Shay Raises Rates on the Less Fortunate

[XLFD]

Less Fortunate Cities

Ludington City Manager John Shay famously raised the salaries of City workers these last two years, and kept the fringe benefits of City workers/officials at about 53% of their salary, well over the rates of local private employees, by having the City Council pass an amendment in December that exempted their health premiums from limits incurred by state reforms.  If you work for the City of Ludington your getting paid well and taken care of.  Unlike Scottville, who is a fiscal stress city.

To help pay for the lavish lifestyle of Ludington public servants, the City of Ludington decided to rework their initial offers to supply grant-writing help and police administrative assistance.  Scottville decided last year to ditch the grant-writing services of Community Development Director Heather (Venzke) Tykoski they endured for a year, but signed a renewal of the police services.  However, Ludington City Hall did not feel the situation worked at the rates, and decided to up this service by up to 83%, saying that the two departments would meld into one by offering the same training for officers and backup for officers.  Scottville's City Manager cannot afford the $25,000 raise.

County Sheriff Kim Cole is looking into getting the MCSO more involved with Scottville's situation, perhaps offering his own patch, and Ludington's Chief Barnett explains the changes in this article from the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) Friday edition.

Less Fortunate People

Even though he won't get the $6500 that Kaye Holman said that two indigent citizens of Ludington owe the City, nor will he likely see the nearly $700 our local Circuit Court said those citizens owe them (pending the results of an appeal of that case), Ludington City Manager John Shay has decided that he needs to once again rework the City's FOIA policy (the City's current policy went into effect in early 2011) to either try to deter future requests from certain parties (the poor and ignorant) by further massacreing the tenets of the state's FOIA.  Read this COLDNews article from today about what he plans on doing.

..and more.

Of course, there will be no editorial in the COLDNews reporting how unjust this new policy is, or how the City is once again maneuvering around the law (actually violating more tenets of the state's FOIA) in trying to cover up what City Hall is doing behind the scenes to the curious and the only local media outlet that isn't either intimidated or mesmerized by them.  Once again, City Manager John Shay and crew single out a citizen in creating a policy that defies being interpreted in any other way as being hindersome to transparency and violative of statute.

Point by point, the first refers to a Poverty Exemption Policy which is for poor homeowners, which would not apply to FOIAs for someone who owns no real property.  I have swore that I am indigent and signed my affidavit; I will not give these corrupt people a list of my assets or my wages, they have no right to do so under the Act.

The second has them redefining the term "person" so that it no longer corresponds with the State FOIA's definition.  That can only lead to trouble in the legal sense, particularly when you see how they adapted the definition.

The third is a bit of the illegality I talk about.  If I ask to inspect non-exempt records, they cannot charge me for making copies.  If I am asking for electronic files or database items sent to me electronically, they cannot transfer that to paper and charge me $.25 per page for it.  Shay has tried to do this often lately, and now he tries to justify it through a policy change.  It will be challenged.

The fourth reduces the minimum labor cost it takes to start charging me for labor for a request.  It started out as $100, was reduced down to $50 two years ago, and is now $25, meaning if the City Manager Shay thinks it will take him, the City Clerk, or just about anyone a half hour to search, examine, review, and separate exempt from nonexempt information, that they will charge fully for their time.  Effectively, paying City workers double pay to do their Constitutional duties.  Their pay goes up, this rate goes down.

The fifth details the appeal procedure changing it from their current form so as to more easily and less publicly deny records to the public.

Five changes, all geared at turning off more lights at City Hall, while attempting to generate more income.  So whether John Shay is trying to milk a poor City that has a multitude of financial problems by increasing the cost by over 80% or changing the rules to deter someone who has been exposing the soft underbelly of the City of Ludington's schemes by raising FOIA fees dramatically and unlawfully, he is not living up to the ideals of his Michigan Local Government Management Association (MLGMA) position of serving as Chairperson of the MLGMA's Ethics Committee.  But then, has he ever.

[AQUAMAN]

I just wonder how much city attorney Wilson got to advise and write all this up for Shay's personal witch hunt on XLFD in the last few weeks. I'll bet it was in the thousands of dollars, which again, proves WHO really is wasting taxpayer funds. And WHO is really paranoid of what. The "Crusade to destroy XLFD"  in his FOIA pursuits, continues into infinity for Henderson and Shay, shameful.

[XLFD]

Now, Aquaman, you can't be saying that my pals dedicated to open government have doctored these five revisions of FOIA towards one person to deter his looking into the public's records, can you?  You wouldn't say there's an obvious pattern of harassment by the City Manager and his Shaydy Bunch, now would you?  Perish the thought, LOL.  

[masonco]

I just cam back and viewed this thread. That is pretty much what I had read. I also wonder how the the plan for the FOIA will be legal.

[XLFD]

The new FOIA Policy will be about as legal as the City's Workplace Safety Policy, where they can banish anyone from any public place in Ludington without any reason and without due process to the person who has their rights assaulted.  The City has seen the WSP being challenged in Federal Court, the new FOIA Policy may have the same fate.  But does the City of Ludington care-- no, they are perfectly satisfied spending tax dollars to defend their Constitutionally-deficient policies and ordinances.

[Willy]

Amazing group of people who are running Ludington. Vindictive and petty. I hope all of them are replaced during the next elections. I bet Henderson will be running for City Council during the next election because his reign as King of Ludington will be finished. They are not even trying to be subtle about tramping on the Constitution and State laws.

[XLFD]

CC Wally Taranko is in his ward, and I could see a trade-off between the two occuring with Taranko looking comfortable in recent times in the Mayor's chair at the meetings as the mayor pro-tem in Henderson's absence.  It keeps the power within the cabal, if they win. 

[masonco]

The title of this thread keeps throwing me off sorry.

Anyway. I am very interested to see how the Scottville vs Ludington situation moves from here. It looks like LDN did not put Ludington in such a glowing position this time by stating the reasons Scottville is looking at cancelling their contract with Ludington.

[XLFD]

I'm looking forward to Rob Alway joining in on this mini-controversy between the two, but he may have to abstain from doing so due to his chairmanship on the Scottville Planning Commission.  If anyone has some 'inside baseball' info, I'm always here to leak the news to.   

[XLFD]

Just a few minutes before they vote to unanimously accept a judgment that admits the City Councilor (the City Mgr., the Asst. City Mgr., Clerk, Mayor) violated the Open Meetings Act by deliberating and making decisions outside of an open meeting, the City Council unanimously vote to approve five changes to the FOIA which some affect the citizen's access to public records at a lawful cost, but all affect one citizen in particular, the one who prevailed in the OMA lawsuit because he received public records through FOIA that showed undeniably that the OMA, a covenant that public bodies have with the public, was broken by the City. 

 

Their logic goes: if he cannot afford to request records, he will not see what we do that runs counter to ethics or laws.  If they were truly contrite about their violations, they would be making these records more available.  As such, they are only going to try to be more secretive in their actions.