"I want to thank the city commission for allowing me to speak at this meeting.  It's a big improvement from the last virtual electronic meeting where I attended but couldn't be seen or heard, including during the two public comment periods where I unmuted myself and otherwise tried to call attention to my intention to talk, but was ignored."

This was the first paragraph from my prepared statement to the Scottville City Commission that I was going to read to that public body during the initial period of their public comment at their April 5th meeting where they finally met in person, and couldn't foreseeably prevent me from speaking using audiovisual tricks.  

I never got the opportunity to speak this paragraph or read the five other paragraphs of content I created for the initial comment period.  Much like the last meeting, where they devised a way to silence my allegations and accusations of impropriety by city officials, the commission created a new way to block the public from commenting at this meeting by changing the way they run meetings, without ever making such a policy decision at any open meetings.

A close look at the agenda packet, shows an absence of the initial comment period, and during this meeting they never had it.  In all of the times I have went to the Scottville Commission before this, dating back ten years, they have always had one at the beginning and end of meetings.  Now that they have embraced embezzlement and courted corruption in its many forms, they have decided they do not want to hear what sort of bad officials they are from me.  

One could say that I must be an incredibly powerful person if my mere words have forced this despicable public body to shut my mike and camera off for virtual meetings (in violation of the Open Meetings Act (OMA)) and then change their long tradition and violate the city charter (more on that later) by removing the initial public comment period from their docket.  I would counter that it's not me, but merely the power of unvarnished truth and its effect on the consciences of the would-be kings who are only digging a deeper hole every time they violate the laws of our state and their city.

At this meeting, they would add an agenda item late, scheduling a closed session in order to review the applications of four city manager candidates applying for the job at Scottville.  After conducting their normal business (which included approving a MERS contract which has the assumption that they have FMLA-eligible employees, and a costly FOIA Coordinator change from the city manager to the city attorney).  They set up going into closed session under section 8(f) of the OMA, noting that two of their four applicants requested confidentiality at this stage.  

Public bodies in Michigan are allowed to go into closed session under strict sets of purposes, one of those is the section they noted which says they can:  "to review and consider the contents of an application for employment to a public office if the candidate requests that the application remain confidential."  Strictly applied, this means they had a duty to review and consider the two applicants in open session that did not request confidentiality and do that with the others in closed session.

Decisions (other than when to come out of closed sessions) cannot be made in closed sessions, only discussions/deliberations.  The session was further restricted to the actions of reviewing and considering applications (i.e. look at and think about these applications without making any decision, by definition).  But they had done more than that, as shown by an immediate motion made in open session after that to interview three of the four applicants at a special meeting, with zero discussion and a unanimous vote.  

The candidates were named:  Locally-grown O’Neil J. Newkirk III of Oscoda, Christopher Frazer of Cass City and Jessica LaPointe of Branch.  None have a degree in public administration, none have ever managed a local government unit of any size. 

But as the public was being ushered out for the closed session, I had rose for a point of order and questioned the mayor on when did the city commission decide to drop their initial public comment and under whose authority was it dropped.  Mayor Marcy Spencer told those assembled it was a new direction she decided to take.  It was clear, however, by the tacit silence of the rest of the commission that they had once again made a decision outside of an open meeting to decide to drop it.  

After their closed session-- held in violation of the OMA where they had made at least one decision, again in violation of the OMA-- the public comment period at the end of the meeting happened, and the folks were finally able to talk.  I reminded them about another important part of the OMA before reading my second prepared comment.

"Section 3(5) of the Open Meetings Act states:  "A person must be permitted to address a meeting of a public body under rules established and recorded by the public body."  The commission has established by practice over the years that the public has a right to comment at the beginning and end of the meeting.

Tonight I was supposed to have a FOIA appeal coming in front of the city commission regarding the denial of an accident report.  In your packets you have a memo from your new FOIA Coordinator Carlos Alvarado grandly misrepresenting the rationale behind my appeal before telling the commissioners that the issue is now a moot point because he sent me a redacted accident report on April 2nd.  Did I receive this report on April 2nd or the three days since Mr. Alvarado?  The answer is "No, I haven't."

So since the records continue to be denied fully, your duty tonight, Commissioners, is to review the actual legitimacy of Mr. Alvarado's denial weighing in my actual rationales pointing at precedents and statutes that support my position against the unsupported platitudes of your inept FOIA Coordinator.  It is your responsibility to do that tonight, Commissioners, before you adjourn this meeting."

