Local State Representative Impresses Peers at Ludington's Private Piers

[XLFD]

In March, I had claimed our area's new State Representative Curt VanderWall was a bit of a hypocrite for getting a lot of press for helping introduce legislation to expand the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the legislature (with plenty of extra exemptions likely to negatively influence the FOIA for other agencies), before voting for a bill that would limit the public's ability to view the competitive bidding process the state would use to award contracts until after the awarding of those contracts was finalized (see Transparent Words, Unclear Actions). 

The latter bill went through the processes fairly quick without any 'no' votes in the legislature and became law on April 18.  The FOIA expansion bill went to the Senate on March 21 and has languished inactively in committee for over a 100 days, with the Senate Majority leader vocally dead set against the majority of the bill. 

Great opera by our state government, loudly announce the unveiling of an ambitious FOIA bill in order to mask the ignominious action of making the state bidding process opaque in relative secrecy.  One might equate the similarity with the state coming loudly into Ludington back in 1980 where a multitude of private marinas were flourishing and spending millions to make a public marina, many more millions through the years to upkeep it and make another one nearby, all the while telling us it's necessary to have extra transient spaces for vessels during inclement weather.  Don't worry about them serving as a port for charter boats or for other commercial operations that would be unfairly competing with the private marinas (such as selling gas without any taxes)they assured us.   

Many years later, those promises have been long broken by a city marina that admittedly looks at the private marinas as competition as they run their operations like a business, boldly limiting themselves to twelve charter boat when they should have none, and who unlike most of their competition, lock the public out of their so-called public bathrooms. 

With that backdrop, and noting that I have both defended and became offended by his public policy in the past, State Congressman VanderWall did a great thing earlier this week that restored some of my faith in him.  He invited several other state representatives including Gary Howell, chairman of the Natural Resource Committee, Triston Cole, Daniela Garcia, and even a Democrat, Ian Conyers to go fishing in Ludington.  And rather than take this esteemed company, along with some lobbyists and family members to the state-propped Ludington City Marina, or even the state-assisted Harbor Front Marina, they went down to the historical private marina district based in and near the Pere Marquette Lake bayou. 

Now, this fact wasn't divulged by the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) Managing Editor Patti Klevorn, who dutifully came along and wrote a fluff feature piece on it that covered a page and a half of the July 11th newspaper (see Patti Klevorn article), who used the opportunity to do the usual cheerleading for the area, while touching on the reason why all these Lansing folks were here in the first place:  in order to have them rally the state and federal government to put more resource into stocking salmon.

The article mentions the charter boats and captains that they used, including Free Style Charters which is based at Lake Street Marina (formerly Abrahamson's Marina), and two other unaffiliated with any marina that apparently also took off from the Lake Street Marina, for the picture above is from their fish display rack.

So be sure to thank Representative VanderWall for utilizing the area's private marinas and the area's ethical charter boat captains (that show the same loyalty by not calling our public marina their home, when it should house no charter boats) in order to showcase the best of what the area has to offer.  If you want to chide someone, be sure to do so for Ms. Klevorn who fails to acknowledge by name the private marina(s) involved in hosting these dignitaries anywhere in the one and a half page article.  You can bet it would have been mentioned early and often if this had took place down at the city marina.

[jfc123]

This is very good and encouraging news for all in this extremely hard hit area. All are struggling and most is due to a lack of clean up after the 2008 storm road washout and raw sewage, then 2012 raw sewage dump. Maybe, hopefully they toured the area and are aware of what happened? Or they were feed lies by the same people that want this covered up? Hmmm.... As for the local papers I don't think they know where this area is and they think all of the mess was not real just a fake story? Just not right or fair to be crushed by the government!

[XLFD]

It would be an interesting exercise to see who funded these junkets because the way it was presented by Patti Klevorn this wasn't just a pleasure trip, but an educational soiree for the legislators, bureaucrats and lobbyists to learn about the conditions of the lake.  I could easily see the costs for chartering the boats being foisted on the taxpayers if they decide they were doing the people's business, rather than going fishing for their own pleasure

Regarding the FOIA issues, another bill was just signed into law yesterday by Governor Snyder diminishing transparency in Michigan once again.  The enrolled bill signed is difficult to decipher if you lack attorney skills and may mean little if you are not read-up on the FOIA, but from reading it I can tell that they have made it more difficult for the public to get relevant recordings and have set a tone that is more anti-disclosure than ever.  Vanderwall and his State House buddies voted unanimously for this further erosion of the FOIA.   

[XLFD]

What scares me about this new law is that if the police enter a "private place" like a person's residence unlawfully against someone's Fourth Amendment protections and that person gets killed by the police, the body cam footage is not available to the public even when the investigation is declared over-- and the police decide that there was no improper action taken by any police officer.

If this was the law back when retired Bill Marble was shot dead in his home, we never would have found out the truth of how he was shot in his home late one January night.

[XLFD]

In the 2016 election, Vanderwall's opponent, Dan Scripts (misspelling intentional) used environmental issues to distinguish himself from Curt, including the demoniacal Line 5 pipeline.  I doubt whether Curt would latch onto two raw sewage spills (even the one in 2012, where the city manager screwed up big time) unless he thought it would work for him near election time.

Still I doubt whether he would since the PM Bayou issues were out there when he was a county commissioner and the county's objectives seemed to be distancing their Drain Commissioners from the blame.  Former Commissioner Carpenter at least listened to the problem in his district, there is no indication that Councilor Castatonia will do anything other than run cover for both the city and county.