FOIA Figures and Figureheads in Ludington

[XLFD]

At the April 13 Ludington City Council meeting, the issue of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests came up after the City's Chairman of the Finance Committee, Kaye Holman, made a point of noting the amount of money it took in attorney fees to fulfill FOIA requests for a six week period.  The fun starts at 1:02:00 into the video of the meeting, and is fully transcribed thereafter:

April 13, 2015 Ludington City Council from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

Councilor Kaye Holman:  "Well, I have soapboxes all over the place.  I'm the chairman of Finance (Committee) as many of you know.  And in this week's finance (report), against my better judgment, we authorized a payment of a bill to Carlos Alvarado, who is our Freedom of Information person (Coordinator), for a total of approximately $2437, which covers six weeks of FOIAs (FOIA requests) by Mr. Rotta.  Six weeks.  That is $400 a week, and over a period of a year, which I'm assuming will keep on going, because I have no reason to think it won't, that's $200,000! 

Will somebody besides me please, please, get angry.  PLEASE get angry.  Two hundred thousand taxpayer dollars..."

City Attorney Wilson:  "Um,  think your math is a little...

Holman:  "My math is terrible, I went to Ludington High School." (cross talk of Holman and Wilson)  OK, it's $20,000, that's still... oops, I can't say that word.  It makes me really angry.  I don't care how much it is, it's too much.  It... I'm not giving up.  Wait till I start coming, after I get off this board (council), and I start coming to public comment. 

Mayor Cox:  "You'll have five minutes."

Holman:  "I'll take that five minutes.  Thank you, and thanks for the correction (to Wilson)"

The City of Ludington:  where the Chairman of the City Council's Finance Committee, admits her math is bad, admits that it's because she went to Ludington High School, and makes a calculation that is off by a factor of ten while relaying 'facts' to the public.  Where the City Attorney who overcharged the City for three straight years at the least (which was never caught by the City Manager or Finance Committee during that time) is the person who corrects her multiplication miscue.  Where a former (Councilor Kathy) and also a current (Mayor Cox) teacher of the maligned school district go along with the faulty figures. 

Councilor Holman begs for people to get angry, begs them twice to be aroused to anger.  Admits her own anger about FOIA in general twice.   Yet, the very charges she is so irate about being charged to taxpayers is there only because she voted to have the City of Ludington's FOIA responses handled this way.  All would disappear if they allowed the city clerk or another competent individual at city hall handle the simple requests and not try to resist showing the public documents they are entitled to see. 

Why would the city manager and attorney devise such a system if their ultimate purpose was not to withhold as much information as possible from the public?  But let's look at the facts and compare it with the Holman narrative.

Here is the six week invoice she spoke of Alvarado's FOIA Charges.  And here is line item from the city council packet showing the FOIA charges for that period were about 33% more than what she intimated at $3281, not $2437.  Did she understate the problem? 

2015 4-13 Council Packet, p. 19

Sort of.  Someone subtracted the ten other FOIA requests during that time that weren't made by me, but by ten other distinct people/agencies.  Yes, somebody other than me makes FOIA requests to the city.  If they made 10 requests and the time for my requests costs nearly three times as much ($2437 to $844), then one might infer I made about 30 FOIA request in that period. 

That would be wrong, I made only seven--  one every six days-- and just a little above the same rate I've made over the years that I have used the FOIA to uncover unknown information and corruption  in Ludington and broadcast it here on the Ludington Torch.  So why do my requests cost more than four times as much as the other FOIA requests?  Let's try to find out, here's the first page in that provided link of charges:

Since I can't provide the specifics on what the others requested without making another request myself, I can only adequately describe the eight attributed to me (the first is a carry-over from the previous cycle).

1) a request to inspect specific parts of the property file for the old Oddfellows Building at 108 W Ludington Avenue.  The main component of time was negotiating whether I could legally record the encounter in a public meeting room when I inspected the files.  Looking at relevant laws on photography and acting as the middleman between the irascible Ms. Venzke-Tykoski and myself took up three hours of attorney time, apparently. 

2) a request to inspect the legal paperwork exchanged between the City of Ludington and Building Restoration Inc. for unpaid labor/unfinished work (depending on your side of the lawsuit) and to view an E-mail between Shay and Wilson regarding it.  The E-mail was denied on attorney-client privilege-- perhaps rightly so, depending on its contents-- but the other was available and a straightforward, simple request, that should have been in one file.  But something took Carlos Alvarado three hours time.

