St. Clair Shores Awards Tow Contract To Scandal-Tinged Company

St. Clair Shores awarded a 5-year towing contract to Official Towing, a company at the center of a vast public corruption scandal centered in Macomb County. At Tuesday’s city council meeting, St. Clair Shores Mayor Kip Walby instead that the contract is fair, and that the city did not try to award its business to a tow company prepared to pay more than others.

At the Tuesday council meeting, Walby denied claims made by a consultant hired by other towing companies, that the city had only offered a bid process to make awarding the contract to Official look legitimate. “I don’t like to be called what I am doing as something that is fake,” Walby said, according to the Macomb Daily. “That is my integrity and I have worked almost 20 years here and I don’t like to have people come to the podium, but we’re going to take issue with it...We do things correctly,” Walby said.

While Walby defends the contract, Chesterfield Township consultant John Johnson alleged that St. Clair Shores had limited bids for the 5-year city contract so as to draw a small number of bidders. Referring to the bids as “a fake process,” Johnson asked “My question is this a shell game? What is going on here?”

Official Towing’s founding owner, Gasper Fiore, pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and racketeering, and faces up to five years in prison at sentencing in May. While Fiore’s name appears on documents filed with the city of Warren, which led Warren to terminate contracts with Official, the company insists that Official Towing now belongs to Fiore’s daughter, Jessica Lucas. The firm has had the city’s towing contract for 30 years.

For complete coverage, follow this story with the Macomb Daily.

Photo by Daniel Shirey/Getty Images.