Detroiters depressed about the public schools crisis, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's legal woes or the FBI probe of City Hall got some good news in the mail this week: Everything's great!

That's the message delivered in a full-color, glossy, 36-page magazine titled "Detroit, Then and Now," recapping the city's progress in the six years since Kilpatrick took office. The publication, with 18 photos of the mayor, does not say who paid for it, nor does it bear the "not paid for at taxpayers expense" notation that has run with some previous pro-mayor publications, like the "Detroit Love" booklet at his 2006 inaugural.

Mayoral spokeswoman Denise Tolliver said Thursday the city did not pay for the magazine or mailing. She said she did not know who did and learned of it only last week.

"I thought it was nice and pretty," she said.

Bradley Thompson II, president and chief executive officer of Inland Press, the company that printed the publication, declined to say who or what entity paid for it, citing client confidentiality. He declined to say how many copies Inland Press printed but called it a "big project."

Kamau Marable, a political consultant with Detroit-based Urban Consulting Group, which is unconnected with the publication, called it "the mayor's way of kicking off his re-election effort and trying to refocus his constituency and Detroiters in particular off of scandal back to his efforts and accomplishments."

M.L. Elrick and Zachary Gorchow

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