City Hall Runs an Extortion Ring But Makes It Hard to Pay Up

[XLFD]

At the end of the last Ludington City Council meeting, this reporter dropped off $131.36 with the city clerk as payment for what the city council had previously adjudicated was a lawful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) fee for body cam footage associated with a one vehicle accident that took place on the morning of the last Christmas Eve.  According to credible sources at the time, the driver of the vehicle, JT Szobozslay, was highly inebriated, which would have been easily detected by the Ludington Police Department's (LPD's) responding officer, Edward "Trace" Forfinski.

The young officer decided his friendship with the driver was stronger than his observation of his official duties and let JT ride home (with his father who came to pick him up) without administering even a field test for sobriety or issuing any kind of a ticket despite the heavy damage done to streetside infrastructure that morning.  Little more is known because the City of Ludington (COL) has been actively blocking any statement about the matter and assigning paywalls to FOIA requests that should be provided for free, then justifying those paywalls with council actions affirming them, as noted.

This behavior follows the revelation of another cover-up by the COL's chief of police, quickly becoming the thief of police, Christopher Jones in regard to the Officer Mendez DWI of 2024.  The allegation that JT Szoboszlay was driving drunk that night has only been supported by Jones' silence during this period and otherwise behaving like a guilty person throughout the record-suppression actions of the COL.  Jones has shown throughout his tenure that ethics is a word not in his vocabulary.

So here I was at the end of my second comment at the meeting, delivering $131.36 to the city clerk, where I would ask (off camera) for her to prepare a receipt after the meeting.  Clerk Deb Luskin nodded her understanding of the transaction, and shortly after the meeting was adjourned, went into the shuttered-off office area in preparation of getting a receipt showing that the money had been paid.  I was prepared to wait as I had paid the fees off with $1 bills and expected and accepted a delay in return.  

I wasn't prepared to deal with what followed, as City Treasurer Renee Caithamer (pictured below) emerged from the door with my cash in her hand and told me flat out that my ransom was not acceptable at this time and that I needed to come back the next morning to pay it off.  

Now certainly, I live close enough to city hall to make such a trip without much inconvenience the next day, but the problem was that it was unclear to me why the COL wouldn't be able to accept my payment made at city hall when not only the city clerk, but the treasurer, was on duty and being paid by our tax dollars. 

I was informed it was policy and asked whether I could see the policy, I then received morphing reasons of it being due to local, state, and federal rules or regulations, none of which she could quote or produce.  When asked to quote any authority which prohibited her from accepting money at that time, she would claim it was under her own authority.  With that admission, she effectively said it was her whim that she wouldn't be able to accept the money offered as payment for services (legal or not) while she was at city hall and on the clock because she felt like not doing it.

Her story of why she or others couldn't do their jobs when they were being paid for that job at city hall changed often in our seven-minute interlude, but one thing that didn't change was her stance:  she wouldn't let me pay.  I would have to come back at a later date to pay for the records.  When I accepted that inevitability, I asked her to look for and produce a legal authority in the interim that would justify her refusal of my payment that evening.  Not impressed by her obedience to her official duties, I sent a FOIA request out that night seeking "Any state or local law or rule in force that allows a city treasurer or city clerk on duty at city hall to reject in-person payment of a debt owed to the city."

When I went to city hall the next morning and found the city treasurer there I tried once again to pay off the ransom and ask her once again for the authority that allowed her to reject payments made in the manner I attempted on the prior evening.  Nothing was forthcoming other than a receipt for the $131.36 I once again offered and a statement by the LPD (delivered by Sgt Austin Morris) saying that the minutes-long BWC video I asked for would take twelve and a half days to separate out exempt information from.  No reasons were given for the delay for what should have been an otherwise exempt public record.  

A response to my FOIA request would affirm and certify that there was no record of any law or rule that would allow Caithamer to try what she did.  Nevertheless, there has been no apology sent to me for the inconvenience to me (and likely others in the past) who have had their payments rejected for absolutely no reason.

It's what one has come to expect for city services delivered by administrative staff.  It's why they cannot produce one legitimate authority to justify why one short BWC video would require four hours of time to separate out exempt information when no viable exemption is mentioned in the response, nor is any indicated in the police report.  It's why it matters when an elected city treasurer who has sworn an oath to perform her duties in accordance with the law can arbitrarily and capriciously ignore doing her duty and provide an inconvenience to those who want to pay city ransoms for public records by denying them until some later date.  

