MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. – In the ongoing power struggle between Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido and County Executive Mark Hackel, it is Lucido that has the courts backing him.
The current fight is over who gets to decide how money is spent in Lucido’s office. When Lucido was first elected, he inherited an office tarnished by the scandal of former Prosecutor Eric Smith who now sits in federal prison.
Lucido viewed the office as an understaffed mess.
He lobbied the Macomb County Board of Commissioners for new prosecutors and clerical and administrative positions. The board agreed with Lucido and signed off on the funds.
The county executive did not and has gone to court to prevent Lucido from getting the clerical positions. Hackel has now lost that fight at the Michigan Supreme Court.
The Board of Commissioners said in a statement:
The Michigan Supreme Court’s July 22, 2022, Order unanimously rejecting County Executive Hackel’s appeal and upholding the Michigan Court of Appeals’ Opinion, in this case, is an important final decision to require County Executive Hackel to adhere to the budgetary and appropriation process outlined in the County’s Charter.
The Board of Commissioners welcomes the Courts’ conclusive rulings that County Executive Hackel violated the Charter when he unilaterally withheld funds duly appropriated by the Board of Commissioners to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Courts recognized that County Executive Hackel’s actions illegally infringed on the Board of Commissioners’ powers and obligations under the County Charter and that the Board of Commissioners possesses the authority to adopt a budget that differs from the County Executive’s proposed budget.
The Courts also made clear that the County Executive cannot frustrate the stated purpose of the Board of Commissioners’ appropriations through unlawful impoundments (withholding appropriated funds).
The Board of Commissioners will continue to carry out its duties and obligations granted to it under the County Charter and focus on serving the people of Macomb County.
The Board of Commissioners
“It’s important that we have those resources to do the work of the people and for the people,” said Lucido. “Without having those and having those cut-off, you can’t operate.”
Lucido has decisively won this round, but there’s more.
The county Human Resource Department, which directly reports to Hackel, launched a probe into Lucido’s behavior in the office. The final report from an outside law firm is unflattering.
It claims Lucido is rude to female staff and lists multiple complaints about his management style, for example, complaints from prosecutors who object to Lucido reassigning them or breaking up longtime units which operated under Smith’s tenure.
Read: Workplace behavior investigation into Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office underway -- What we know
Hackel had no comment about the Michigan Supreme Court siding with Lucido.
Lucido, for his part, sees all of this as political gamesmanship.
“If he wants to continue playing politics, that’s going to be his way of doing it, but I assure you the way this office is going to be run is going to be in a very hard effort to clean up all the corruption that was in this office three floors above him.”