Petition Fishin' Expedition

[XLFD]

Ignition   On August 9, 2012 I sent the City Of Ludington City Manager/FOIA Coordinator John Shay a request to inspect the petitions that were turned in to the City regarding reversing term limits for the Ludington Mayor's office from three four-year terms to five.  Four days later, the City's most recently adopted attack dog, Kaye Holman, offered a presentation at the City Council meeting that was short on facts, but long on innuendo as regarding a citizen who utilizes the FOIA  kaye-holman-freedom-of-information-fighter.

Politician   Kaye considered my efforts a fishing expedition, meant to harass the City.  She had no justification for those statements, but that's what she believes.  I believe her rambling rant was predicated by my FOIA request into seeing the petition papers, primarily because there is evidence that there were things, many of them legal technicalities, that certain City Officials overlooked or bypassed in the process of getting this petition ready for this fall.

Exhibition   Initially, WMOM reported on a story saying there was movement afoot to extend term limits via petition, so I sent a FOIA request in April:  "These requests deal with records concerning a recent local story that involves an alleged petition that would change the charter's section on term limits for elected officials and a petitioning group called the Committee for a Stronger Ludington:

1)  All signature lists, affidavits, and other related materials dealing with such a petition since January 1, 2011 to present.

2)  Any written record (E-mail, mail, etc.) between City Officials (including all members of the DLB/DDA) in that time period that discusses the amending of the "term limit" provisions of the City Charter to provide for more terms, or mentions the "Committee for a Stronger Ludington".

Omission  The reply came back on April 19, 2012 from FOIAC John Shay:  "I have attached the City of Ludington’s response to your FOIA request  April 19, 2012.pdf  .  This says that no documents exist that fits this FOIA request.  What does that mean?  It means that nothing had been filed with the City Clerk, but then that would mean that there had been no initiative started up to that point, April 19.  This is because Section 7.5 of the City Charter says very clearly: "b. Petitioner's Committee.  Any five (5) qualified voters may commence initiative or referendum proceedings by filing with the City Clerk an affidavit stating they will constitute the Petitioner's Committee and be responsible for circulating the petition and filing it in proper form, stating their names and addresses, and specifying the address to which all notices of the committee are to be sent, and setting out in full the proposed initiative ordinance or citing the ordinance sought to be reconsidered.

Promptly after the affidavit of the Petitioner's Committee is filed, the City Clerk shall issue the appropriate petition blanks to the Petitioner's Committee."

Supposition  No affidavit of the Petition Committee, filed with the City Clerk, existed before April 19, and so petition blanks should not have been issued by the City Clerk for this proposition before that time.  A Statement of Organization for the "Committee for a Stronger Ludington" was filed with the state on 3-5-2012, but this does not fulfill the local requirement (nor does it appear that any proposed initiative was offered to the state during this period).  State law says  MCL 117.4i   Each city may provide in its charter for the following:  (g) The initiative and referendum on all matters within the scope of the powers of that city and the recall of city officials.

Having an affidavit with the petitioner committee's names filed with the City Clerk is within the scope of powers of the City, and is incorporated in the charter; but this wasn't done, at least until April 19, so any signature dated before that date at the least is invalid for this petition.  There is a good likelihood that affidavit was never filed, because it's just an annoying legal technicality, at least that's what the City-official-packed Petitioner's Committee thought.  But it is legit City law.

Division   There are just under 6000 registered voters in the City of Ludington.  The Home Rule City Act, MCL 117.25 says that you need 5% of the registered voters in an 'city' to enact an initiated law.  That amounts to just under 300 signatures.  Sources say 308 valid signatures were gotten, I counted 302 definite signatures among the 47 pages of petitions.  Either way, the number of petition signatures would meet the state criterium.  But then there's that annoying City law, Section 7.5 of the City Charter, section c1, that now says 10% of the registered voters is needed, meaning about 300 more signatures.  I think this aspect of City law is illegitimate, but it does exist, and should be addressed and repealed (to the state's 5%) before this proposal is to be considered valid.  But even then...

Exhibition    ...there is the petitions and that lack of an affidavit on April 19, 2012.  Let's choose the best case scenario for the petitioners, that they actually filed an affidavit on April 19.  Then we have to disqualify the following signatures as being valid:

Milan (Budde) Reed's 1 signature here

Brandy Henderson's and 9 other sigs here

Gerry Hansen's and 11 other sigs here

In total, 8 signatures here (one signed on April 19!)

Joyce Usiak (petitioner) and 9 other sigs here.

In total, 9 signatures here.

