Al Fields joined Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s executive team in January 2010. A veteran of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration who also has private sector experience, Fields said he was recruited by Bing and other top city officials.
Fifteen months later, he was gone.
Fields is one of 46 employees, 31 of them managers, directors, deputy directors or group executives, who have left the mayor’s office in the past 22 months.
Most of the 46 were asked to resign or their appointments were revoked; a handful retired or were cut as departments were eliminated.
Bing defends his personnel choices as housekeeping, clearing out unsuccessful legacy appointees from past administrations.
But many of the 46 were hires made by Bing, including Fields; former Bing Groupd CEO Kirk Lewis, who served as Bing’s chief government and corporate affairs officer; Charlie Beckham, chief administrative officer; Warren Palmer, director of planning and development; Janet Anderson, deputy budget director; and the entire Office of Targeted Business Development.
And three veterans of the Kilpatrick administration — Chief Communications Officer Karen Dumas, Chief of Staff Shannon Holmes and CFO Norm White — continue to climb the organizational chart.
So many departures have left power in the mayor’s office concentrated in the hands of a few C-level employees and group executives, a lineup that critics of the administration say lacks the experience to guide the state’s largest city. To some, it signals instability in the mayor’s office.
“There’s always been a lot of movement on and off the 11th floor,” said Sheila Cockrel, who served 16 years as a Detroit City Council member and is now an adjunct professor at Wayne State University‘s Irvin D. Reid Honors College and owner of Crossroads Consulting. “People come and go. What’s interesting is that it’s all in the first 22 months.”
