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

Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole has a nasty habit of prosecuting innocent people in the court of public opinion, tainting the jury pool by using the local media to slander individuals his office accuses of major felonies and to judge them guilty of all charges.  A perfect example of this happened a dozen years ago, in the heartbreaking case of Coach Todd Lane Johnson.  Splashed on the …See More

The June meeting of a school board meeting typically involves a special hearing for their budget for the next school year, understandable since Michigan law mandates that they need to have a budget prepared before July of the next school year. Additionally, two other things often come up in June meetings, the first being an evaluation of the district's superintendent over the last year, which is seen as the last action item in the …See More

I accidentally caught the latest headline on the Friday edition of the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) after making a purchase at a local business.  While I hadn't attended the last Scottville City Commission (SCC) meeting, held at the same time as Ludington's so as to inhibit attendance thereat, they apparently added an action to the agenda at the very last minute, then passed it without any discussion.  At least this was what the headline and subheading indicated:…See More

For the first meeting of the Ludington City Council in three weeks, this one had a relatively light agenda packet and a couple of notable absences.  Councilor John…See More

You may remember the controversy surrounding actor Jussie Smollett back in 2019 when he staged an elaborate hoax, playing the part of a crime victim to get himself widespread attention and demonize those who he was politically opposite of.  Ludington has its own version of Smollett, and he just happens to be the Ludington Police Department's (LPD) Chief Christopher Jones, who recently…See More

Municipal governments can often be reluctant to do the right thing when citizens point out deficiencies that are not being addressed within city hall.  A great divide can form when a well-intentioned citizen points out a problem with existing traffic infrastructure that the city/township has allowed to remain.  These battles over public safety often require court action to resolve, even when remedial action would be a negligible expense to the budget. We will look at a Charlottesville Virginia…See More

Back in September 2023, the Ludington Torch revealed what appeared to be the widespread defrauding of West Michigan individuals by a contractor named Daniel Siefka, who with his wife, fronted about a dozen limited liability corporations (LLCs).  In that story, we transcribed an investigative…See More

Growing up in Scottville in the 1970s was quite a bit different than it would be today.  At that particular time, the city was self-sufficient with a supermarket in the downtown area and a new one opening up just north of town, multiple hardware stores, sports stores, apparel, and drug stores.  A brand-new middle school coming in and no hint of the US 31 bypass that would come in at the beginning of the 1990s.  No Walmart's, Meijers, not even any K-marts in the area just yet, just a Grant's…See More

The post-Memorial Day Tuesday meeting of the Scottville City Commission (SCC) was held at the city's senior center, just south of the county's sole operating marijuana dispensary, the Hempire Collective.  Commissioners at this meeting (and the meeting before) have been so mellow doing their jobs over the course of this and the …See More

Our loyal readers have likely noticed that the Ludington Torch failed to put out a straight recap of Ludington City Council meetings over the last two months, even though we were in attendance.  We have been abnormally busy, but the reason why we weren't able to supply these summaries was the initial lack of a video for the first meeting in April.  We always try to include a video with our recaps, but for some reason, we would never find this within the first week of the first April meeting…See More