The City of Ludington Loses its Cool?!

[XLFD]

Check out the top of page three in today's Ludington Daily News.  Here is a brief synopsis of the event, which is a minor part of this push against a private citizen.  Perhaps someone with a subscription to the E-Edition of the LDN can post the expanded version:

 

http://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news/53382-city-oks-deposit-to-co...

 

Below, was my letter to each of the Ludington City Councilors with an E-Mail address made over this weekend, expressing my appeal.  The amount of legal and factual inaccuracies in the article will be covered in more detail as I get more time. 

 

Once again I am the appellant for a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that is being considered on the agenda for your 11-8-10 meeting.  I received the letter from FOIAC Shay in Friday’s mail, and was not able to read it until this Saturday, so hopefully, you check your E-Mail on a regular basis because I have not the time to get something through you in the snail mail before your meeting, and I have pledged to never talk with haughty public servants on the phone again.

 

Nothing in the City or State’s appeal process for FOIA requests say I can represent myself in front of the appellant entity within the public body, so I won’t bother showing up on Monday night and having you make your own rules to mock the process.  I offer here a brief synopsis, followed by my letter from April which explains your FOIAC’s inability to follow legal process, both then and now.  You ignored it then, so I am not expecting much now, though this FOIA appeal does proffer a new angle.

 

I was mischaracterized in the previous appeal as “not liking the decision to pay ½ of the upfront costs.” as per the minutes of that meeting.  If you read my letter, I objected to the original quote of $600 without  the FOIAC specifically identifying the nature of the unreasonably high costs of my simple request, which was then capriciously changed to $120 in his next letter to me, still without identifying any reason, specific or general, for the high costs of just inspecting the documents, as per the law.

 

As per the law, the fee he quoted is not a recognized fee per the FOIA as he did not specify the nature of the costs.  This is why I did not recognize any lawful fee last time, and due to the same mistake on his part, there is no fee recognized by law in his response.  He is entitled to let me inspect the documents or fall in arrears of the law.

 

This time, he once again failed to mention what the nature of the costs were for the four separate FOIA Requests I sent on 10-18, and the five separate requests I sent in on 10-25.  For both he sent a form letter that said paradoxically that my request was Granted, but required a fee and also that it was denied because a public record does not exist.  Each of my requests (attached) had four or five clearly distinct requests.  If your FOIAC wants to use one incomplete and confusing form for four or five requests, he is once again operating outside of the law, and failing to serve the public in his appointed office.

 

In his letter notifying me of my appeal going through, dated 11-3, FOIAC Shay states that his policy as FOIAC is to not charge a fee for inspection anytime the costs to the city to search/compile records are less than $100.  He finally, after two inquiries and all the past inquiries, breaks down the specific labor costs incurred by my nine FOIA requests which total $367.25.  Per his figuring, That’s less than $41 a request and should allow me to inspect these free even on this count.  Likewise, unless City Hall is totally helter skelter, I can’t imagine any of my initial requests taking 3 hours of a City Manager’s time, since each simple request could be gathered by lesser paid employees of the city.

 

Stonewall the citizens who have a right to know about the workings of their government, or follow the law.  It seems so obvious to me what your decision should be.  Here’s a link to the MI FOIA, have Mr. Shay search a few hours for the city's policy for you:  http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(qxqgj455sbfplcew22hb5e55))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-Act-442-of-1976

 

  

 

[Willy]

Froggy
How do you know Wart is a she? You should start paying more attention to the posts you reply to. Noone said wart was againts FOIA. And who ever you are, your playing the fool. Politicians love to hear folks like you defend their right to make it more difficult to obtain information. It makes their job easier. Who are you to decide that any FOIA request is frivoous. Why does anyone need to file a FOIA for information regarding Government business? I think X has a valid point. Any extra electricity is paid for with tax payers money.

[XLFD]

Edie,
Torch Classic?!? We are only ten months old, so we haven't reached the point of "Stairway to Heaven" or the refreshing taste of the original Coca-Cola. Yet ; )

Truth to tell RJE, the nature of my requests shouldn't even have been brought out in an open public meeting. The only thing I was appealing was that the local and state FOIA laws were not being followed by the FOIAC, and since he had not specified any recognized costs after quoting me ungodly amounts of money, if I paid I would have been setting the City up for an offense of charging illegal fees. I just want the information, and the City to follow the law for once.

In truth, Aquaman pointed out the extremely stupid addition of these transient docks at Ludington Talks over a year ago. The point he made was that even if the docks were full all the time, it would have taken about 50 years to recoup the cost. I maintain that the addition is likely going to be a loss for the city in yearly revenues when we consider the 10 new high wattage street lamps they put in which lights the north side of the marina that will be on all year each night and the rareness of use this year when their was still some novelty in them.

[Dave]

It never ceases to amaze me how many sheeple are more then willing to simply follow their local, state and national leaders and believing everything they say. Ya get someone that is trying to show what's wrong and some people would rather just continue on with the same ole same ole.... guess Froggy is fine with corruption... probably voted for Obama too.

[AQUAMAN]

Dittos Big Dave!

[XLFD]

Dave,
There is something I just learned over the last weekend that I hadn't known before. In the Federal OPEN Government Act of 2007, the Feds amended the Federal FOIA and changed the definition of the "News Media" to cover websites and blogs who use information-gathering to create original works for their audience (such as many in the Ludington Torch, including yourself, Aquaman, and other members who put most threads up in our forum).

Because this designation can help in the (actually) free retrieval of Federal records by those who request such and state such a designation, I believe it might be a good idea to lightly reorganize the Torch into more of a journalistic venture. "Administrators" would be "Editors", "members" would be "contributors" and/or "staff writers". You (and others) then could request federal records to back up and complement your posts with force. No change in content need be done, as human interest and feature stories are still encouraged. I will elaborate on this soon, unless I get strong, reasoned resistance.

BTW, my latest FOIA request which reached the CM's desk before the City Council meeting noticed this fact, and likely led to the LDN's interest and CM Shay's antics at the meeting.