As I noted earlier this year back on February 19, I prevailed in my second FOIA lawsuit in the court of the Honorable Peter J. Wadel at a summary disposition hearing.  In a summation of the day I added: 

"The City got admonished for not supplying the records and all I got was the money I invested in the lawsuit and the records unlawfully withheld (like most FOIA actions), and the legal affirmation that the City of Ludington just wasted your hard-earned tax money defending their untenable actions.

Enjoy living in the knowledge that your City leaders willingly and arbitrarily violate the law which make actions like this necessary, spent $125 per hour rather than less than a tenth of that for a FOIA Coordinator who made this arbitrary decision to withhold non-exempt records, and then spend thousands in legal fees defending their neglect of the law."

At that time, the order had not been wrote out, the judge entrusted the City's attorney, Andrew J. Brege, to accomplish that task.  After Brege wrote one that was vague on specifics and did not include the amount in damages (which I had provided him before the next business day after the hearing) and indicated he would contest paying a couple bucks in mileage for me to travel to the Preferred Credit Union on Jebavy to get documents notarized, he forced another court meeting where it was found that the amount needed to be specified. 

The City of Ludington had wanted to withhold the entirety of a LPD arrest report saying it was an investigative record, and needed to be exempt; it had no open investigation in it, and just detailed a 'routine' arrest of a Ludington citizen named Gene Foster.  They released it in its totality after the lawsuit started, and the record spoke for itself-- there was nothing in it that was exempt other than the SSN and the phone number of the arrested and his wife, which weren't redacted.

The Foster case in court was recently wrapped up for the most part in that a plea has been agreed to between him and the state, represented by County Prosecutor Paul Spaniola.  The only item left to be decided in the state's case against Gene Foster (pictured above with public defender David Glancy) is the judge's declaration of punishment, to be decided in early June at a sentencing hearing.  It looks favorable as to what he could have been charged with, in two crimes that were set up by SSCENT.

SSCENT is a multijurisdictional police task force set up to go after illegal drugs, their sellers, and their users, but they seemingly have gotten into the business of trying to entrap medical marijuana card holders by having criminal confidential informers (i.e. drug offenders trying to reduce their penalties) off-camera tell the legal user of MM, who are not suspected dealers themselves, that their friend (an undercover SSCENT officer) is in town, is a MM card holder, and is suffering big time without any access to their medicine.  

Personally, I believe using police resources as they did in this case to create crimes and criminals is more deleterious to our society than what happened at their staged sting operation, and I am willing to defend that viewpoint stridently after the sentencing of Foster takes place.   Yet I am equally strident in keeping my friends and society in general away from drugs that have no medicinal value to the individual using it. 

In the Tuesday, April 26, 2016 COLDNews, an article was written by Brian Mulherin over a bit of stale news that happened the previous Thursday covering the plea of Gene Foster made in court.  But, as you will read, the article seems more interested in a peripheral issue, my FOIA denial that I took to court.  As you can see, the article devoted more time and inches to that than the plea issue:

Although many paragraphs were devoted to the FOIA case, it never touches upon the court finding of that case which was made back in February, and officially settled about a week before Foster made his plea, here's the official and signed order by Judge Wadel granting myself (***drumroll***) $211.80 :  FOIA2-Order.pdf  I had even received my check for that amount before this article was written signifying a close of the case, as seen below:

Mulherin is typically a fair guy, as you would hope a journalist who handles court proceedings would be, but this article leads me to suspecting an ulterior motive on his part, or the new COLDNews editor's part. 

1)  As usual, the generic COLDNews reporter contacts the City's John Shay, but not me about the FOIA lawsuit.  My phone number is in the court documents, my E-mail address is well known.

2)  The important point left out-- namely, the conclusion, order and findings of the court in the finalized documents showing that I prevailed and was awarded all costs and disbursements-- should be classified as good news for media and exalted.  Here it is totally ignored, which is perhaps better than the treatment they gave me when we prevailed in the first FOIA lawsuit, even after City Manager Shay willfully swore falsely (perjured himself) in court documents, and the city taxpayers footed tens of thousands in legal costs.

3)  The facts and filings behind my lawsuit, including my status as a candidate for city council are spliced into an indirectly related story about Gene Foster pleading guilty to serious drug crimes.  How best to impeach a candidate's character than to have him be the main focus under a headline declaring someone pleads guilty of delivering marijuana?  But I didn't even know what a "Gene Foster" was back when he provided medical marijuana to an uncover officer at no profit to himself.  The actions of our public officials throughout Foster's odyssey is what intrigues me about the case, but again, more on that later. 

I may never get the nod for being the local crusader for the release of public information around here, at least not portrayed in the good sense, by the City of Ludington Daily News, but they will at least associate me, and not those who break the FOIA law at City Hall, with other common criminals, whether they deserve the appellation or not.  At least I know in my heart that I am providing a necessary public service; can your typical COLDNews writer say the same?

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I know people that subscribe to the on line paper, I tried reading it using my sisters password. What a pain in the butt that is. Still have to pay to read it also and you loose out not being able to line the bird cage .

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