The more the Michigan Governor's Cabinet operations are uncloaked, the more I am inclined to reaffirm my position that Snyder was falsely advised, if he was even advised on what was going on.
Here is a list of Rich Baird's privatization activities in Michigan:
The
search and appointment of Kevyn Orr, Emergency Manager for the Detroit Bankruptcy.
Pay attention to all those trust funds and real estate.
Senior Advisor and Transformation Manager
Office of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder
Richard L. Baird was appointed Senior Advisor and Transformation Leader to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in October of 2013. Prior to that, he was the CEO of MI Partners, LLC, a Michigan-based consulting company contracted by the Snyder administration since January, 2011.
Baird works with the Governor and his leadership team to reinvent and transform Michigan. Baird has played key roles to address financial solvency, organizational redesign and performance, talent assessment, financially distressed city turnaround strategies, public safety and infrastructure, economic/workforce development and education reform.
Baird served as co-leader (with U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox) of the mediation team which led to the creation of the Great Lakes Water Authority and also assisted Judge Gerald Rosen in the successful resolution of creditor disputes under the Detroit bankruptcy. He created the Office of Good Government for the State of Michigan, designed the Governor’s Council on Law Enforcement and Reinvention (CLEAR), and has been actively involved in pension redesign, enhancing opportunities for the disabled, ex-offender rehabilitation, and tax payer reform.
More recently (since January, 2016), Baird has served as the Team Leader for “Mission Flint” which coordinates the State’s partnership with the City of Flint and the related nearly $300 million appropriation to address problems arising from the water crisis and assist with economic/workforce development, medical and education initiatives.
In 2010, Baird retired from PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP as global and U.S. leader of people and change management. From 2003–2008, he was global managing partner – people, responsible for human resources and learning & education for PwC’s 150,000 partners and staff in 150 countries, while serving on the 14-partner global leadership team. From 19997 to 2000, Baird was President of Compass.com, a couple sold to TMP Worldwide (Monster.com) in 2000.
Baird has been referenced in various professional publications for his work in talent management, including The Wall Street Journal, Global HR News, Newsweek, Economist, and Chicago Tribune.
Baird serves as Treasurer of the Michigan Education Excellence Foundation, and is a member of the board for the Grow Michigan Investment Fund. He joined the board for the American Center for Mobility in May, 2017. He is a life member of the board of trustees for United Methodist Homes and Services and a past member of the AIESEC U.S. board of directors and global advisory steering committee. An avid conservationist, he also served on the board of the Great Lakes Protection Fund.
| Word Mark | DETROIT SCHOLARSHIP FUND |
| Goods and Services | IC 036. US 100 101 102. G & S: Charitable fundraising; Charitable fundraising services, namely, raising funds for college education costs; Providing educational scholarships; Providing college scholarships; Financial administration of scholarship programs. FIRST USE: 20130430. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20130430 |
| Standard Characters Claimed | |
| Mark Drawing Code | (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK |
| Serial Number | 86597230 |
| Filing Date | April 14, 2015 |
| Current Basis | 1A |
| Original Filing Basis | 1A |
| Date Amended to Current Register | October 30, 2015 |
| Registration Number | 4915636 |
| Registration Date | March 8, 2016 |
| Owner | (REGISTRANT) Michigan Education Excellence Foundation non-profit corporation MICHIGAN P.O. Box 10030 Lansing MICHIGAN 48901 |
| Attorney of Record | Eric T. Fingerhut |
| Disclaimer | NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "SCHOLARSHIP FUND" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN |
| Type of Mark | SERVICE MARK |
| Register | SUPPLEMENTAL |
| Live/Dead Indicator | LIVE |
| Word Mark | MICHIGAN EDUCATION EXCELLENCE FOUNDATION |
| Goods and Services | IC 036. US 100 101 102. G & S: Accepting and administering monetary charitable contributions; charitable fundraising; charitable fundraising services, namely, raising funds for college education costs; financial administration of scholarship programs; charitable fundraising for education projects in the State of Michigan. FIRST USE: 20120827. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20120827 |
| Standard Characters Claimed | |
| Mark Drawing Code | (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK |
| Serial Number | 85429727 |
| Filing Date | September 22, 2011 |
| Current Basis | 1A |
| Original Filing Basis | 1B |
| Date Amended to Current Register | February 21, 2013 |
| Registration Number | 4319072 |
| Registration Date | April 9, 2013 |
| Owner | (REGISTRANT) Michigan Education Excellence Foundation non-profit corporation MICHIGAN P.O. Box 10030 Lansing MICHIGAN 48901 |
| Attorney of Record | Michelle R. Osinski |
| Disclaimer | NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "FOUNDATION" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN |
| Type of Mark | SERVICE MARK |
| Register | SUPPLEMENTAL |
| Live/Dead Indicator | LIVE |
https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2016/453/076/2016-453076410-0eb4e396-9.pdf
Baird received his bachelor’s degree from Albion College and was a trustee for 12 years, including five as chair. He received an honorary Ph.D. from Albion College and from Eastern Michigan University.
