Newly elected County Commissioner Mark Brant says he’s eager to serve his constituents in Monroe County, Michigan — but first he has to serve time.
Brant is scheduled to report to federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Friday, making this a Thanksgiving he’ll always remember — even if he’d rather forget. Brant was sentenced to 18 months in Club Fed, fined $500,000 and agreed to give up the more than 300 grand the feds found in his Monroe home after he pleaded guilty to what Uncle Sam calls “maintaining a drug-involved premises.”
While that may sound like the longtime Republican politician was operating a crack house or opium den on the Michigan-Ohio border, it’s not that dramatic. Brant copped to leasing land to some dudes who grew marijuana they sold in Ohio, in violation of federal law.
Brant, who was first elected to the Monroe County Commission in 2012, somehow kept secret that the feds had been after him for four years. Fellow commissioner Randy Richardville said when Brant’s colleagues got a whiff he might be in trouble, Brant assured them nothing was happening.
“It turns out something was happening,” Richardville said. When Brant, who was serving as chairman of the commission, finally came clean in September that he was facing a potential prison sentence, Richardville said: “We were like WHAT!?!”
Brant resigned from the commission on Oct. 1. But, because it was too late for Brant to take his name off the ballot (even if he had wanted to), and it was too late for other candidates to get their name on the ballot, Brant was elected to a fourth term on Nov. 5 with a staggering 90% of the vote.
Brant’s popularity contributed to his decisive victory, but he also benefited from running in a district that is so overwhelmingly Republican that no Democrat dared challenge him by trying to get on the ballot before the filing deadline in April. Add to that the fact that Brant had been elected three times before and that most folks had no idea he was in the feds’ crosshairs, and it’s a lot easier to understand Brant’s landslide comeback victory barely a month after stating in his resignation letter: “I don’t want my personal circumstance to interfere with the smooth operation of the county I so dearly love.”
Nevertheless, instead of resigning a second time, and despite his “personal circumstance” interfering with the smooth operation of the county he loves, Brant hustled over to the county clerk’s office last week and took the oath of office to serve a fresh four-year term.
Even with time off for good behavior, Brant will spend the first year of that term behind bars.
He says it’s no big deal.
“While I’m gone, my phone will be available,” Brant said last week. “I have somebody who will be taking my messages. And my fellow board members have all volunteered to handle all of my constituents’ concerns that I won’t be able to handle.”
As for his salary of about $15,000 a year, Brant said he has no choice.
“By law, I have to take the payment while I’m in …” he said, pausing to avoid saying “prison,” then adding: “while I’m not here.”
He said he may try to donate it to charity.
It’s unclear how Brant’s colleagues feel about his assertion they’re willing to pick up his slack, especially since they have their hands full coping with conundrums caused by his conviction. Among the questions they’re wrestling with now are whether county officials who knew about Brant’s predicament should have informed the commission.
This became an issue after commissioners learned two top county officials and the state senator who represents Monroe knew months before they did that Brant was facing hard time.
That raises another question: Should elected officials use their position — and even their government stationery — to seek leniency for a friend?
And there’s the matter of whether an elected official can fully serve his neighbors while sitting in a cell more than 300 miles from home.
Up in smoke
Brant describes himself in court documents as a “serial entrepreneur,” whose portfolio includes renting land to people growing soybeans, corn and other vegetables.
Unfortunately for Brant, some of those vegetables included hippy lettuce.
This was not a surprise to Brant. His lawyer wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Brant knowingly broke the law, “renting properties to individuals that would grow and ultimately distribute marijuana, in violation of” federal law.
This wasn’t his first offense, either. Brant pleaded guilty in 1984 to delivery of misbranded drugs for selling “over-the-counter diet pills.” He served two years probation.
Brant’s other business ventures include commercial and residential real estate, selling livestock, currency, agriculture, tech, vintage cars, farm equipment and running the Twin Lakes Llama Ranch. Brant’s LinkedIn page boasts that he and his wife once had the largest herd of llamas “east of the Rockies.”
“He has been addicted,” his lawyer wrote, “to business for nearly six decades.”
In 1986, Brant added politics to his portfolio, winning election as supervisor of Raisinville Township. In 2002, he was appointed to the Monroe County Planning Commission. In 2012, he won his first term on the Monroe County Commission. In 2020, the board of commissioners elevated him to chairman, making him the most powerful elected official in Monroe County.
Brant’s lawyer, associates and friends lauded him as a hardworking family man and leader committed to improving “the quality of life for residents of our County.”
Some of that praise is now causing heartburn for the people who offered it, as well as Monroe County commissioners.
