Airport County Commissioner Meetings Dodge Transparency

[XLFD]

Covid-19 shutdowns of public facilities in Michigan and the executive orders that allowed all public meetings to be held virtually, have led to a serious eroding of the Open Meetings Act (OMA), the law which mandates public bodies to hold their meetings in front of the general public.

                   County Commissioners Doing the Oath of Office Shoulder to Shoulder in Times Before Social Distancing

The first barrier such provisions put forth is accessibility by the general public.  In rural areas, like Mason County is, broadband internet access is only enjoyed by less than 50% of the population according to a March 2020 MSU study.  During the shutdown, one could not even visit a neighbor or a public facility and use their equipment.  When more than half of your population cannot attend a 'virtual meeting', it's a travesty of open government.

When you look at the governor's guidance for conducting public meetings virtually until June 15, you see the words:

"A person must not be excluded from a meeting held electronically otherwise open to the public"

It's without any recognition that 1/2 of rural citizens and 1/4 of urban citizens cannot attend that meeting because they lack either the necessary infrastructure or the desire to have internet service.  With that basic right ignored, many others guaranteed under the OMA fall.

As we slowly emerge out of the three month shutdown with 'virtually open' governmental meetings and transition back to true open meetings, we will look at some instances of local public bodies skirting the law and holding almost-secret meetings with little knowledge or any participation of the public. 

Perhaps one of the most evident violations is the 7 PM June 9th Mason County Commissioner's (MCC) meeting.  When the MCC set up their regular meeting schedule, this was on it along with saying they normally meet in the commissioner’s room in the Mason County Courthouse at 304 E. Ludington Avenue.  

The MCC meeting was set to be held in-person, but according to a June 9th article of the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) they were to consider items that have been pending since April as well as new items at the Mason County Airport Terminal’s conference room.  The article also listed a number of items on the agenda.  Being that the meeting was to be held at the airport, this was a rescheduled regular meeting of the MCC board recessed from previous months and required public notifications of a special meeting.

Special public meeting notices must state the date, time, and place of the meeting to be posted at least 18 hours before the meeting in a prominent and conspicuous place at both the public body's principal office and on a portion of the [public body's] website that is fully accessible to the public.  The public notice on the website shall be included on either the homepage or on a separate webpage dedicated to public notices for non-regularly scheduled public meetings and accessible via a prominent and conspicuous link on the website's homepage that clearly describes its purpose for public notification of those nonregularly scheduled public meetings (MCL 15.265(4)).

Whereas it seems as if the notice may have been put on the County's website home page as part of their calendar (see below, as it looks now), one cannot find a publicly available agenda for this meeting, nor is it noticed as a special meeting.

So here are some of the problems involved with this meeting.  The COLDNews meeting 'notice' didn't appear on their own website until 5 AM on June 9th, 14 hours before the meeting.  The notice of a rescheduled meeting was not put up on either front door of the courthouse, the public body's main office.  The 'notice' may have been put up on the county website calendar early enough to satisfy the 18 hour requirement, but that's not clear because the notice fails to indicate at what time it was posted to the event calendar.

The lack of an agenda available to the public but apparently available to the local newspaper that morning is also troubling, as is the lack of the rescheduled special meeting findings its way on a page meant for that express purpose. 

I was also surprised to learn that there had been a special commissioner's meeting held on April 30th at the airport, but the only place on the county website with that information was the calendar feature.  The minutes for that meeting reflect that there wasn't any public participation and the COLDNews unofficial notification was the only one with agenda items for this meeting.  As noted for the June 9th meeting, no agendas are available to the general public at the county website.

While the county commission has been substantially compliant with most tenets of the OMA, they can surely do better to include the public; it's even possible they may have wished to quell attendance due to concerns with Covid-19 social-distancing policies.  But in the future, they would make themselves a lot more transparent to the public if they published not only their agendas before well-noticed meetings, but other relevant public records they receive in making their decisions in packets just like they do in the City of Ludington.

