West Bloomfield supervisor resigns just weeks after winning re-election
Three weeks after being re-elected as West Bloomfield Township supervisor, Steve Kaplan announced his resignation from the post.
He will join the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office as assistant prosecuting attorney. He served both the Wayne and Macomb county prosecutors before he became supervisor.
Kaplan’s resignation from the township’s top post will be effective in early December. The Board of Trustees will have 45 days to appoint a successor, according to “The Splash Live,” a program on the township’s community access cable channel.
He could not be reached for comment on his resignation.
Kaplan, a Democrat, was elected to the township board in 2000. He was elected supervisor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020 and also in the Nov. 5 election.
Kaplan’s last Board of Trustees’ meeting will be at 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 2. The board meets at Township Hall, 4550 Walnut Lake Road. You can watch the meeting live at https://civiccentertv.com/.
He ran unopposed in the Nov. 5 election. He garnered 26,765 votes, more than any other elected official in the township, even though the clerk and treasurer were also unopposed.
The supervisor is a full-time post, overseeing all township departments, according to West Bloomfield’s website.
In addition to his previous work in both the Wayne and Macomb county prosecutors’ offices, Kaplan worked as a Warren-based criminal attorney. He represented several well-known defendants, including Timothy Fradeneck. The Eastpointe man pleaded guilty but mentally ill in 2016 in the strangulation deaths of his wife and two children.
Kaplan, an attorney since 1981, was a Macomb County assistant prosecutor for 24 years and Wayne County assistant prosecutor for two years.
During his time in the Macomb Prosecutor’s Office, ending in 2010, Kaplan prosecuted some of the biggest murder cases in the county, including convictions in 24 of 25 cold cases.
He said in a 2016 interview with the Macomb Daily that he is most satisfied with the murder convictions of Robert Pann, Arthur Ream and Michael George, although the George conviction was reversed and he was convicted again in a second trial by another assistant prosecutor.
Pann was convicted in 2001 of killing his girlfriend, Bernice Gray, 23, of St. Clair Shores, despite no body, no eyewitness and no confession.
Ream died in August while serving a life sentence for the murder of Cindy Zarzycki, a 13-year-old Eastpointe girl. He was a suspect in the disappearance of at least four other girls, but police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him in the additional cases.
Kaplan ran for Oakland County prosecutor and Oakland County Circuit Court judge in the late 1990s. He narrowly lost both races — the prosecutor post by 0.6% in a recount won by Republican David Gorcyca.
Kaplan said in the Macomb Daily interview, given when he became supervisor in 2016, that he would miss being in the courtroom.
“Whether it’s a retail fraud trial or a murder trial, there’s drama, action, passion and choreography in every trial,” he said.
He said he would transfer some of his lawyering abilities to his new job, as he would run the township Board of Trustees meetings and would be keyed into legal matters as the township’s top administrator.