A senior Detroit Department of Transportation official received a significant raise after the city’s watchdog recommended discipline, while the agency’s former chief safety officer was suspended twice and fired after cooperating with the same investigation.
Superintendent of Operations Howard Bragg III is now making $100,000, up from $86,986 in 2025, according to records provided to Metro Times.
Bragg received the raise in February, less than two months after the Detroit Office of Inspector General concluded he abused his authority and recommended that he be disciplined.
The city has declined to say whether Bragg was ever disciplined. Sources inside DDOT tell Metro Times he was never suspended.
In its Dec. 22 final report, the OIG found that Bragg failed to properly investigate serious misconduct by two DDOT employees who disrupted service and abandoned a running city bus to have what investigators described as “romantic interactions” while on duty. The watchdog said Bragg classified their conduct as a Class IV offense, the most serious category under DDOT’s disciplinary system, but still imposed lenient penalties that were inconsistent with department policy. The OIG also found that Bragg failed to seek out or review available surveillance video before issuing discipline.
The OIG concluded that Bragg “abused his authority” and recommended “discipline for Superintendent Bragg for failing to conduct a proper investigation as part of his supervisory duties, and failing to impose appropriate discipline that is consistent with the 2008 Handbook.”
The report did not recommend a specific punishment.
Yet while Bragg remained on the job and later received a raise, Corie Holmes, DDOT’s former chief safety officer and a key witness in the OIG investigation, was suspended twice and then fired for actions.
Holmes helped provide evidence in the OIG probe that faulted DDOT leadership. The report identified a video review by DDOT’s safety department as part of the evidence and described systemic problems inside the department, including a culture in which officials treated written disciplinary rules as flexible even when the handbook required specific penalties.
Holmes later said that role put a target on his back. Holmes was suspended on March 9, just hours after Metro Times began asking questions about allegations that DDOT Chief of Staff Jennie Whitfield showed up intoxicated at the Rosa Parks Transit Center, berated employees, assaulted a security guard, and drove off in a city-issued vehicle. Whitfield was initially allowed to remain on the job and keep driving a city car. After Metro Times reported on the unequal treatment, the city fired her on March 13.
Then on April 8, the city fired Holmes for interviewing security guards and DDOT employees who witnessed Whitfield’s outburst. Five days later, Holmes sued the city and DDOT Executive Director Robert J. Cramer in Wayne County Circuit Court, alleging he was retaliated against for reporting misconduct by senior officials and cooperating with the OIG. The lawsuit says Holmes engaged in protected activity under the Michigan Whistleblowers’ Protection Act and was punished for it. According to the complaint, Cramer and Assistant Director Andre Mallet “began to disparage and harass” Holmes after the OIG report became public, and the city ramped up its retaliation after Holmes continued cooperating.
The contrast in treatment became even more striking in February, when Holmes was disciplined over an internal pay dispute involving Michael Enriquez, the man who has since replaced him.
A corrective action form dated Feb. 6 says Holmes sought approval in December to raise Enriquez’s salary to $72,500, which Cramer approved on Dec. 28. The form says Holmes later submitted a revised request on Jan. 29 for $76,000, a move that cost him a five-day suspension.
The email trail shows Holmes had argued Enriquez was underpaid, citing his transit safety credentials, management responsibilities, and the fact that the raise would be budget-neutral. But the same emails show Cramer drew a hard line between the amount he approved and the amount Holmes later sought. Cramer wrote that he was “ok with this salary adjustment” in connection with the earlier request, but after seeing the revised paperwork, he said the $76,000 figure was not what he had approved and accused Holmes of an “attempted bait and switch.”
Holmes responded that he was making a recommendation based on the civil service process and Enriquez’s qualifications, but acknowledged it was ultimately Cramer’s decision.
Enriquez has since replaced Holmes and is now making more than $101,000, according to information provided to Metro Times. That raises new questions about DDOT’s judgment.
The city’s Human Resources Department defended Bragg’s raise, saying in a statement it “had nothing to do with performance or even him specifically” and instead stemmed from a citywide process to realign salaries after union wage increases left some supervisors making less than the employees they oversee. HR said the salary changes affected multiple departments and were approved by City Council in January 2026.
That explanation may account for the raise itself, but it does not answer the central question hanging over DDOT: Why did a supervisor, who the OIG said should be disciplined, keep his job and get a raise, while the safety official who helped expose misconduct was suspended twice and ultimately fired?
In Bragg’s case, the OIG found he abused his authority by failing to properly investigate misconduct and by issuing discipline that contradicted DDOT’s own rules. In Holmes’s case, DDOT quickly imposed discipline, then fired him after he helped the OIG and later looked into allegations against another top official.
The episode also comes as the city failed to respond timely to a Metro Times Freedom of Information Act request seeking the salaries of all DDOT employees. Metro Times submitted the request on March 4. Michigan law requires public bodies to respond within five business days, or issue a notice extending the deadline by up to 10 more business days. The city did neither. Only after Metro Times followed up on Thursday did officials say they would try to provide the records by the next day.
Then-Mayor Mike Duggan appointed Cramer to lead DDOT in January 2025 at a salary of $225,000. Before that, Cramer ran the Detroit People Mover, where he was accused of replacing at least seven Black managers with white ones.
Mary Sheffield, who became mayor at the beginning of this year, has not yet weighed in on DDOT’s controversial actions.
