City of Ludington FOI-sted by their Own Petard, pt. 2: The Big Sniegowskis

[XLFD]

Here's Part One, Read this first.

 

The Finance Committee of the Ludington City Council consisting of 4th Ward Councilor Wanda Marrison, 6th Ward Councilor Gary Castonia, and chaired by 2nd Ward Councilor, mayor candidate, Walter Taranko, decided that the current FOIA Coordinator, City Manager John Shay, needed to be freed up from FOIA requests allegedly because his time could be better spent elsewhere. 

 

That's reasonable-- the City Manager spot is the highest salaried position for the City and one could readily admit that his job at the task of doing both has been less than ideal.  The City Clerk or any of her lesser paid assistants could more economically and more easily be tapped for the FOIA duties, which the City admits has been about 200 or so requests over the last five years.  One usually simple request every 9 or 10 days, to be usually assigned to other city employees, was quite a drain on this person who commandeers about $140,000 every year from the taxpayers in salary and benefits. 

 

But instead of giving the job to the assistant city manager, Jackie Steckel, or to any of the clerks, the three brains of the Finance Committee got the idea to give the job to one of the seven City Attorneys for this City of 8000 people.  City Attorneys who command the most money for their hourly services to the city, up to $185 per hour.  But Susan Sneigowski, the City Attorney used for prosecuting criminal actions for the City of Ludington, is giving her FOIA services away for the small figure of $125 an hour.

 

                             Susan Sniegowski, City of Ludington's newest FOIA Coordinator

 

That's quite a lot for someone who makes a FOIA request, but rest assured, we have it confirmed (and it follows the law) that the City will eat the cost of her responding to these requests.  But isn't the money used by the City coming from the taxpayers?  Yes.  Wasn't the prior method used not costing the taxpayers any money extra, because the FOIA Coordinator was a salaried position, and the requester would pay for legal FOIA fees?  Yes. 

 

So whenever I, or other individuals and groups, make a FOIA request, our new FOIA Coordinator, who isn't even a city employee, nor bound by any oath of office to honor and protect our state and federal constitutions and corresponding laws, can charge our City Treasurer by the minute for the time it takes her to fulfill a FOIA request.  With some of the claims made by these same Finance Committee members in the past, this should run the City's bill up quite substantially. 

 

However, Councilor Kaye Holman vocally endorsed this proposal as offering more accountability to them (indirectly dissing the City Manager) and thought it a great idea.  She who put forth that the City Manager was already spending may hours on FOIA requests every week when she brought two stacks of paper to a meeting where John Shay was absent and she made a lot of bogus claims absent of facts.  Now she has voted for and strongly endorsed spending a lot of extra taxpayer money after saying that day:

"Everybody in this room and the people watching are all taxpayers, we're paying for this, we're paying and paying and paying, and I have to say again, I resent that deeply." 

 

 

But beyond this being an inefficient way to disseminate information to the public, the whole deal smacks of cronyism.  For this we have to consult our Ludington history to see why they might have hired Mrs. Susan Sniegowski for a job that will siphon more tax dollars away from the City's coffers. 

 

A Brief City Official Genealogy of the Sniegowskis

 

Our Criminal City Attorney wasn't always so, she once had the very respectable title of Mason County Prosecutor under her maiden name of Susan Kasley.  She defeated John "Jack" Bulger for that post in 2004.   I thought she had done a very respectable job while in that post.  During her tenure at that position, she married Thomas Sniegowski, at the end of 2006 who worked for the City of Ludington's Department of Public Works.  They had a son on August 16, 2007. 

 

In 2008, she went up against Paul Spaniola and lost her re-election bid.  She was a lot better than Paul Spaniola as prosecutor and as a debater, in my opinion:

 

 

But this unfortunate loss, made her go back into private practice, operating from a modest building on James Street, where she has practiced for the last five years with another lawyer named Vilija Bilaisis.  Lawyer.com and several other sites (superpages, hotfrog, etc.) list their website as http://www.sb-lawoffice.net.  But that site is for a law firm operating out of Calgary.  That's in western Canada.  They apparently have no website, and they seem to operate under the radar.

 

On December 21, 2009, Susan was welcomed aboard as the City Attorney for criminal issues, winning the spot from John "Jack Bulger five years after defeating him in the prosecutor race.  It is not commonly known why they let Bulger go, but neither was it divulged that Susan's husband also worked for the City of Ludington earning a hefty paycheck working for the DPW. 

 

 

But Thomas Sniegowski probably doesn't have a whole lot of political pull down at the City Hall, leave it up to another heavy hitter down at the City Hall who has a bit more influence-- the previously mentioned Assistant City Manager Jackie Steckel comes from the regional power clan known as the Sniegowskis:

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/jlsteckel   which also includes the Hamlin Township Supervisor Nancy (Sniegowski) Vandervest who has served on the City of Ludington Recreation Board:

 

in the past, and continues to serve on it with her married name.  We have already noted some appearance of impropriety in her dealings:  the-plied-pipelayer-of-hamlin-township.

 

Therefore, the concept of nepotism should not only have been raised when she was originally appointed as the 'Criminal' City Attorney, but when she got this potential gold mine just for coordinating FOIA request for a very non-transparent organization.   The concept of nepotism was part of former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox's Model Ethic's Ordinances for Local Government   AG of MI Ethics Ord .  Section 2-12 states an Anti-Nepotism Policy:

Unless the [name of governing body] shall by a two thirds (2/3) vote, which shall be recorded as part of its official proceedings, determine that the best interests of the [type of unit] shall be served and the individual considered by such a vote has met the qualifications for appointive office or employment, the following relatives of any elected or appointed officer are disqualified from holding any appointed office or employment

during the term for which said elected or appointed officer was elected or appointed: spouse, child, parent, grandchild, grandparent, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, or the spouse of any of them. This Section shall in no way disqualify such relatives or their spouses who are bona fide appointed officers or employees of the [type of unit] at the time of the election or appointment of said officer to elective [type of unit] office.

Many Michigan cities (such as nearby Fremont :  Fremont's Nepotism Law) and many other states have solid rules against hiring and appointing relatives.

Private businesses are often run by families, passed down through generations-- so why is nepotism bad in government?  Here's a short list of why, courtesy of City Ethics Expert, Robert Wechsler:

• Nepotism includes many of the basic government ethics issues:  conflict of interest, misuse of office, preferential treatment, and patronage.

• Nepotism undermines public trust by making government look like a family business run not for the community, but for the families in power.

• Nepotism is bad for morale within the government organization. It goes far beyond hiring. It remains a problem every time raises and promotions occur.

• Nepotism and its cousin, hiring friends, are the leading methods of keeping other ethnic and racial groups out of local government.

• Nepotism puts officials in an awkward position when they don't want to hire a relative, but feel it's expected of them. Nepotism laws protect officials as well as the public.

Nepotism also exacerbates problems. A culture of loyalty and secrecy flourishes within families. As does crime. Nepotism in government naturally leads to nepotism in contracting, which means a failure to competitively bid, or bid-rigging. This can cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year. (http://www.cityethics.org/node/811).

 

I used the same argument in "Marina and the Hendersons".  Here, we have an arrangement that is clearly not in the citizens' best interests, without the party that is getting a windfall being properly vetted.  As stated, Jackie (Sniegowski) Steckel could easily take over the FOIA Coordinator spot with no extra money dispersed, she has handled it before during Shay's illness. 

But when her relative Susan (Kasley) Sniegowski can make a lot of extra cash for doing something that a much lesser paid public servant could do better, to supplement her income, why not allow her kinfolk to milk the taxpayers, particularly when all the councilors are so inclined to waste the money.