Taxpayers socked with mayor’s bills

By Charles Sercombe
Mayor Adam Alharbi wasted no time in submitting the legal bills from his ongoing effort to prevent the counting of 37 ballots from last November’s city election.
As of Aug. 18, taxpayers are on the hook to pay $135,242 for Alharbi’s private fight to prevent those ballots from being counted and then potentially having to give up serving as the city’s mayor, according to invoices The Review received through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
More legal fees are expected to be submitted to the city for payment. Alharbi has said the bills will eventually total about $200,000.
Mayor Alharbi insists that the city should cover his legal bills because he was acting in an official capacity as mayor.
Alharbi told the city council that the “city should have covered” his legal expenses “from the beginning – for its mayor and the city itself.”
But the dispute with his mayoral challenger, former city councilmember Muhith Mahmood, originated before Alharbi was sworn in as mayor back in January of this year.
Alharbi won the election by an 11-vote margin. The uncounted ballots were discovered the day after the November election in the city clerk’s office.
Alharbi ultimately lost his court appeals to prevent the ballots from being counted. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers is expected to set a date to count the ballots any day now.
The mayor has argued that, since the ballots were left unattended and exposed to unauthorized people in the clerk’s office, they should not be counted.
Mahmood insists that every voter has a right to have their ballot counted. The Michigan Court of Appeals agreed with him.
Alharbi appealed to the state supreme court twice but, in both instances, that court turned away his requests for consideration.
The city council approved paying Alharbi’s legal bills by a bare majority of just three councilmembers: Nayeem Choudhury, Abu Musa and Muhtasin Sadman.
That was a few weeks ago, and, since then, Councilmember Mohammed Alsomiri has filed a lawsuit and ethics violation complaint against the mayor for orchestrating the city council vote to have taxpayers pay his $200,000 legal bill.
Alharbi is using one of the state’s leading legal firms, Butzel Law, to represent him. A breakdown of the legal bills reveals a range of addressed topics, including a discussion on The Review’s election coverage articles.
However, there was no charge for that discussion.
At the same time that Alharbi persuaded a bare minimum of councilmembers to agree to have the city pay his legal fees, he has also complained about the increasing costs of legal fees that the city is paying out for other matters.
His challenger, Mahmood, says that if Alharbi can get taxpayers to cover his legal fees, then he (Mahmood) is also entitled.
“But I don’t want to do that to taxpayers,” Mahmood previously told The Review. In a recent interview, Mahmood said he is still hesitant to submit his legal fees to the city.
However, he also told The Review that he is reconsidering that position. Alharbi told the city council that the city is not obligated to pay for Mahmood’s legal costs because he was acting as a candidate, not a city official.
In another legal dispute with Mahmood, Alharbi has gone to court challenging his residency in the city. In a recent appeal to the state Supreme Court, that court declined to hear the matter until there was a ruling on it from the Wayne County Circuit Court.
It was not immediately known if Alharbi is also billing taxpayers for that legal fight.
In the residency challenge, Alharbi is utilizing material collected during a prior internal city investigation into whether Mahmood actually lives in Hamtramck, or with his family in Troy.
The investigation concluded that Mahmood is not truly a resident and does live in Troy.
Mahmood still insists he is a resident in Hamtramck, however, and that he simply visits his family in Troy. He says that he lives in an apartment on Holbrook.
That same investigation concluded that Councilmember Abu Musa lives in Warren with his family, not in Hamtramck. Musa denies the allegation, and says he lives at 11441 Mitchell.
Posted Sept. 18, 2026