[Epictetus]

The OMA and for that matter FOIA, are tools for the sun to shine on our government and should be followed accordingly. During these times, it is even more important for our elected and appointed leaders to be transparent in how they act and what they are acting on in order for the public to feel like they are working in their favor. While we may not always agree with their decisions, we should at least know what decisions could be made at these meetings. I appreciate you showcasing situations like this and hope those leaders learn from them: X, do you contact these leaders to let them know of the issues you see? Do you get much feedback or corrective action noted?

“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.” – Marcus Aurelius

[XLFD]

County Administrator Fabian Knizacky has a very good track record with respecting both the FOIA and OMA, and is very amenable to weighing suggestions on process that may not have been handled properly.  Many years ago, I pointed out some FOIA issues and that records showed that he had not yet taken an oath of office and should have.  Most county administrators with two decades of experience (at that time) would likely have shrugged it off, but he modified the county's FOIA policies towards transparency, and took an oath of office.  I have not had any FOIA issues with him since, but I rarely make FOIA requests to him, and a large part of that is due to his commitments to being a helpful and humble public servant.

The problems that have arisen at the county level are primary due to the adaptation to the executive orders, so I may explicitly contact the county and give them a heads up on better practices for transparency and accountability during these times, I'll definitely leave my cudgel at home.  It would be awesome if some day I could do that with the City of Ludington, but parts of that venue are still resistant to change, resistant to having citizens identify struggles and offer humble criticism of public policy and acts. 

Did you know that Marcus Aurelius was a teenager when your historical counterpart went to the Elysium fields?

[Willy]

Thanks x for this information. This kind of stuff never ends

[Epictetus]

Absolutely X. 

Interesting comment regarding the City, do you feel like there is a push-back against change or against acknowledging an issue? Glad to see that the County is willing to move forward in a positive direction!

[Freedom Seeker]

That's a very uropian view of transparency in government, Epictetus.  In my simple opinion , a major issue in Ludinton has been ignorance of the OMA law and/or a willingness to learn it, coupled with an attitude of government agents wanting to do what they want to do without gaining input from the community.  It's a lot easier to make decisions without public input.  But, our new city manager has made more of an attempt at including the public in discussions than the previous city managers, not that it is even the responsibility of the city manager as much as it is of the mayor and the councilors to listen to their constituents.  It seems most councilors get elected to get on the joy ride of rubbing shoulders of the perceived hightony of the city rather than pursue the people's voice.  Ludington seems to be  run by the downtown and pleasing anyone perceived to have money.  The lowly residents don't have advocates, once their Councilor is on board they go with groupthink as recently evidenced in some bickering on the council "we're all supposed to be on the same team here."  How can their ever be change or a voice for residents with "one voice" the same?  And in what secret meetings in the agenda for that "one voice" declared?

[Freedom Seeker]

For whatever reason, the Torch is not allowing edits, my previous comment should be corrected to say "utopian"view, not "uropian" as in the Euro version.

[Du Wright]

I agree that the residents don't get a voice or have much representation, at least in my time in Ludington.  Now we have a mayor who is following in the footsteps of a previous mayor who also was the president of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and seems to put most effort into pleasing the downtown business owners and the DDA.  That's likely to happen when that's all you hang out with.  The Council just sit and endure anything that a resident who is so bold to speak about at a council meeting, often with dirty looks from them and being shamed for speaking up (thanks X for taking so many arrows).  Decisions for the community have already been made in the "secret squirrel" meetings (thank you Councilor Serna for getting nailed to the cross on that).  But it's true.  And the public was not informed of the meeting times, and there were no minutes published--two major violation of the Open Meeting Act (OMA) that went on as routine for years as standard policy.  Thank you, X for fighting for the people to get those violations corrected.  But still the secret squirrels will try to be secret until we get Councilors who are in it, "not for themselves, but for their constituents"--their Ward, the people, the residents of the city who make up the majority of the city, not just the 100 or so residents of the "downtown."  I'm not against businesses being heard, but when 90 percent of the city is unheard, the scales of representation are heavily tipped.

Until that happens, just sit there, shut up, and pay your taxes and fees that keep getting raised because the elites downtown get to decide what to do with your taxes without representation.

