Councilor pleads guilty to bribery

Her lawyer, Steve Fishman, said he will ask Judge Avern Cohn to impose a sentence that does not include prison time.

Representative John Conyers, the 80-year-old chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who prosecutors said knew nothing of the bribery, declined to answer a reporter’s questions as he walked to the House floor for a vote yesterday morning.

His office issued the following statement: “This has been a trying time for the Conyers family. With hope and pray, they will make it through this as a family. Public officials must expect to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards. With this in mind, Mr. Conyers wants to work towards helping his family and the city recover from this serious matter.’’

Prosecutors said Monica Conyers accepted two payments in late 2007 from a Synagro Technologies official, Rayford Jackson, in exchange for supporting a $47 million-a-year, contract that November to have Synagro recycle wastewater sludge and build a modern incinerator in a poor Detroit neighborhood. The plea agreement did not specify how much money the bribes involved.

The council voted, 5 to 4, to approve the 20-year contract with Conyers’s vote. It was rescinded in January amid the accusations of wrongdoing.

Berg said the Conyers plea doesn’t end the Synagro investigation, but it does mark the conclusion of the probe into elected officials in the case. Monica Conyers’s plea is the latest blow to a city beset by political scandal in recent years. Former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and a top aide were jailed after admitting to lying under oath about their romantic involvement during a whistle-blowers’ trial. And a recent audit of the city’s school system has uncovered theft and other wrongdoing by employees.