County Administrator Michael Bosanac and his deputy Aundrea Armstrong lavished praise on Brant in letters sent to his lawyer on June 4. The lawyer then sent those letters to the judge in Brant’s case as part of his bid to avoid prison time. Bosanac and Armstrong said last week that they didn’t know what Brant had been charged with or that he had pleaded guilty when he asked them to write letters on his behalf in May, even though there had been signs he may be in trouble with John Law.
“Back in 2020 when his business and home were raided, a Board member informed me,” Armstrong wrote in response to an email. “Mr. Brant had stated he was innocent and had done nothing wrong.”
Bosanac said he would have notified commissioners if Brant’s legal problems had involved county business or his duties as an elected official. “I do not have a responsibility to inform others of Mr. Brant’s private matters, nor did I have any information to report,” Bosanac said. “This responsibility is solely his.”
“In retrospect, which is a really valuable tool,” Bosanac added, “I may have asked more questions about the character letter and used that information to determine if a different approach should have been taken.”
Armstrong agreed.
“Knowing what I know now,” she wrote, “I would have probably asked questions regarding what the letter was being used for.”
Neither Bosanac or Armstrong responded when asked if Brant pressured them to write letters lauding him.
Now, commissioners are asking questions, too.
“Is there concern about the letters being written? I would say ‘Of course,’ ” Richardville said. “There hasn’t been a detailed investigation of who knew what when.”
Richardville, a former state Senate Majority Leader, is serving on a new ethics committee tasked with recommending reforms to help avoid future scandals.
One official who wrote a letter seeking leniency for Brant is beyond the committee’s reach.
State Sen. Joe Bellino Jr., a Monroe Republican, wrote that Brant “has always possessed a high degree of integrity and honesty in his personal and professional interactions. I was surprised to hear of the issues that Mark is facing and find this to be very out of character.”
Unlike Bosanac and Armstrong, Bellino wrote his letter on government-issued stationery, with The Great Seal of the State of Michigan emblazoned at the top of the letterhead.
Bellino said he heard from a couple people who think it was unethical to use his Senate stationery.
“He was a friend who was in trouble,” Bellino said, acknowledging, “I used my position to write a letter for someone who admitted he’s a felon to get a lighter sentence. … I try to help people when I can because people were there for me when I got sober.”
Bellino, a recovering addict, said he has written about 40 letters seeking leniency for addicts who get in trouble with the law. He acknowledged that Brant is not an addict, and said he usually does not use his Senate letterhead. But he said he was at his desk when he was asked to help Brant and just grabbed the stationery that was handy.
When asked whether he would use his Senate letterhead again, he told me: “Now that it’s drummed up 74 bee’s nests, I’d probably use different stationery.”
Bellino said he figured other people knew about Brant’s case when he wrote the letter, and that he’s disappointed that his friend had not revealed his predicament.
“Mark should have let people know,” he said. “It would have made things a little smoother right now for him and the board.”
A fine mess
Brant’s lawyer argued that his client made a “grievous lapse in judgment” and that “a prison sentence would hurt Mr. Brant’s community, children and grandchildren more than it would hurt him.”
Not everyone in Monroe County agrees.
The Monroe News and Toledo Blade quoted angry residents who lashed out at Brant, the board of commissioners and the officials who wrote letters on Brant’s behalf.
“It’s not about the marijuana,” Katybeth Davis said at a recent county commission meeting. “I hate liars. I hate being lied to. (People think) when you get to be elected, it gives you the right or the power to act better than anyone else. You guys are in charge of the county. I believe that we deserve better. I’d like to ask that if Mark Brant was to get elected, that these fellow county commissioners would encourage him to resign again.”
Bill LaVoy called for the head of any county employee who failed to alert the commission to Brant’s legal problems.
LaVoy, a Democrat and former state representative who ran unsuccessfully for the commission this year, doesn’t want Brant back on the county payroll in January. He wrote in an email: “How can someone represent the people of Monroe County from a prison cell while not living in the area you are supposed to represent?”
Richardville said that while commissioners encouraged Brant to resign when they learned of his case, there’s not much they can do to remove him from office next year.
“There’s no attendance requirement, and there’s no attendance punishment if you don’t show up,” he said. “It’s a very strange set of circumstances.”
The Michigan Constitution isn’t much help, either. It was amended in the wake of the Kwame Kilpatrick scandal to ban officials convicted of a felony from being elected to state office for 20 years, but only if the crime was related to their position. So, an elected official convicted of drunken driving could still serve, while an official who took a bribe could not.
When I asked Brant whether he would have voted for a felon, he said: “Well, I voted for Trump.”
Then he said he didn’t feel his own conviction was that big a deal.
“There are plenty of felonies that do not take away your credibility,” he said, “or your ability to serve in an elected position.”
On the bright side, Brant should have plenty of time to respond to the concerns of his constituents — as long as they’re willing to accept a collect call.