Just Lori Kazymicki's one signature here.

Kathleen Fisher's (petitioner) and 10 other sigs here.

Fisher has 10 more 'early' sigs here.

Fisher has at least 6 more here.

The LFD Chief and his wife are the 2 here.

Barry Neal is one of 2 here.

Addition   There are thus 82 people whose signatures are disqualified from the petition's total.  That either puts you down to 220 or 226, depending on where you started.  That total only gets smaller if the affidavit was signed later than April 19.  The petition is invalidated by state and city law, and should never have been sent to the state by the City Clerk for consideration this fall.

Repetition   Clerk Luskin was a bit better at getting some of the "Election Lawbreakers" including Tim and Carrie Callihan who both signed on August 5 and August 7, with petitioners Heather Venzke and  Michele Johnson respectively.  Petitioner Heather got Lars Kvalvaag twice, once on April 16 and then on August 5.  At least 19 other people signed twice, as well, even when the petition says in capitals and boldfaced:  "A person who knowingly signs this petition more than once... is violating the provisions of the Michigan Election Law."

Attrition  More signatures were disallowed due to voter's signatures not matching their filed signatures (at least 7), they were not registered (at least 16), not registered at the address indicated on the petition (at least 16), and two had signatures dated after the date the petition was filed.  These were dutifully knocked off the original amount turned in (around 360).

Commission   The petitioner's committee, seemingly limited by the City to five, and, if not actually limited has to list its circulators/members.  The amount of petition circulators were far more than five, it was actually 20.  The original committee looks to have been made up of Heather Venzke, Gerry Hansen, Joyce Usiak, Kathleen Fisher, and Robert Neal.  Fourteen more made the push starting around August 4th.  Were these legal circulators?  City law wouldn't recognize them as such without a special affidavit, but State law is more forgiving.

Wishin'  Don't you wish you could choose what laws apply to you, and which don't?   The City Council has no problem passing laws which have no regards for civil rights guaranteed under the Constitutions of Michigan and the USA, all they need to do is have the City Attorney draft it, City Manager John Shay recommend it (both refuse to take the Constitutional Oaths of Office themselves), and then the City Council gets out there rubber stamps.  So now they can enter your house at any time to 'inspect your pipes', restrict you from entering a public place without any due process or rationale, and even say how you can feed your's, or other's, cats.

Sedition   Yet they never seem to follow their own City Charter, even when they're called on it.  Raise your salary from $50 to $3600 by putting aside $20,000 for 'transportation expenses' and then incorporating it into your salary.  Insist on having contracts competitively bid for projects over $10,000 in the charter, and then have a City Official who marries the Community Development Director get the signage project without a contract, without a competitive bid when started, and then an unfair bidding process later.  Mix that in with a lot of missing documents, a cover-up by the City Manager involving perjury in a FOIA appeal in Circuit Court, and violations of the Open Meetings Act, and you get an idea how corrupt our City Hall has become.  And that's just a start...

 

Finishin'  The City will run with this proposal, even if it is proved illegitimate in more ways than I have just shown; that's how corrupt governments work.  Kaye Holman, one of the 20 petition circulators, will demonize a citizen for asking questions, and trying to receive documents that may answer those questions, but don't be fooled by her, her fellow City Hallers, or her partners in the City of Ludington Daily News who will not even acknowledge the shortcomings of this petition, better yet, explain the cruel, hard truth away.  Proving that they can do anything, regardless of the laws saying they can't, is just one more way of showing the citizenry their power, which is close to pure tyranny.

[Willy]

X

This situation shows exactly how petty, small and vindictive the Council, Mayor and Manager are. They knew you were questioning this fact but they chose to remain silent at the meetings. If I recall one of the Council members made a comment to you about "are you sure, have you read the ordinance". He could have laid this question to rest right then and there but chose to be obstinate and petty. They are not trying to be helpful but are going out of their way to hinder a citizen's quest for information. This incident highlights their contempt for the public.

[AQUAMAN]

Again, I couldn't say it better myself Willy, good point, and rather overbearing and obviously petty.

[CLFD]

Willy

The shoe that you describe could just as easily fit the other foot!

Is there a time and place to be resonable? Or not?

Is the truth of an issue more worthy of consideration, or are the accusations more worthy?

It appears likely that the issue will go up for vote after all. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

[Willy]

CLFD

I would like to see more voter participation regarding what Government officials do. I have one question for you. Do you believe that documents, letters, records, contracts and all paperwork in general that is located in the files and on computers at City Halls all over the Country belong  to the Government officials and employees?