Governor's right-hand man served as emissary, deal-maker, talent scout
Rich Baird, senior adviser to Gov. Rick Snyder, has worked throughout Snyder’s tenure as a de facto deputy governor of the state, whether it was dealing with the Flint water crisis or weekly meetings with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
Rich Baird's skin is a lot thicker these days after eight years as a student of government.
The former PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP executive's faithful service as the right-hand man for outgoing Gov. Rick Snyder has been a ride through the making of laws, Detroit's landmark bankruptcy, some well-intended ideas gone awry and the tsunami of turmoil that engulfed his hometown of Flint — and nearly took the Snyder administration with it.
Whenever there was a controversy or a fire to put out during Snyder's unconventional tenure as Michigan's chief executive, Baird was typically on the scene, serving as an emissary, a deal-maker, the talent scout and, in the eyes of some people, a de facto deputy governor of Michigan.
For the past six years, Rich Baird's trail has run from the governor's office and courtrooms to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's office and Flint City Hall. And for most of that time, he has spurned attention from journalists who have been curious about his wide-ranging assignments from the governor.
Rich Baird has seemingly been everywhere:
- He recruited the top minds to Snyder's team, convincing Jones Day bankruptcy attorney Kevyn Orr to camp out in Detroit for a nearly two-year bankruptcy reorganization project that defied political gravity.
- He set up Snyder's now-defunct Education Achievement Authority school reform entity — and later was involved in dismantling the EAA after it became entangled in mismanagement and corruption.
- In 2016, Baird planted himself in Flint during the height of the city's lead-tainted water crisis, living in rooms he rented off Craigslist and serving as the governor's personal representative at a time when hatred for Snyder was at a fevered pitch.
- He has served as Snyder's ambassador to the Manoogian Mansion, holding meetings every Thursday morning with Duggan for the past five years and forging an early peace treaty in 2013 between the emergency manager and a newly elected mayor who vowed to dispose of the EM.
- During and after the bankruptcy, Baird mediated negotiations with stakeholders, including creation of the Great Lakes Water Authority, a regional entity that spun off suburban water and sewer operations from the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department.
- In the four years since Detroit emerged from bankruptcy, Baird has continued to be the go-to troubleshooter for state-city issues, serving as a self-described "field commander" in Detroit's failed bid for Amazon's second headquarters.
- Baird played a central role in striking key deals for construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, including securing funds for Detroit to relocate Delray residents who live near the planned bridge plaza.
"He's the person we turn to when we're stuck," Duggan said of Baird. "The fact that he's down (in Detroit) every day, he understands what we're trying to do and why, it has made him very effective as an honest broker with a lot of different major deals."
Baird's broad role in the Snyder administration "created a vacuum, a mystery around him" that was widely misunderstood, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley said.
"It's hard for this town to understand that there's this person that you've never heard of that has a lot of influence. What's going on there?" Calley said in an interview.
Before Snyder took the oath of office on Jan. 1, 2010, incoming Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore gave Baird the ubiquitous title of "transformation manager."
"What's transformation manager mean?" Baird asked Muchmore.
"Absolutely nothing," Muchmore replied.
"Or it could mean absolutely everything," Baird said.
