EXCLUSIVE: Meridian Township manager using township resources for personal benefit

MERIDIAN TWP., Mich. (WLNS) – Meridian Township’s top employee has been using township resources to benefit his consulting business.

As Township Manager, Frank Walsh oversees and manages the day-to-day operations of Meridian Township. But Walsh confirms to 6 News that he has used township resources to conduct some of his consulting work with his business Walsh Municipal Services, LLC (WMS).

WMS contracts with municipalities across the state to conduct searches for executive-level employees such as city manager and director of public works positions.

How much township time and resources Walsh uses to conduct his private business is a matter of debate.

“I can assure the residents of Meridian Township that my business activities are conducted 99% of the time on my personal phone, email and personal computer.” Walsh wrote in an email to 6 News. “With anything, there are times that you plan for a phone call at home and you get a call or Zoom on my personal cellphone while at the office. I typically spend 4-6 hours per week with my recruitment activities. The Township has always been my top priority. This will not change.”

But a source with direct knowledge of Walsh’s activities tells 6 News he spends about 20% of his time at the Township working on consulting contracts rather than his township responsibilities.

Multiple sources tell 6 News their perception is that Walsh is spending significantly more than 1% of his time working on his consulting contracts, rather than township business. Walsh also comes in later in the day when he travels to other locations to present for his contracting work because “he is working late that day.”

“If you want to make a case that I’ve accepted phone calls and emails on my personal cell phone while at work you are correct,” Walsh wrote. “I’m sure if you expanded your search you’d find that it is common to respond to private emails or calls during the day. Like I said, I average 46 hours a week in the office. The Township is not in any way receiving less than 40 hours a week from me.”

All of the sources who spoke to 6 News for this reporting were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation from Walsh and they remain actively involved at the township. 6 News relied on sources verifying information provided, often independently of one other, as well as cross-referencing with thousands of pages of documents obtained by 6 News.

Walsh refused to meet in person or appear on camera for this story.

Supervisor Pro Tem Scott Hendrickson responded to questions from 6 News on behalf of the board.

“On the advice of Township counsel, the Board has no comment on any investigation that may or may not be ongoing,” he wrote in an email Monday.

In response to 6 News reporting, Walsh denied any wrongdoing Monday in an email.

“The taxpayers are not subsidizing my consulting. I operate with my own cell phone, home computer & office,” Walsh wrote. “The only time that my schedule has changed during a time or two, I would take a short Zoom call with a community. I estimate that occurred 4-5 times over the past few years. I keep track of my time during the day and account for the time with evening and weekend work. I’ve never taken more time than I’ve given during a week without using vacation time.”

Walsh’s claims do not match interviews with several sources and thousands of documents obtained by 6 News from the Township.

Gauging how much time he spends working on government responsibilities versus his contract work is difficult, sources tell 6 News. They say he carries two cell phones that appear the same. One has the ringtone of a barking dog, but no one is certain as to whether that is his contracting cell phone or his township cell phone. Those sources also say he will travel across Marsh Rd. to the Fed Ex copy center during the day to produce copies of presentations he will give to clients, but he also prints some of those items off on the township printer in his office.

Sources tell 6 News that in a year, his assistant spends an estimated 10 hours handling Walsh’s consulting-related work while on the Township clock. That includes answering emails and phone calls from applicants for positions Walsh is running searches on. Walsh denies that.

“My assistant does not spend 10 hours a year responding to inquiries.,” Walsh wrote in an email to 6 News. “On an average 10 calls are received per year which take one minute to say please use Franks’s (sic) private cell number. I can’t control who contacts my office.”

As Township Manager, Walsh earns $160,823 a year in taxpayer salary plus health and retirement benefits. His consulting business brings in thousands of additional dollars on top of that. 6 News talked to three of Walsh’s clients who, combined, said they paid WMS around $13,000 in 2023.

Jay Kennedy is an expert in white-collar crime. He has studied and taught about it at Michigan State University and is now in the private sector. 6 News shared the results of the investigation into Walsh’s outside contracting with him.

“Actually, the diversion of resources is a type of theft. It does not have to be simply taking cash,” says Kennedy. “It can be organizational resources to ensure that you, yourself, don’t have to pay costs that you would normally pay in running your own private business.”

While Walsh says 99% of his consulting work is done on equipment he owns and personal time, Kennedy questions this.

“What I have found with my work on employee theft – and I am not saying that this is employee theft – but what I have found in that work is that people tend to underestimate the amount of resources that they’ve either used or have taken advantage of from their company or their employer,” Kennedy says.

Kennedy says the extent and impact of Walsh’s use of township resources would require further review.

“Go back to the records to see what the utilization is and put a number on it and see where it lands. Now there are two things here,” he said. “One is the very use of it, irrespective of whether it’s 30 seconds or whether it’s 30 hours, is likely a violation of an ethical contract that exists between the individual and the employer, whether it rises to a level of crime is something for a prosecutor to determine.”

“In my expert opinion, someone who utilizes Township resources for their own personal benefit – redirects staff work to something that generates revenue for that individual that is outside the scope of their work for that organization and is the same, is tantamount to taking $20-$30 a week, an hour, what have you,” says Kennedy.