[CLFD]

Willy

I believe that the public has a right to know all particulars as to how their tax money is spent. I had to pay a dollar a page to print over 1 dozen pages of property records from the public computer at the court house. I paid cash. Could some of that cash have gone directly into somebody's pocket? Or not?

[XLFD]

That's an established fee at the courthouse.  You can choose to bring your own copier and scanner in to the courthouse to save you some money in most instances.  The County Clerk and other units will even scan you information from FOIAs for free, because there is no set fee for electronic records/scanning by the state FOIA, and the County uses FOIA law from the state, unlike our City of Ludington who have made their own policy to make it more difficult to do so-- in large part because they feel my regular FOIA demands pose such a problem. 

[CLFD]

XLFD

I went in to the appropriate office at the court house and asked for some property records. I was very specific with address and parcel number. I explained to her that I wanted all prior property transfer information for that one specific parcel. She said wait a minute, then she went to a file cabinet, opened a drawer, and pulled out a stack of filecard documents and started shuffling through them. That took several minutes of her looking and relooking.

I became a little impatient and I spoke up out loud and asked how difficult can it be to locate property records? Then she stopped shuffling through the stack and told me I could find the information at the computer that was right there on my side of the counter. I sat down at the computer and quickly located what I was looking for. Then I asked how much to get copies and someone else behind the counter chimed in that it was $1 a page. I hit the print button and printed my pages. Then I got up, was handed my copies, and I paid her in cash. No FOIA paperwork to fill out and no receipt for my cash payment. I had the information that I sought in my hand so I left.

[XLFD]

OK, CLFD, what is your point?  Going directly to the clerk for such records is common practice, definitely not records I would use a FOIA for, as there are public sites you can generally get that info, and the copy rate at the county clerk's is fixed.  You effectively made an informal FOIA request and paid well for it.

Do you think those slips of paper they printed out were worth $1 each?  Those records do belong to you, you know, and the actual cost of the ink and paper have come out of your pocket and the pockets of your fellow countypeople and of those who own real property here. 

Also, be aware that sometimes computer records may only go back so far, and that your information request may not have totally fulfilled what you were seeking, if you were looking up information on an older property.

[Willy]

CLFD

What I don't understand is you don't seem to have a problem paying for information you have already paid for with your taxes. Why should you be charged for public information. It never used to be this way until FOIA showed it's ugly head. The reason FOIA was enacted was for Federal information dispensing because so much information was held from the public by the stooges in Washington. Then State and local Governments got the bright idea to enact FOIA's of their own so they could use it to raise more tax money. That's right, in my opinion the money charged for FOIA's is a tax and not a fee. And since they are a tax, in my opinion, they should be voted on by the people. We are losing the very basic freedoms this Country was founded on. The fact that we the citizens must pay for our own information is to me unthinkable. FOIA's actually work in reverse. Instead if encouraging the dissemination of information FOIA's discourage it with high fees and intrusive paperwork and long waiting periods to obtain the information. 

[XLFD]

It also shows that I do not have 100% knowledge of the laws, because there are so many of them, and I can make mistakes.  When I do, I will try to correct them as soon as possible, and thank the person who set me straight by pointing me to the proper conclusion of the law, as I did Ms. Luskin after confirming her point.

I don't try to steer the law to my own personal ends, as certain local officials try to do, or ignore the laws when it suits my purposes.  I still only yield at stop signs while on my bicycle, however, because it's the safest thing to do, improves traffic flow for all concerned, and it's legal by Michigan law.

[AQUAMAN]

CLFD, please do tell us ALL the TRUTH! Afterall, where is your evidence? XLFD posted many threads over the past years to legally and ethically produce documents and proofs that not only prove his points, but totally substantiate them. The TRUTH is in our documents, those that prove and are, well, sometimes touchy for some, and financially challenging too, and for no FOIA reason, by law. They too, are in the archives of the TORCH, just try to invest some reading time, and you might just be surprised, and even shocked, as it is in history. That which yes, I do hope votes can and will change, at least someday. Those that think we don't need to know, are the ones nervous, not us. Thanks.

[CLFD]

Aquaman

Do I detect hostility in your ramblings? I think you may have misread my comments and became unnecessarily defensive. No need for that!

The original post did not paint an entirely accurate picture. Anybody who made up their mind in favor of the original post did not have all the relevant facts. XLFD posted the truth from Ms Luskin and the issue has been further clarified. What other evidence do you seek about the issue at hand?
I commented on this discussion in this discussion. I cannot read minds, so please post a link if there is something else in the archives that you want me to read.