The latter turned out to be true.
"Rich Baird has been one of the most important, impactful and effective members of this administration," Calley said.
The recruiter
Baird, 62, retired from PricewaterhouseCoopers on June 30, 2010, after three decades at PwC and one of the accounting giant's predecessors, Coopers & Lybrand, where he hired Snyder in 1982 to work in the firm's Detroit office. Snyder has been Baird's colleague, a client when he ran Gateway Computers, confidante and friend ever since.
Baird volunteered for Snyder's gubernatorial campaign. In the transition, Snyder tapped Baird to lead the recruitment of state agency directors and top aides — a natural fit for the guy who was PwC's global managing partner for human resources.
Two positions proved to be the most difficult to fill: the Department of Corrections director and the state budget director. The corrections director job would be filled a month into Snyder's tenure with the appointment of then-Jackson County Sheriff Dan Heyns.
For the budget director job, Baird was not satisfied after interviewing nearly two dozen in-state candidates.
"I did not come away with the sense that any of them really understood what it was going to take to not only deal with the budget and fill what we knew was a deficit, but also knowing how the governor was going to approach policy and budgeting," Baird said.
On a Saturday afternoon in November of 2010, Baird called former Gov. John Engler for advice on out-of-state candidates for the job.
Engler, who was then CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, came back to Baird with a list of five well-regarded state budget officers across the country. At the top of the list was Utah's budget director, John Nixon, then the president of the National Association of State Budget Officers.
"(Engler) said, 'You won't get this guy, but you should start with him and talk to him about the other candidates — because he knows all of them,'" Baird said.
Baird sent Nixon an email — and within an hour Utah's budget guru called the Michigan headhunter on a Saturday night.
Nixon, a devout Mormon with six children who were ages two to 14 at the time, wasn't interested in uprooting for the Midwest.
But cajoling is Baird's specialty.
"I said, 'It seems to me that you've retired in place. How exciting could it be? Why don't you at least come out and talk to us? We'll make you part of the biggest comeback in the history of the country,'" Baird said. "And he laughed."
Nixon relented, flying to Detroit to meet with Baird and the top members of Snyder's cabinet — Calley, Muchmore, Treasurer Andy Dillon and Strategy Director Bill Rustem. He also met with members of Snyder's transition team: Business Leaders for Michigan CEO Doug Rothwell and Meijer Inc. Vice Chairman Mark Murray, a former state budget director and treasurer under Engler.
When Nixon came back the following weekend with his wife to meet with Snyder, Baird called in a favor from Honigman corporate attorney G. Scott Romney, son of former Gov. George Romney and a fellow Mormon and Republican.
Baird asked Romney if he'd take the Nixons to his Mormon church. "The Romney name is like gold in Utah," Baird said.
On New Year's Eve 2010, Nixon flew to Michigan and set to work on a grueling mission: Produce a two-year budget in six weeks that eliminates a $1.5 billion budget deficit and lets the state slash business taxes.
"Rich is a compelling guy. I realized they had built a first-class team. And I thought, this is something I want to be part of," said Nixon, who returned to Utah in 2014 to become chief administrative officer of the University of Utah.
'Great idea' gone bad
Baird never intended to be part of Snyder's administration.
Initially, Snyder asked Baird to work as a consultant for six months to help put together a new government.
Baird says he "resisted" becoming an employee of the State of Michigan.
"I'm not a bureaucrat," Baird recalled telling the governor. "I don't want to stay on."
"He said, 'Well, I'll pay you out of the NERD Fund,' which we thought was a great idea at the time," Baird added.
And that's how Baird got on the radar of reporters like me.
For most of Snyder's first three years, Baird was paid $100,000 annually from the New Energy to Reinvent and Diversify (NERD) Fund, a not-for-profit organization that could accept limitless donations without having to disclose the donors.
The arrangement raised the specter of whether special interest groups with a policy or legislative agenda were funding the salary of an influential member of the governor's inner circle.
"It wasn't special interests that gave to the NERD Fund — it was Democrats, a whole bunch of them," Baird said.
