The Detroit Department of Transportation wasted city resources — including $40,157 in overtime pay — to drive an employee between home and work using city vehicles for a year, according to an oversight report.
The finding of a “significant waste of taxpayer dollars” stems from a complaint the city of Detroit’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) received in January 2025 alleging a DDOT supervisor, DeMarcus Garrett, abused his power by asking staff to drive another employee between their Clinton Township home and work in Detroit, engaged in time fraud and retaliated against workers for refusing to continue to transport the employee. An OIG investigation, published Friday, Sept. 11, found Garrett exercised “poor professional judgment,” but his actions didn’t amount to abuse of power. The oversight office didn’t find evidence of fraud, either, though it characterized the situation as wasteful. Garrett is still employed at DDOT.
“We received the OIG report on Friday and are currently still reviewing it,” said Robert Cramer, DDOT executive director, in a statement. “We will be responding to the OIG in writing within the 30 days it requires, but based on our initial review, the recommendations made by the OIG appear to be reasonable.”
Those recommendations include training for supervisors and reviewing policies to prevent waste.
The Free Press was unable to reach Garrett for comment Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
Here’s what happened, according to the OIG report: In October 2024, a DDOT dispatcher submitted a doctor’s note saying they couldn’t drive and supervisors decided to accommodate them by providing transportation to and from work using city vehicles. Garrett — who the report said leads DDOT’s paratransit division, a ride-share service for people with disabilities — told four paratransit driver trainers, responsible for service quality and safety, that they’d be paid overtime if they could drive the dispatcher outside their regular hours. Two declined; two others accepted. The two trainers started transporting the dispatcher between home and work in November 2024 and were paid overtime. Between November 2024 and November 2025, Garrett approved 1,112 hours of overtime, totaling about $40,157 in overtime pay. Garrett said the arrangement was a medical accommodation approved by former DDOT leadership and city human resources, the OIG report said.
But the arrangement was risky, the report said. A trainer got into an accident in Clinton Township while driving the dispatcher in a city vehicle outside Detroit — exposing the city to an “unnecessary liability.” The trainer then went on leave and was unable to work for several months.
The OIG goes on to say about the incident: “The OIG finds that using employees for unofficial transport wastes time and fuel that should go toward paratransit work. Further, when an accident occurs during these trips, additional City resources can be wasted because of repair bills, time off work, and potential legal fees. Accidents also negatively impact the department’s productivity by sidelining workers and causing managers to spend time filing paperwork. By allowing these transports, the City takes on unnecessary workforce and financial risks. Based on the information reviewed, the OIG found that DDOT wasted City resources, including employee time, taxpayer dollars, and city-owned vehicles.”
The OIG was unable to verify an allegation that Garrett abused his authority by asking employees to drive another worker as a personal favor or complaints of retaliation.
The OIG found that he didn’t make the decision alone, either; it was discussed with former DDOT director Michael Staley and DDOT manager Jennifer Kaczmarek, who reports to Garrett. The former requested and approved the transportation of the employee, he said. The actions demonstrate a lack of professional judgment, as opposed to abuse, the OIG said. The Free Press was unable to reach Staley and Kaczmarek Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
The Office of Inspector General made recommendations including: requiring employees who need long-term accommodations to submit a request through the vendor the city uses for FMLA and other medical-related requests; training supervisors on balancing the needs of employees and the city’s budget; and reviewing current policies on overtime approval to “prevent further waste.”
Beautiful job! You should look
Into how the city enforces blight violations and the little proticol or procedures or lack of lets this department of BSEED, are raking in fines, that are unwarranted, against Detroit citizens, thank you
The main finding I see is that DDOT mishandled a reasonable accommodation request that should have been deemed unreasonable. That’s a point well taken, but I can appreciate that DDOT was stuck between two compliance risks. I am cautious to judge them harshly.
Ultimately, it should be a reality check that the DDOT paratransit program is not even able to get its own disabled employees to work. That’s not to diminish the improvements the system has made, but I do question the impact when an employer needs to “waste” $40,000 to get a disabled employee to and from work for a year.
Public transportation is a missing, load-bearing pillar of an integrated metro area — socially and economically. Hopefully the regional transit millage will go further towards addressing these types of gaps, but the answer is that we need millions of dollars of increased state or federal funding, not to recoup $40,000 at a time by providing less-exceptionally-generous accommodations for disabled employees.