City Manager John Shay Has Not Swore in Over Eight Years

[XLFD]

An oath of office is an oath or affirmation a person takes before undertaking the duties of an office, usually a position in government.

Such oaths are often required by the laws of the state before the person may actually exercise the powers of the office.  The presidential oath, last given to President Obama, is in the Constitution Art. 2 and is given with much pomp and ceremony and denotes when the President-elect makes the jump to President.

 

 

All state and local government agencies by MCL 15.151 require that those who work for them take the Constitutional (Article XI-1) Oath of Office before they serve in that office and get that office's powers.  This says that they must state: 

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of this state, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of .......... according to the best of my ability." 

 

City Code Sec 4.11 affirms this for Ludington officials and says that elected and appointed officials are to take the above oath and file it with the City Clerk.  It further states that failure to comply within 15 days of written notification of appointment is the same as declining the office, and the office will thereafter be considered vacated. 

 

It is not difficult to do, utter 40 words to say that you will support the US Constitution and the laws of the Michigan Constitution and say it as if you mean it.  I remember doing it myself back in 2001 when I became a firefighter for the City of Ludington.  A position I relinquished back in 2008 because of LPD Chief Mark Barnett's violation of his Oath.

 

In a previous thread, Hiding Behind Signs 3 I made a long comment on November 14 here about the City Attorney denying he or his fellow attorneys who serve jointly as the Ludington City Attorney had to swear an oath to our City Clerk as demanded by our City laws for all city officials.  I do not agree with his interpretations of Ludington law, or our city's statutory ability to contract out this position, but that could be contested. 

 

In that same comment, I noted in reply to Willie Smith, that there was no proof in the readily available public record that John Shay had actually took the Oath of Office back in 2003.  I passed this on to my FOIA secretary, and got the results back on Monday.  Here's the request:

 

And the reply which was in this .pdf file had this to say:

 

Such a public record does not exist?!  This means there is no record that says that eight year City Manager John Shay, the chief executive of Ludington, ever took the Oath of Office required by law. 

 

The ramifications of this is immense.  When the City of Ludington signs contracts, either he, or him and the City Clerk, are signing for the City.  He did not have the power to do so under law, and the validity of those contracts could be legally challenged.  When he has appointed or removed someone from office, he had not the authority to do so, and could also be legally challenged.  When he enforces ordinances and laws and sees that they are faithfully executed, not taking the oath shows that he had not the authority to do so.

 

When he co-authors and creates an unconstitutional Workplace Safety Policy, endorses it for City Council passage and uses his authority to invoke it on a citizen via a Letter of Trespass, and then enforces it thereafter by not allowing that person to vote or enter a public facility after several pleadings by that person and his lawyer, you have created extreme legal issues for that City.

 

Finally, lets not forget the negligence of the rest of the City Hallers, particularly the former City Clerk Klaft who failed to ever administer this Oath or record it.  Failure to do so has set the City of Ludington up for myriads of liability issues related to the fact that the City has not had an official City Manager since Jim Miller's dismissal over eight years ago. 

[Marty Redman]

With my limitted searching skills I looked through the web for something similar to this and found this.  It may seem like a minor detail to John Shay and the others at 400 Harrison, but it is a big deal.  I hope the cities Risk Management team takes this into account when they try to settle with you, X. 

[XLFD]

Thanks for the link Marty, and the other support you passed along. 

Here's some food for thought.  The State requires licensing for just about everything you can imagine.  If you don't get that licensing, and something bad happens, you get into a whole lot of other problems due to you being unlicensed. 

John Shay is effectively unlicensed to run the City of Ludington, due to him not taking the oath of office.  He effectively is just a citizen like you and me who gets paid $100,000 plus $50,000 in fringe benefits from the City's coffers every year. 

[Willy]

This is  potentially a very serious situation. All of Shay's decisions including the letter of banishment delivered to Mr. Rotta would be considered illegitimate. Not to mention any court cases he has dealt with involving the City.

[XLFD]

True, most anything the City Manager has done in an official capacity could be called into question by anyone who was affected by those actions.  It will be interesting to see if this is addressed at Monday's City Council meeting.

[AQUAMAN]

It would be interesting to see some people at the next CC mtg. call this issue up and question it in the next agenda. As usual though, I trust this will just be ignored and cast aside with deaf ears. It would be even more interesting if a (State's) Attorney was there for the public to make the case even more clear and visible.

[Willy]

The sad thing is that they know he has to take an oath just as they are required to take an oath. And X has informed the city of that by way of a FOIA request.

[XLFD]

As a matter of fact, Aq and Willy, I sent an E-mail to all 5 city councilors this Saturday with my findings and a link to this thread, but they didn't even touch on this topic at the City Council meeting on Monday.  And of course, they haven't commented back to me or made any public statement about it, even though it is filtering out in the media.  Here is that message:

[Willy]

Excellent