But Democrats had a field day, raising transparency questions about the secrecy of the fund and the source of Baird's pay while being listed as a state employee with an office across the hall from the governor's suite.
To this day, the identity of the donors who contributed $2.2 million to the NERD Fund remains a secret. In October 2013, Snyder shuttered the NERD Fund,
put Baird on the state payroll — at $140,000 a year — and started a new nonprofit organization that has voluntarily disclosed its
donors and expenses.
But Baird insists his NERD Fund employment arrangement was devoid of conflicts.
"If I'm a tool of the special interest, then somebody should be shot because I made exactly one-twentieth of what I made in my old life at PricewaterhouseCoopers," Baird said.
'Hated being called a tax cheat'
Even after Snyder tried to tamp down the NERD Fund controversy, Baird remained a frequent target of Democrats and the governor's political enemies.
In August of 2014, the critics pounced after MIRS news service discovered Baird was claiming tax principal homestead exemptions on a $500,000 home in Clinton County's Bath Township and his longtime residence in suburban Chicago. Tax laws limit the property tax break to just one home.
Baird also was still driving around a vehicle with an Illinois license plate, even after he had changed his voter registration to Michigan and got elected a precinct delegate to help re-nominate Calley for lieutenant governor at a GOP state convention — and vote for Snyder that fall.
That move, Baird said, triggered a call from his accountant, who flagged the fact that Michigan — under Snyder — was now taxing pension income for individuals born after 1946.
"She said, 'Are you crazy? You've got to move your pension away from Illinois and to Michigan — and you're going to get taxed on the pension,'" Baird recalled. "I said, 'I know. I was at the scene of that crime.'"
'EAA was not a failure'
Baird's activities stretched well beyond recruitment and the confines of governing inside the Lansing bubble.
Snyder made turning around Detroit and its long-failing schools a top priority. For the city's schools, a succession of state emergency managers was not working, and Snyder wanted to try something new.
The governor tasked Baird with
helping to create a new entity that would take over 15 persistently failing schools in Detroit in an effort funded in large part by billionaire Detroit native Eli Broad to demonstrate a different style of education with longer school days, year-round instruction and no grade levels.
The result was the Education Achievement Authority, which was organized as an intergovernmental agreement between Eastern Michigan University and Detroit Public Schools, which was run by an emergency manager at the time.
That move, Baird said, triggered a call from his accountant, who flagged the fact that Michigan — under Snyder — was now taxing pension income for individuals born after 1946.
"She said, 'Are you crazy? You've got to move your pension away from Illinois and to Michigan — and you're going to get taxed on the pension,'" Baird recalled. "I said, 'I know. I was at the scene of that crime.'"
'EAA was not a failure'
Baird's activities stretched well beyond recruitment and the confines of governing inside the Lansing bubble.
Snyder made turning around Detroit and its long-failing schools a top priority. For the city's schools, a succession of state emergency managers was not working, and Snyder wanted to try something new.
The governor tasked Baird with
helping to create a new entity that would take over 15 persistently failing schools in Detroit in an effort funded in large part by billionaire Detroit native Eli Broad to demonstrate a different style of education with longer school days, year-round instruction and no grade levels.
The result was the Education Achievement Authority, which was organized as an intergovernmental agreement between Eastern Michigan University and Detroit Public Schools, which was run by an emergency manager at the time.
From the outset, the EAA was troubled.
The school reform entity struggled to meet payroll and manage expenses in the absence of authority to borrow money like normal school districts do.
John Covington, the former Kansas City schools superintendent who was hired to be the EAA's chancellor, was "a good blueprinting guy ... but not an operations guy," Baird said.
Baird said Covington's insistence that the EAA be a closed shop for the American Federation of Teachers triggered an unnecessary "war" with the union and legislative Democrats, who dredged up thousands of pages of emails that revealed the early dysfunction and stumbles of Snyder's school reform project.
"I ultimately rolled over on that," Baird said. "I'm really sorry I did, because over the years, I've worked with the (AFT), and we've been able to find common ground."
In 2013, as Snyder was
seeking legislation to expand the EAA to 50 failing schools across the state, Baird said he experienced an "epiphany" that the EAA was faltering when a highly skilled information technology director quit after one week on the job.
