Eighteen high-ranking police employees of the city of Lansing were paid more than $100,000 in the 2018 fiscal year, with some earning more than the city’s police chief.

Darin Southwell, a Lansing police captain, was paid $139,510 in 2018 while Sgt. Jeff Winarski collected $133,113 in gross compensation. Police Chief Michael Yankowski was paid $124,542 in 2018. The salary data came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request to the city.

In an email, Yankowski said that the 2018 income figures were for gross pay that included a clothing allowance, gun allowance, overtime pay, and final leave payments, such as accrued sick and vacation time, comp time, personal leave balances and more.

Lansing had 202 sworn police officers in 2018.

Yankowski said 14 employees, including Southwell, retired in 2018. City records show Southwell was paid $111,505 in the 2017 fiscal year. Winarski, however, was paid $157,719, making him the highest-paid employee in the city at that time.

City Attorney James Smiertka received the highest gross pay in the city, collecting $156,288 in 2018. The highest-paid fire department employee in 2018 was assistant fire chief Matthew Jenkins, who received $140,679. Jenkins had gross pay of $99,870 in FY 2017.

In June 2013, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation announced a slate of business expansions that, with a boost from a state grant program, were predicted to add 442 jobs to Michigan’s employment rolls.

Blissfield Manufacturing, a manufacturer of heat transfer technology for the automotive industry and others, would receive a performance grant of $365,000 from the Michigan Business Development Program. The money was to be in exchange for its planned expansion, involving a $1.5 million investment and transfer of 73 jobs from Indiana to Lenawee County.

“Michigan’s comeback story is being documented almost daily with news of companies choosing to invest and grow here,” said Gov. Rick Snyder in a report on the website of WWJ-TV. “These four projects are proof positive that our reinvention strategy is working and ... fostering new economic growth and more and better jobs for our citizens.” Former legislator Bruce Caswell, a Hillsdale Republican, issued a news release congratulating the company “on its sustained growth” and said the investment would “benefit our entire region.”

Perhaps it has: Blissfield Manufacturing remains in business.

But its engagement with the MBDP program is no longer in force.

According to annual reports the MEDC filed with the Legislature, by 2016, Blissfield was in default on its agreement to make investments and create jobs, which means it had “triggered repayment.” In March of that year, the company went through an “Article 9 foreclosure” and was sold to BMG Global.

The company had by then received $125,000 of the award.

In 2016 and 2017, according to MEDC reports, it repaid the state $62,500. In the 2018 annual report issued in March, the grant agreement was listed as terminated, with the number of net new, permanent jobs created at zero.

MEDC officials declined to provide additional information about the circumstances that resulted in the company’s default and the agreement’s termination without a formal Freedom of Information Act request.

Blissfield Manufacturing did not respond to a request for comment.