[AQUAMAN]

Thank you X and all the rest that see thru this kind of BS by County Officials too again. This wanton repeat of violating OMA's and such is really getting out of hand, as usual, and without any excuses that are valid. The Secret Squirrel way of doing things has got to stop someday, it's illegal and unethical to say the least. And unless someone calls it to their attention, it will simply continue into the future again.

[XLFD]

I am currently awaiting a response from the Ning platform help squad to figure out why some members (including myself) are having problems with features like the 'edit' and 'reply' functions in the forum.  Please let me know if anybody's experiencing anything else that has posed a problem, like Freedom Seeker has, and Willy has done previously.

Du Wright, thanks for your assessment of the city's prioritizations, I would only add a chess analogy.  The city hall has been and probably will remain a classic chess player, concentrating on piece-by-piece (business) development in order to control the center of the chessboard, which is the downtown.  Continuing the analogy, I think they fail by trying to establish center control by occupying it with major pieces (rooks and queen), rather than with minor pieces and pawns, which is a tactical blunder by them as these are usually driven away by the moves of the opponent (represented by fate and fortune).  The city could allow the major pieces and even the bishops to remain in the wings and still control the center effectively, while protecting the king (the everyday Ludington citizen) and pawn structure (Ludington neighborhoods).  

For over three months, fate has kept us from controlling the center, and we will be losing material because of it, so the best move may be a counterattack along the wings and pushing our pawns forward in order to promote them, rather than trying to beat back the opponent's dominance of the center. 

[XLFD]

Epictetus, 

At the second meeting of February this year, I made a comment on humility and hubris.  Since the second term of Mayor John Henderson (roughly 2006) which coincided with the fourth year of city management by John Shay, city leadership was consumed almost totally by hubris.  This seemed to peak by the 2008 recession, when the City had a few tough choices to make and some humility crept in.  It didn't last long, however, hubris would creep even higher in 2013, Henderson's last year, when I (as plaintiff) won or favorably settled three lawsuits with the City in three different courts.  I must admit, my own hubris was high with the successes and I would freely taunt city officials by reminding them of their misdeeds, since our local media always spun the City's lemons into golden fleeces, and heaped manure on my victory garden (which only fertilized my growth as a citizen activist).

The city council has a long communal memory, I have heard I was a uniting force for them on many occasions-- unfortunately this was usually uniting them against the common good and making them do some rather odd things.  Like Donald Trump with Democrats, I could influence some city councils of the past to vote against something just by coming out for it, and vice versa.  Did I ever use this odd superpower?  You'll have to wait for the memoirs.

I sense humility, dedication to laws, and empathy with citizens as a strength in one councilor and the chief administrative officer who both came on-line in 2019.  The others are blinded by conflicts, elitism, and ego.  It's still better than anything Ludington has ever had in recent memory, but we need more dedicated and thoughtful public servants on the council so that the good isn't outnumbered by the bad by a factor of six. 

[Willy]

Good analogy on the chess comparison X, however I think most of elected politicians have a checkers mentality and are being influenced / controlled by the chess players who really control Ludington's politics.

I think that the only way to change things is to get common citizens interested in running for public office and I have mentioned before that one way to do that is to pay Councilors a fair wage for their time. The only people who will do the job for basically free are those who have been recruited by the corrupted full time political establishment. Of course there have been a few who have tried to go against the establishment but there have not been many. By paying Councilors a decent wage it may incentivize more citizen politicians to put their hats in the ring.

I have found that a post can be edited by using a cell phone. It may not work for everyone but it has for me on several occasions.

[XLFD]

Brilliant, I wished I thought of that checker-playing mentality twist.  I think we can all recall times when councilors wanted to move their checker a certain way but have been corrected by city attorneys and managers telling them that their piece can't and shouldn't move like that.

I wouldn't be against paying councilors more (as long as they follow the city charter), but I would then like to see them being better prepared for their position, establishing/sharing rationales for their votes, and maintaining their own webpage with a duty to respond to citizen praise, comments, and complaints in a timely manner.