POP CULTURE: FORMER DETROIT MAYOR HAS TO SELL HIS PERSONAL ITEMS TO PAY BACK THE CITY OF DETROIT

Disgraced Detroit mayor kwame Kilpatrick has turned salesman. However, it is far from his desire to do so, rather HE’S BEEN FORCED TO SELL BACK MOST OF HIS LUXURY ITEMS TO BACK PACK MONEY HE STOLE FROM HIS CITY. READ ON TO UNCOVER THE DETAILS. ENJOY

Judge: Kilpatrick must scrimp to pay city back

By M.L. ELRICK

Free Press Staff Writer

Kwame Kilpatrick will have to scale back his lifestyle instead of his restitution payments, a judge ruled today.

Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner rejected the ex-mayor’s bid to avoid paying the city of Detroit $6,000 per month to help defray the $1 million he agreed to pay the city as part of a plea deal to resolve the text message scandal.

Kilpatrick attorney Michael Alan Schwartz had argued in a March 24 court filing that Kilpatrick could only spare $6 a month from his $120,000 annual salary after paying for expenses like his Cadillac Escalade and the home his family is renting in a posh suburb of Dallas, Texas.

But Groner, who ordered Kilpatrick to make the payments after learning about the ex-mayor's high living since being released from jail in February, wrote that the former mayor “must realize that he is a convicted felon, and will have to balance meeting all the conditions of his probation, including restitution payments, with the lifestyle to which he has grown accustomed.”

“In other words,” Groner added, Kilpatrick “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.”

Groner invited Kilpatrick to request a restitution hearing, but Schwartz instead said he would take his case to a higher court.

“That’s why we have a Court of Appeals,” he said, “to correct the errors of the trial court.”

Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, said Kilpatrick “presented no legitimate grounds to modify his restitution. We agree with the judge’s order.