3) a request to inspect the property file of an address on George Street, which initially took Alvarado 1.5 hours to contact and assemble data from the city-- later, I emphasized that they left two things (at least) out of what should have been in the file (found later in the invoice).  This took four more hours, which equals a full $500.

4) a request for police reports containing Daniel Bothwell in a six year period.  I had done the same request for such police records with the parents of Baby Kate over a three year period, with about the same number of pages and more reports with no charge for labor.  Here I was charged nearly sixty dollars, for two hours of clerical work and copies I didn't want made of (mostly) non-exempt records.  Alvarado meets up with prosecutor and police chief to verify the overcharge, and charges the city for one hour.

5) a request for a subscription to the billing records of city attorneys with the City of Ludington and recent billing records since March 2014 (when my last record received was).   It took Alvarado just 1/2 hour to compile this info.

6) a request for the arrest report of a citizen named Gene Foster seems to have been originally sent to Alvarado to send to me, until the prosecutor knocked it down saying it was part of an active investigation-- which it wasn't.  The ensuing denial of these records contrary to established precedent took four hours, and will take a lot more time and money in the future when it is appealed successfully. 

7) a request for settlement agreements and disbursements between the City and two people who had sued the city in regards to an address on Madison Street.  This took two hours of Alvarado's time.

8) a request for MCOLES certifications of any of the Ludington Reserve Officers on LPD.  There was no such record, but it took Alvarado, one half hour of coordinating. 

Kid Rock was recently outed as a Reserve Police Officer in Oakley Michigan , paying to play cop, in facts found out through FOIA Requests

So the cost in just FOIA Coordinator fees for looking at two property files (where lawsuits are either in force or pending), the attorney billings report for one year, court filings for a lawsuit against the city, settlement records for another lawsuit against the city (both of which few people even know about), and a few specific police reports in two separate FOIAs (both effectively denied) is $2437. 

Each of these requests were to find out about what the city has been doing wrong behind the scenes, especially those police reports.  If they aired their 'dirty laundry' publicly, or quit doing things illegally, there wouldn't need to be a reason to find out what they're hiding through FOIA.

Had FOIA requests been coordinated by the city clerk and her staff, there would have been no extra charge to the taxpayer, and the process would have been more efficient.  If the clerks had done the job in accordance with their duties, rather than try to find some way to legally wriggle out of doing so (as Attorney Alvarado is encouraged to do by Shay, Wilson, and Spaniola), the time coordinating would be negligible overall.

So if you take a cue from Councilor Holman and get angry, get angry at the proper cause of the waste of your taxpayer dollars in responding to public records requests.  Yet, I would suggest converting your anger into a more useful and positive energy, by pledging to change the city leadership in an ethical and lawful manner.  Lest you become no better than the current angry and obstructive officeholders keeping secrets from you, the taxpayer.

[Willy]

Excellent work of showing the facts. It's to bad the Council wouldn't give you enough time to talk so you could present the viewing audience with the truth instead of being cut off every time you try to tell the public about the foolishness that keeps on puking out of City Council meeting twice a month. What she is doing is bordering on slander when she attacks you for questioning local Government. As you said, the head of the finance committee cannot even do simple math or keep her big yap shut. This is the 3rd time I've seen the video and I don't know if it's possible but she appears to be dumber with each showing of this video. Why doesn't that foolish woman present facts if she wants to convince people of what she is saying? Probably because the facts show she is in the wrong. Can anyone imagine her being in the State Capital with her limited mind. I can't believe that a Councilor is telling the public to "get mad" over the fact that someone is exercising their Constitutional rights. 

[XLFD]

I think Holman plagiarized this one of her quotes, but it is a good one.  One thing that Councilor Holman leaves out is how we should channel that anger that she wants to channel into the public mind to use against me for asking for records that, by law, belong to the public.  Before anybody gets spurred into anger, however, I would hope they would consider why a public officer is continually verbally assaulting a citizen who dares to ask questions and make irrefutable statements against current public policy of the city, when the citizen is not able to publicly defend themselves from her personal attacks.  

If the City was acting with a reasonable level of transparency, the city could save $200 million every year-- or so, my math is terrible, I went to Mason County Central School.

[Willy]

[Willy]

[stump]

XLFD, I take exception to your statement that your math is bad because you went to MASON COUNTY CENTRAL. I went to MASON COUNTY CENTRAL and I can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Some times I get mixed up on how many times I counted my fingers but I always double check with my toes.

[XLFD]

How unfortunate for you that you don't have the same number of fingers and toes, stump! 

MCC must have done something right, actually, since I eventually got a master's degree in mathematics.