Elected officials release joint statement against Warren mayor; Fouts says he will not resign

WARREN, Mich. – Elected officials representing the people of Warren are speaking out against Mayor Jim Fouts after leaked audio recordings allegedly caught the Warren mayor insulting black people and women.

The audio recordings were leaked Monday on MotorCityMuckraker.com, just as Fouts was attending a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event.

U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, State Sen. Steve Bieda, State Rep. Henry Yanez, State Rep. John Chirkun, State Rep. Patrick Green, Macomb County Commissioner Andrey Duzyj, Macomb County Commissioner Veronica Klinefelt and Macomb County Commissioner Marv Sauger released the following statement Tuesday:

“Each of us represents the citizens of the City of Warren. We have listened to the audio tapes with the voice we recognize of Mayor Jim Fouts. These comments are hateful. They are racist and disparaging of women. The leader of our State’s third largest city should be a role model for how we treat each other and anyone that harbors these feelings and expresses them is not fit to lead. We believe that these comments, and the previous comments about people with disabilities, do not represent the people of the City of Warren. Therefore, we believe that it would be best for the people of Warren for Mayor Fouts to resign, and we call on him to do so. It would have been our preference that the individuals making these audio recordings would have immediately turned them over to the proper authorities for investigation so they would have been handled in an appropriate manner and reduced the discussion about the motivation for the recording and the circumstances of the release.”

Fouts posted the following statement to his Facebook page:

There is tremendous effort to force me out immediately by slander, by character assassination, lies, and by out right...

Posted by Jim Fouts on Tuesday, January 17, 2017