Something that you don't hear often enough is that all those unelected people who work at Ludington City Hall are your employees.  You pay their wages, their exorbitant benefits that amount to over 80% of their wages, their pensions/retirement, and even buy them hotel rooms and dinners at times (as an audit of their credit card records show).  

And you may permit these things because you want to have the best people at city hall and hope they are happy in doing the business of running your city; you accommodate some of their excesses even if it doesn't meet your own ethical standard that you may have at your job. 

At your work, you may punch in on your time card (maybe punch out and in for your lunch) and then punch out nine hours later, but let's say you had to take a morning off.  Would you punch in and then go do your personal affairs, and then come back and punch out at the end of the day and claim you worked a full day? 

It sounds tempting for those who may be able to do it and not get caught, but we could probably all agree that it is dishonest and could get you fired and/or potentially prosecuted by your employer for the fraud and theft that it is.  Under the FLSA or federal Fair Labor Standards Act, companies have a legal obligation to maintain accurate payroll records, including accurate records of time worked. Any action that falsified payroll documents could be considered time card fraud.

  

That includes public corporations like the City of Ludington, where time card fraud should be particularly egregious to citizens because they are the employer.  John Shay, who has a rather bad legacy already. shows another side of his unethical character by committing time card fraud/theft during his recent job search endeavors in the month of May.  Two recent sets of records received through the FOIA process from the City of Ludington and the County of Ottawa clearly document the crime.   

Records received from Ottawa County show they were scheduled to interview six candidates for the Deputy County Administrator position, John Shay being the last one at 4:00 PM.   

You will notice that a couple were interviewed via Skype, those were the ones who could not make the trip to Ottawa County.  Shay made the trip, a trip that typically takes 81 minutes, meaning that Shay must have left Ludington around 2:30 PM 

The timecard filled out by John Shay for that week does not reflect that he was out of Ludington on personal business (trying to get another job) for the last 2.5 hours of his business day.  

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If you believe in miracles and John Shay, perhaps you think that he went back to city hall around 7 PM and diligently worked that extra 2.5 hours for the people of Ludington.  If you believe that you probably think he did roughly the same thing 15 days later when he was called back for a second interview, this time in the morning.  

The interview was over around 9 AM, assuming he came back to Ludington and went to city hall just before 11 AM, maybe he stayed until 8 PM that night working again on the people's business,  the time card certainly reflects that, but footage of internal city hall cameras would certainly not:


City%20Hall%20Administrative%20Timesheets%20Week%20Ending%20May%202...

In defense of Shay, you might propose that he always puts down 8 hours, he's a salaried official after all.  Recall however, that time records need to accurately reflect the hours actually worked by public law.  Notice also that Jackie Steckel notes her 8 hours of vacation taken on May 18th, and when we look at the very next week, Shay does take some sick leave, two full days and one half of a day.  


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So John Shay knows how to use time cards when he's not heading off surreptitiously to another far away county and interviewing for another position in the middle of his 2018 contract with Ludington's city council.  He kept his meetings secret from everybody, even from the time sheet auditor (look whose initials are in the corner, JS, aka John Shay).  One wonders what lie he told his fellow public employees on the two days he took off early and late.  

One should expect the city council (the public's mid-level managers) would review this fraud, this theft of public funds, and publicly admonish their dishonest employee, but that will never happen even when the evidence is out there.  They wouldn't be team players then, rather than what they are:  impotent accomplices to illegal acts, as former Mayor John Henderson admitted at the last council meeting.

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With Shay having his arm up the backside of interim city manger Steve Brock making him dance and  talk I don't think we are completely done with the likes of John Shay's corruption.

Really? Unbelievable evidence of theft found in a new FOIA. I'm really surprised that COL released this important and illegal information to X. The Ludington Pitchfork/CCL definitely need this thread to show what's going on behind back doors, for over 15 years, and up to the present day. Very well documented article X, it's sad, but definitely a real eye-opener for many that don't waste any time on these very factual incidents of fraud in our little town, thanks, you're the best!!!

Had the City of Ludington knew what I was 'fishing' for when I asked for administrative time sheets over a period of time, I may have had some problems, or possibly some doctored records considering John Shay's record.   As you may have noticed, the Ottawa County FOIA Coordinator blacked out the names of other candidates after the selection process was over, without any explanation of a suitable FOIA exemption-- I can't find any that are applicable.  They also left some material out that I believe they have in their possession, so it looks like they may have a FOIA appeal if they don't correct their mistakes.

I will be sharing more of my FOIA findings tomorrow which may harden the cement on your opinion that I'm the best, as it seems to show that I served as a muse for Shay's abdication.  Tomorrow is his last day, I am going to celebrate tomorrow night by dancing a jig and metabolizing some ethanol.

So how is the council going to refute the so called twisted FACTS that XLFD has has come up with this time?  Maybe Henderson will show up again and state he did it all the time and see's nothing wrong with it LOL.  Dock his pay!!!!!!

Maybe they'll commend the whistleblower and punish the errant officials, like Shay, Mayor Henderson and their seven trained monkeys did with Jack Byers in 2007 and me back in 2011.  NOT.  Although both Byers and I were eventually rewarded for their overreach in the federal court system.  

And it's hard to believe this too, 142 aholes from the COL are looking and reading this and say absolutely nothing, just spying on this forum for more money in their own pocket, and also getting away with it to present day, sad, and also ILLEGAL imho.,

I would be willing to give up the pay he cheated the City out of as long it aided in his departure.

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