The agenda packet of the Ludington City Council's last regular meeting before Independence Day on June 23, 2025, didn't give much hint of how repressive our local government has been over the last three years, but fortunately the council's actions, words, and the voice of the citizens…See More

Michigan State Senator Veronica Klinefelt (pictured below) has had to deal intimately with the Open Meetings Act (OMA) during a career which goes back to her stints as city councilor and county commissioner in Macomb County.  The OMA requires meetings of public bodies like those to be open to the public; to require notice, the keeping of minutes of meetings, and allow for comments from the general public.  As a Michigan senator, she wanted to "improve" on the OMA as early as 2023.…See More

In American tradition, the most serious crimes one could assign against individuals had obvious victims targeted by the criminals.  Admittedly, in our distant pre-revolutionary past we had our variations from such a principal, the Salem witch trials come to mind, where innocent women suffered at the hands of an unjust legal process.  The concept of a witch hunt lives on to this day to describe situations where some people are unfairly arrested, arraigned and adjudged in the name of justice. …See More

Few things are met with more disdain by the Ludington Torch than public policy being decided unilaterally by public agencies without asking for input from the public.  Yet this is what has occurred in Mason County in regard to meaningful debate about a policy decision that may affect the future of school-age children in your family.  This seems to have been happening here since 2014, when the Mason County Safety Planning Committee (MCSPC) was …See More