Shortly thereafter, the meeting adjourned without the commissioners doing their duty.  It seems that Carlos Alvarado during the Monday night meeting finally sent the accident report records and yes, fully 95% of that report was non-exempt at the time I asked for it, requiring Mr. Alvarado to black out the few phone numbers and addresses on the report and send it to me, without the nonsense he spouted by saying that the investigation into the accident was still ongoing, making all of the report sacrosanct. 

But before I was able to check that out in my Email, I approached Mayor Spencer to find out from her why she thought she had the unilateral authority to remove the public comment period from the meeting.  After hemming and hawing, she declared that the city charter gave her that power.  It seemed rather unlikely that Scottville, who had a council-manager system where the weak mayor is actually elected as a city commissioner and given the title of mayor primarily to serve as chairman of meetings.  About the only other power they have (in section 5.5 of the charter) is when riots or disorder run rampant in the streets.  

The mayor thus does not have the power to unilaterally remove an established part of commission meetings without getting that authority from the full council, which was never given.  And even if the city commission decided to do that, they would have to contend with the city charter once again because the charter actually has established rules for what happens at meetings and in what order.  

Section 7.6 states:  "All meetings of the Commission shall be conducted according, to Robert’s Rules of Order; Provided, however, nothing herein shall contravene the provision of the statutes or this charter. The following procedure shall be adopted:

   1.   Call meeting to order.
   2.   Roll Call.
   3.   Reading of previous minutes.
   4.   Hearing citizens present.
   5.   Reading of correspondence.
   6.   City Manager’s report.
   7.   Committee reports.
   8.   Special orders.
   9.   Unfinished business and general orders.
   10.   New business.
 
  This procedure may be suspended in accordance with parliamentary procedure.
Note that the comment period falls between the reading (approval) of prior minutes and the reading of correspondence, and that the agenda just for this meeting was doctored to remove the comment period mandated by the city charter.  Only a suspension of this procedure can be made by a full vote of the city commission at their meeting, not by a lone commissioner serving as a figurehead mayor.  The rules follow the recommendations of the Michigan Municipal League, in that they 'indicate the sequence of the agenda'. 
Why would the public go to one of these Scottville City Commission meetings if they do all of their business before giving the public a right to comment-- and then predictably adjourn immediately after?  The major value of public meetings is to allow the public the ability to participate in representative government more than just by voting every couple years.
Mayor Marcy broke the city charter by exceeding her authority and by unilaterally removing a charter-required part of the meeting.  Every meeting, these city commissioners look more and more like cockroaches shrinking from the light of law and truth, retreating into their dark corners of thoughts and actions. 
These 'representatives' of the good people of Scottville enable their officers to embezzle money from city coffers, allow the city attorney to pad his paycheck by writing a resolution to allow him to respond to FOIA requests at $190 per hour when he doesn't have access to the city records and only complicates the process, and willfully and gleefully break the city charter without a care.  Scottville citizens:  Expect more. 

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The other five paragraphs of my first comment, which praised the past leaders of Scottville and explained why the current leaders were failing the City of Scottville and the citizens of Scottville.  As noted, the mayor violated the city charter by preventing anybody to speak, all while the rest of the commission let her do that:

"... I contacted 9 officials attending that meeting to express my concerns of not being able to speak either time at the so-called public meeting, mere minutes after the meeting ended.  I received no reply.  I contacted them all a couple of other times, and received no response.  The local paper also researched the issue and found no evidence that this commission did not do the unthinkable: prohibit a member of the public from commenting at their public meeting.  

If this was an isolated incident, it would be bad enough, but there is ample evidence that the City of Scottville has been violating the Open Meetings Act regularly and egregiously since at least the retirement of City Attorney Tracy Thompson.  Standing committees have been serving as more than advisory bodies, the investigation committee created in December, admittedly held unnoticed meetings and kept no minutes of the illegal proceedings while acting with city authority throughout.  

In the prior 11 years, I have had no problems in making FOIA requests with the two former city managers, who were wisely advised by Attorney Thompson.  Since the current corrupt regime took command illegitimately in November, I have encountered incredible resistance in public record requests, being denied an efficiency investigation for over a month after it was completed and this commission reviewed it, and being denied an accident report in full for a three month period, when the record is assuredly over 90% non-exempt.  

