middle school property. In a lawsuit filed over the incident, the motorist claimed that he asked village police at the accident scene to give Harris a Breathalyzer test, but they declined.
More importantly, Harris has repeatedly seemed clueless as to the breaks he has been given by the criminal justice system over the past 25 years.
When he finally landed a felony conviction in 2008, he faced a maximum prison sentence of five years but he was sent to the Macomb County Jail in Mount Clemens for 90 days. Weeks later, he was granted a daily work-release status and landed a $12-an-hour job at a New Haven machine shop.
Shortly after that, the fast-talking Harris petitioned the Macomb Circuit Court to limit his stay behind bars to 45 days so he could find a better-paying job and fend for his family.
After all this, you can Harris to plead not guilty when he faces his day in federal court next week on the new bribery charges.
But this time, his luck with the justice system may have run out.