"I called her and I said, 'What's going on?' And she said, 'There's so many things that are wrong, I can't fix them and I'm not going to fool anybody into thinking I can,'" Baird said.
Baird asked David Behen, the state's chief information officer at the time, to audit the books of the EAA. "He did a thorough investigation — as good as anything a PwC or a Deloitte would have done," Baird said.
The audit revealed duplicate IT contracts and a "consistent lack of controls" that allowed vendors to get paid without contracts. That caused Baird to turn to a former PwC partner, Tom Golden, who co-authored a guide to forensic accounting.
Golden's investigation led to an FBI and state police probe that rooted out a corruption scheme involving an EAA principal who was driving a Maserati and pocketing tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from a vendor. A dozen principals in DPS were eventually charged for taking bribes from vendors in a pay-to-play scheme that had been going on in Detroit schools for years.
The corruption scandal, Covington's mismanagement and controversial frequent travel to conferences coupled with declining enrollment and rampant staff turnover eventually caused the Snyder administration to fold the EAA schools back into DPS in 2016.
"It clearly didn't work," said David Hecker, president of the AFT Michigan. "But I'll give Gov. Snyder credit for realizing it didn't work."
Baird insists the "EAA was not a failure."
"If we had done some things differently, I'm convinced the EAA would have been the trigger to create some real revolutionary change in school districts across the state," Baird said. "It was always designed to be Stage One of a statewide focus."
Defending the EM law
For eight years, Snyder wore his "relentless positive action" mantra on his sleeve, while Baird worked to enforce it.
On the Thursday after Detroit's November 2013 mayoral election, Baird brokered the first meeting between Mayor-elect Mike Duggan and Kevyn Orr, who had been running the city for nearly eight months as emergency manager.
Baird hand-wrote a pledge for the two men: Both agreed to keep their disagreements private "and the only time that we're going to publicly talk about the other person is when we have something good to say."
"I made them sign it," said Baird, who declined to show me a copy of this peace accord.
At that meeting, Duggan and Orr agreed to share power for the next year — Orr would manage the bankruptcy and supervise police chief James Craig, while Duggan would run city departments.
Baird cautioned Orr on how the arrangement could play out.
"You've heard about if you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk," Baird recalled telling Orr. "Mike Duggan will want the barn, the dairy farm, the production facility and the supply chain — it won't stop with the milk."
Since Orr left town at the end of the bankruptcy four years ago this month, Baird has remained Snyder's point man in Detroit, holding court with the mayor every Thursday morning. Duggan even gave Baird his own mayor's office ID badge that lets him bypass security.
"I think Rich Baird has been as big a part of the progress Detroit has made in the last eight years as any other person, including Kevyn Orr, Mike Duggan and Rick Snyder," Calley said. "Rich Baird has been that impactful."
Baird credits the bankruptcy's success to both Duggan's management and turnaround skills and the talents Orr and his Jones Day legal team brought to the restructuring of a city that was drowning in debt and political dysfunction.
The
same cannot be said for Flint, where Baird ran a "Mission Flint" program in 2016 trying to chart new initiatives in education, economic development and social services for his hometown in the wake of the water crisis.
Baird, the longtime human resources professional, is blunt in his assessment of how Flint's water became tainted with lead under the watch of Snyder-appointed emergency managers.
"The reason it didn't work in Flint is because we did not always have the right emergency manager that looked at this as a partnership as opposed to a dictatorship," Baird said.
Rumor has it
With just two weeks remaining in Snyder's term, the only transforming Baird is working on is stepping back into semi-retirement.
Snyder
appointed Baird to an eight-year term on the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents, and he's planning to do some long-overdue traveling with his wife next year.
And even though he's already got walk-in privileges at the mayor's office, Baird said he isn't going to join the Duggan administration.
"I think Mike was the one spreading that rumor," Baird said with a laugh.
In an interview, Duggan didn't deny he has tried to make Baird more than a weekly visitor to Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
"Yeah, I'm recruiting people all of the time," Duggan said. "But you know, I think he's earned retirement."
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
