Convicted felon and former Detroit mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick today lost a hardship bid to reduce $6,000 in monthly restitution payments to the city for his crimes.
As part of a plea deal last year to end criminal prosecution in a sex and obstruction-of-justice scandal, the ex-mayor agreed to repay Detroit taxpayers $1 million, resign his office, serve four months in jail, forfeit his law license and refrain from running for elected office for five years.
After his release from jail, Kilpatrick moved his family to a Dallas suburb where he lives in a 2,800-square-foot home, drives a Cadillac Escalade, and earns a base salary of more than $100,000 with income potential of as much as $360,000 a year as a software salesman for Covisint, a subsidiary of Detroit-based Compuware Corp.
Chairman and CEO Peter Karmanos, who moved Compuware headquarters to downtown Detroit in a political deal with Kilpatrick, said when he hired the confessed perjurer that he is “on a short leash,” and will be fired if an ongoing federal investigation of corruption in Detroit leads to new charges against him.
Kilpatrick claimed hardship in the terms of his restitution, saying that after all monthly living expenses, only $6 remained to repay the city.
Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner, who had ordered those terms as part of Kilpatrick’s plea deal, said Kilpatrick will have to reconsider the “lifestyle in which he has grown accustomed.”
“In other words,” Groner ruled, the ex-mayor “may not be able to sustain an upper-middle-class existence while he still owes a debt to society and a substantial financial debt to the citizens of Detroit.”
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