The commission has before it tonight a resolution undoubtedly drafted by City Attorney Alvarado giving him the title of FOIA Coordinator.  Alvarado is a contracted employee who earns $190 per hour for his work; currently public record requests go directly to employees at city hall that round up the records as part of their normal workload. 

The proposed change will not release them from still doing that, however, it will introduce a middleman who will get paid $190 an hour from taxpayers while complicating the process.  Why would this even be under consideration unless city leaders want to use Mr. Alvarado to block FOIA requests using any means necessary?  What else are you hiding?"

Exactly, X. I think your last paragraph answers the problem of increased difficulty in getting public information and city transparency, using Mr. Alvarado to block you, and I don't think Mr. Alvarado would act like that on his own direction.

The city (any city) has a lot more to lose in not giving the public information than in trying to block it and suffer subsequent lawsuits.  They may go to court and think they will win, but even if they manage to settle out of court, the lawsuit can be dragged out for years, and the only one that really wins is the attorneys who get $190 and some up to $450 an hour.  $190 looks cheap except if the time takes twice as long which can be the case when an attorney struggles with the English language and inserts twice as many words as necessary to make a point.

Scottville leaders should learn lessons from Ludington's recent history.  The COL hired a contracted attorney back in 2013 to deal with what they considered a high volume of FOIA requests that the city manager was having a hard time keeping up with.  At the time, I was making on average about 1 every ten days and using them for my journalistic efforts, I was by far the highest consumer, but the average number of requests made, roughly 1 per week, were usually for simple requests that required mostly simple coordination between him and department heads or clerks.  

Brainiacs like Commissioner/Mayor Kaye Holman were wondering aloud why Attorneys Sniegowski and Alvarado working on FOIA requests were pushing the budget up by $15,000 each year and why the costly FOIA lawsuits kept coming at a quicker pace.  Alvarado would spend hours trying to justify denials in memos to the council, when his defense didn't make any sense; those memos would cost $1000, the lawsuits that followed would cost 20-50 times that amount in attorney fees for them and settlement fees to me.  

The current FOIA/OMA lawsuit I have in appeals court, the only one since City Manager Foster took over, is there simply because Alvarado advised the council, contrary to the advice of the other City Attorney Ross Hammersley, to fight disclosure of the minutes of two unlawfully held closed sessions.  

In the six years I've dealt with Alvarado, he has shown an amazing acuity in making money as a FOIA Coordinator, but sheer ineptitude in municipal law based on the OMA and FOIA.  That ignorance is making these major problems in Scottville, it's not my persistence in trying to make things more transparent, educating the general public, and throwing the embezzlement label on embezzling officials.

The lesson to be learned in Ludington, once known to the city manager and city attorney in Scottville back in more-enlightened times, is that releasing non-exempt public records is not a murder trial; you don't need a lawyer to suck up money if you dutifully do your job and provide the records on request. 

Alvarado has to be unhappy in Ludington, CM Mitch Foster is dedicated to transparency and will generally get me records on informal requests, while letting Carlos know about it, probably so they can keep statistical records.  This has saved the COL many thousands of dollars over the last two years in needless attorney fees, as has his more transparent inclination in stacking more information in council packets.  His leadership may have even prevented forced FOIA appeals.

I would have no problem with Mr. Alvarado dotting his sentences with 'filler words' (um, uh, aah, etc.) if the legal concept he was trying to communicate made legal sense; I can't help but think he has been hired by the local cities not for any competence in law or communication, but for diversity. 

Kudos to CM Foster who jumps on the front line and fills FOIA much better than the previous closed administration, which even went to corrupt lengths to ban you with "workplace safety act" to try to cut your tongue out from gaining access to public records ... and which only makes it look like someone had something to hide and was afraid of transparency.  Until the city apologizes for those lawless acts, I shall never forgive them for the coverup, deception, corruption, and harrassment, and the city council either too dumb to know the law, or no backbone to stand up for what is right.

As far as Alvarado being a place filler for diversity, a possibility. But to me, more like a manipulative team player with a favorable coach letting him play the game, plus pulling in big bucks for hem-hawing and dragging out FOIAs and possibly outright wrong advice on other instances of closed session, well, either stupidity or smooth greed or going along with the team to continue his position. Either way, the public loses.  And what an embarrassing and unnecessary mess he is making in Scottville.

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