Walsh’s consulting work appears to violate Township policies regarding outside employment. The Township employee handbook explicitly prohibits employees from using “Township supplies, staff or equipment, including computers or technology, with any outside employment or private practice,” and prohibits the employee from engaging in “outside employment during employee’s regularly scheduled working hours.”

For instance, one document obtained by 6 News shows a 9 a.m. meeting on Friday, November 3, 2023, between Walsh and participants in a search for the Saginaw County Administrator position. The meeting was held on a Meridian Township-owned computer in Walsh’s office at the Township.

Notes on the document and interviews reveal Deputy Township Manager Dan Opsommer attempted to move a 10 a.m. Zoom meeting about township work to 9:40 a.m. Opsommer showed up outside Walsh’s office asking if he was available.

Walsh’s assistant told Opsommer that the manager was not available because Walsh was on a Zoom for “his business.”

The printed calendar invite for the meeting with contemporary notes reveals Walsh exited his office at 10 a.m. after completing the Zoom meeting with Saginaw county officials and told Opsommer and his assistant, “Mark me down for one hour of vacation for today.”

6 News also has a 2021 email from Walsh directing his assistant to put 40 hours of vacation time aside as a bank for his consulting time.

The email includes Meridian Township’s director of human resources, as well as township attorneys.

“As we orally discussed, please immediately deduct 40 vacation hours from my personal account. The deduction is to account for personal calls or emails I author during regular business hours,” Walsh wrote in the email.

Kennedy says the use of vacation hours is “easy to play.”

“Who is monitoring that 40 hours? How do you monitor that 40 hours, right? Because you can get, you know, three months down the line and, ‘Oh, wow, I’ve used 46 hours now.’ Do you have to pay back those six hours?” he says. “Where, in a normal case, if you said, ‘Hey, I want to use up six more hours of vacation time or PTO [Paid Time Off] and the system or the supervisor tells you you’re at 40 hours already, you’ve got no more left. Then it’s unpaid time off, potentially, or some other mechanism that can be used. It’s difficult to do that retrospectively.”

The rules also prohibit the employee from using the township as a referral or recruitment location for outside employment, reference to the township employment in any advertising or recruitment of customers or clients, and maintaining a clear separation between the outside work and township functions and responsibilities.

Sources tell 6 News Walsh regularly wears Walsh Municipal Services branded clothing while on duty at the Township. The image of Walsh on his consulting business’ website is also an official Meridian Township picture.

“I don’t believe wearing a pullover with my logo affects anyone,” Walsh wrote of branded clothing for his consulting job while on official Township duties. ”I’m not trying to cultivate clients at work.”

Regardless of the intent of his wearing his branded clothing, Kennedy says it blurs the lines between his personal and professional work.

“That’s a concern for me because you are, you’re addressing the Township board in your role as supervisor,” he says of Walsh wearing his branded clothing during meetings with officials and official functions. “There needs to be that clear distinction between you, the supervisor and you, the consultant. And look, you’ve got a closet full of clothes, right?”

In a previous email, Walsh reported his contracting work and management work did not conflict.

“Under the terms of the contract, I must inform the Supervisor of my client list. For the past four years, I have done so. I maintain a personal cell phone, website, computer and home office to perform my consulting,” Walsh explained in an email. “I have a family member who supports our work during daytime hours through emails and drafting proposals. Whenever someone reaches out to me on my Meridian email, I always direct them to my personal cell phone. I average 46/48 hours per week performing my duties as Township Manager. I’m available to the residents 24/7. When I travel for interviews, I use vacation time. There have been a few occasions when my Meridian work schedule has not allowed me to travel home for a brief Zoom call. Oftentimes, I’ve used my personal cell phone for those Zoom calls.”

Walsh’s contract has evolved over the years. At first, Township officials provided a provision to allow Walsh to conduct up to three consulting searches in the 2020 contract. That was expanded gradually over the years until the 2023 contract provided him the opportunity to participate in an unlimited number of searches as long as he informed the Township.

Then-Trustee Dan Opsommer made the motion to amend Walsh’s employment contract to allow him unlimited consultant jobs, lifting it from a cap of 10 in late 2022.

Walsh states on his website for WMS that the consulting business began in 1997. However, he did not file articles of incorporation with the state of Michigan for Walsh Municipal Services, LLC until December of 2018.

“My consulting business started in 1997 by donating our services to smaller communities trying to find Municipal leaders,” Walsh explained of the discrepancy. “We did this off and on until around 2009. With township approval, we officially kicked off a business model in 2018. We have been providing searches since 97.”

The WMS Facebook page reveals Walsh is involved in at least five consulting jobs in 2024. They include a search for a township manager in Zeeland Township, a city manager for the city of Saugatuck and a village manager for the village of Dimondale.

In 2023, the WMS Facebook page revealed Walsh was involved in searches for 17 municipalities. Here’s the list of municipalities he conducted searches for last year:

• Charlotte

• Riverview

• Clinton County

• Chelsea

• Caledonia

• Van Buren County

• St. Johns

• Plainwell

• Watervliet

• Buchanan

• Gratiot County

• Cedar Springs (finance director)

• Mason County

• Norton Shores

• Saginaw County

• Litchfield

• Spring Lake

All of the sources expressed concerns about how taxpayers would react to Walsh’s contracting work and the use of township resources.

“I just don’t know if the community knew that he has the ability to do unlimited searches,” says one of the sources. “If that would seem reasonable.”

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