Ross Sewage Tardy on Raw Sewage Records

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Ludington City Attorney Ross "Sewage" Hammersley didn't have that nickname until last year when he committed a couple of crimes in the category of public extortion.  For a simple public records request for a police report about an arrest and the associated body cam footage of the arresting officer, he assigned a charge of just under $230 saying the costs were $25 for nine different videos of an arrest that had no exemptions (I received videos from the sheriff's office of the same outdoor arrest showing LPD Officer Austin Morris making an unlawful arrest).  The City took my deposit money and I reported it to a local deputy, who did nothing other than take a report.  

When Ross Sewage, absent his Riddler glasses, realized there was nothing in the City's FOIA policy allowing for his obscene fee, he doubled the fee and created a brand-new policy, unsupported by FOIA law, where any police video asked for would cost approximately three dollars for every minute of it, even if there were no exemptions.  And even though I explicitly told him that I wanted only the 6-8 minutes of footage from where Morris got out of his car, unlawfully arrested a man and put him back in the deputy's car, he would charge for 14 videos covering about 140 minutes of footage I never asked for.

That, and other illicit charges made since that time have made him Ross Sewage, because he is literally full of crap and other nasty things.  Ironically, when I heard about and later reported on a leak of untreated wastewater (aka raw sewage) on the City's force sewer main near Sixth Street and Old 31 on April 7th and of how for a better part of a day, they bypass pumped this untreated sewage into PM Lake, I took some interest in learning more.  Particularly, since they kept that fact unreported to the public until two days later, and even the local health department would say nothing the day after other than e coli levels were unusually high in PM Lake, so stay out of the water.

Thus, on Thursday April 17th I sent a FOIA request to Ross Sewage looking to get some idea of the extent of the leak and who actually authorized the bypass pumping of untreated sewage into the PM Lake, which is generally illegal and can earn the authorizer multimillion dollar fines.

The FOIA states that such an email request is received the next business day, and then the public body through their FOIA Coordinator needs to respond within five business days after that.  You might recall that the next day was Good Friday and city offices were closed.  But as this was not a weekend day or a recognized holiday, Good Friday was a 'business day' (see MCL 445.111).  You can look at all other definitions of "business day" in Michigan law, and Good Friday is always a business day as it always occurs on Friday and never falls on a real legal holiday.  

Thus, Monday through Friday of this last week was Ross Sewage's opportunity to respond timely and within the law to my FOIA request.  But I received no response for this request, not even a notification that they want to extend the time by 10 business days, as they have the power to.  

One supposes this shouldn't be too surprising, as the City of Ludington was a couple of days too late in notifying the public of their leak and bypass pumping into the lake, they are currently, as of today, two days tardy for their FOIA response.  Perhaps they are still bypass pumping incriminating records into File 13-- or tabulating how many thousands of dollars they will charge as a fee.