The twelve and a half days since the morning of February 24 came and went yesterday evening.  If the records I took great pains to pay for arrive, it will likely not be in time to bring it up in front of the city council tonight to show them that one of their officers has once again violated LPD policy and let a drunk driver avoid responsibility simply because one or more LPD officers avoided that duty.  Treasurer Renee Caithamer, in her legally-unsupported denial of my ransom payment shows perfectly that none of our administrative staff, elected or unelected, is immune from being true to their official duties.

[Freedom Seeker]

This is a doozy. Dollar-bill X. Did the treasurer ask you to come back with bigger bills, check, credit card or some other ransom? Did you go Tuesday morning with the same 131 dollar bills (and assuming 36 cents)? I'm sure the clerk and treasurer were not humored having to count 131 dollar bills after a long day and after the Council meeting (what? About 7:30 p.m.), especially if they were old and crumbled. They'll probably consult with an attorney and hold a closed session to figure out what to do.

I know what they are doing: withholding information, lying, and covering up is wrong; the FOIA fees are unjustified but what were you thinking with this strategy? The clerk and treasurer have little to do with the unjust policy the Thief of Police and Council are making, do they?

[XLFD]

As you may know, I sell firewood cheap and so I get hundreds of dollar bills every year, and they come in various conditions.  At points, I will gather them together and flatten them under heavy weights and then for convenience and counting sake I put them into stacks of ten invert the next ten and collect them in 100s.  It was a matter of getting a 100 stack and adding a partial stack of 31, where the bills are dry and flat.  Even though I thought of making their job harder the next day by scattering them around the desk, I didn't. 

Even so, I did make sure to ask several questions while she was counting so that the overall time it took for her to verify that my amount was accurate (before the quarter dime and penny were thrown in) assuredly took longer than the time to prepare my BWC footage.  The problem with the growing corruption is that the city clerk and treasurer necessarily become drawn into the swamp when they accept the ransoms; they are elected representatives of the people who have sworn oaths that should have them at the least object to being a party in such transactions.  Instead, Renee Caithamer indicated to me throughout our interactions that she was part of the problem.  Clerk Luskin, had the treasurer not been around, would have at least taken the money and have a clue to the notion that it was ransom.

[Freedom Seeker]

Ok. Now that makes sense. A display (131 plus displays), of how hard you work for your money and how great the extortion of thief jones and the Council to charge for police records that should be minimal or free and transparent.

I agree that the clerk gets pulled into the mire, for generally i have found her to be fair and perhaps innocent otherwise. I didn't see the interaction and couldn't make out the still picture. Itlooked like you have something on a platter. Maybe a plea to the chief and council of how hard your (and many citizen's) money comes would tug ar a heart string. If they have a heart.

I'm glad you pressed the dollar bills out somewhat and banded them! Reminds me that as a kid i got many dollar bills collecting for newspaper delivery. I used an iron to press the bills before paying the newspaper company.

[XLFD]

For the record, I did not band the dollar bills or put them on a platter for their base consumption.  I used a spring clamp to hold them all together, only releasing the spring when giving them to the clerk that night and the treasurer the next morning.  I doubt the connection was made by the councilors that this was hard earned money even with the demonstration, as this current bunch doesn't seem to be concerned with thew plight of local businesses.

When growing up in the late 70s and 80s, I had a Detroit Free Press route that covered all of the City of Scottville, between 40-60 papers each day (including heavier Sunday papers) delivered between 6 and 8 AM.  It would take nearly two months to earn $131.36 profit back then.  Like you, I needed to collect from the subscribers personally, put it in my "State Savings Bank of Scottville" green leather pouch and turn the bills in to the distributor flattened out, meticulously sorted through, and with proper receipts.  

A major update on this topic is about to drop showing that the cover-up on this DWI event is a big thing.

[Freedom Seeker]

Looking forward to your hard work over many years with extreme dedication to payoff! I'd say the majority of civil servants rather quickly forget the plight of the hard-working taxpayer, especially in Ludingtion with higher-than-average wages and golden benefits that most locals would drool over. Some quickly think they deserve the golden pay and benefits and unheard of raises, and soon think they are better than those who pay their salary.