Ludington's Shadow Government in Action

[XLFD]

Some may look at the title of this article and wonder if the shadow government to be discussed is the various individuals and business entities in the private sector who have an inordinate pull over local governments and enjoy immunities therefrom.  While these puppet masters are worth discussing, most are cautious enough to have a defense based on their own plausible deniability upon most any allegation.  This article instead is looking at the usual target of those described above, a small group of individuals that are actually part of the local municipal government that do not have to worry about operating against the best interests of the people because the outcome of elections has no bearing on their behavior:  city administrators.

Over the course of this century, the City of Ludington has had its own golden and silver ages in terms of city administrations.  In a very short time after John Henderson was elected mayor in 2001 with an ambitious pro-citizen agenda, John Shay became city manager and Mark Barnett became police chief.  This golden age would last for about 4 years, with corruption setting in over the next two terms of the mayor where he ran unopposed, where each of the three characters, along with other city administrators and a Manistee-based city attorney, misdirected a city council and a city against the interests of its people.

The silver age arrived with the hiring of Mitch Foster as city manager in 2019, followed by the replacement of Mark Barnett with Tim Kozal at police chief and the sacking of the Manistee-based city attorney.  Alas, this era of transparency and citizen-centered initiatives (assisted greatly by constructive conflicts between Councilor Angela Serna and Mayor Steve Miller) would end in about four years, where a still-corrupt Barnett would become mayor, Chris Jones would succeed Kozal (who would move on to become Muskegon's chief of police), and a tainted Foster would move on to a created position at WSCC, and be replaced with Kaitlyn Aldrich, who has been a total disaster from the start, as has Jones.

Unlike those who operate in the shadows outside of government, those who work in shadows as part of their government "service" at a local level are not serving the people who demand transparency, honesty, and accountability, even among appointed officials who owe their job to elected officials.  When the elected officials regularly allow administrative officials to usurp their authority and hijack the people's mandate in order to benefit their own positions, you have corruption running rampant.  When those administrators actively work against the people without repercussions from the city council and mayor, you have unchecked tyranny.

We can point out recent manifestations of this phenomenon, some of the worst we'll list:

-- the ridiculous stop-work order against the AndyS project:  by the administrative fiat of Aldrich, fellow administrator Building Inspector Shawn Reed placed a SWO on the $8 million restaurant project in the downtown, a subsequent legal filing by Dr. Andrew Riemer's lawyers had the judge remove this.

-- the attempted extortion of Dr. Riemer:  Although it appears that the AndyS' project followed the rules approved by the city for its construction, they issued the aforementioned SWO and Aldrich offered a proposition publicly at a council meeting, saying the city would get out of the way if Riemer would fund a protected bike lane along Rath Avenue.  This was correctly identified as attempted extortion in Riemer's legal filing, but a silent council did not challenge Aldrich's declaration, never before brought up even at the committee level.

-- the Gram's grave robbery:  summarized, a family purchases plots from the city at Lakeview Cemetery that unlawfully get sold out from under them.  Terry Grams files suit to make the city honor its contract, city administrators hire an outside legal team in order to defend their actions, doing so outside the purview of their authority.

-- abridging the right to fish at a public facility:  Without using proper authority, Aldrich and Marina Manager Jim Christenson shut down fishing along the city marina by erecting signs never approved by the council, who publicly declined to do so.

-- offering a legal settlement agreement without council approval:  After the police chief destroyed a public record requested under the FOIA, he, Aldrich and multiple city attorneys conspired to offer a settlement agreement with this reporter without any knowledge of the city council, until after the offer was made.

As noted, the city council has decided not to fulfill their duties, just look on and seem to enjoy it while city administrators screw over citizens whether they just want to open a business, get back stolen cemetery plots, fish at public facilities, or view public records; they have become the city cuckolds.

The most recent ascendancy of city administrators and descendancy of the city council into irrelevancy is set to come before the city council this Monday.  The precursor was discussed here, where I berated the council at their last meeting for not taking up a FOIA appeal where the FOIA coordinator blocked a dozen email entries claiming attorney client privilege existed, but the nature of the emails didn't make that exemption seem to work. 

The council packet for Monday, starting on p. 54 has the city's response to my appeal.  You can see that once again, the city has utilized a lot of unnecessary administrative and legal time on trying to protect public records from release.  What they haven't bothered with is allowing the city council to review the record and see whether their administrators were acting lawfully and ethically-- before doing a highly unethical and unlawful act of trying to push a settlement agreement onto someone without the council's approval.

To their credit, the lawyers did reverse themselves on two of the emails.  The one above with the simple comment sent from one official to another with two lawyers also in the mix saying "Will do."  Wow, that was once protected by attorney-client privilege in some universe?  It doesn't even come close, while the second is even more ridiculous:

This is ostensibly a letter between Aldrich and two attorneys, but the revealed body of the email shows it was a communication between Aldrich and Chief Jones, neither of whom is an attorney.  The city's FOIA coordinator certified that this exemption was valid when they sent me this response, but we see quite plainly that our incredibly corrupt City Manager Kaitlyn Aldrich used attorneys in her direct sending line for the purpose of trying to later cover up her unlawful bypass of the city council to push a settlement contract.  

I asked in my appeal that the council should review (in camera) all of the blackened email bodies I received in order to make an informed decision, the defense drawn out by the city attorneys indicate that such a review will not be employed.  One can infer that if they were to see such emails and rule on behalf of the city, the eventual appeal to the circuit court to address the issue would show them to be true cuckolds, keeping public records from the public simply because their bad actors in administration told them they must cover-up all of the underlying corruption.

The city cuckolds will approve their irrelevancy tomorrow and take glory in seeing city administrators screw the public over once again.  The only alternative is to challenge the people that they have signed off all of their powers to, get a backbone, and say "enough already".  Three councilors are lame ducks, the four others are just lame, so don't expect to see any backbone tomorrow, or anytime soon.

[Freedom Seeker]

Good summary/history X of Ludington's shadow corruption. Lame duck councilors and others just "lame". Love this description. The active shadow Aldrich making herself to be shadow power should shadow resign, imo. How arrogant and bold.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow knows."

[XLFD]

The presence of shadows is often more concerning than darkness.  With darkness, you have the absolute absence of light, a condition which can be remedied quickly enough by introducing light.  With shadows, light is present and gives us the illusion that everything is open to inspection, but something present may be actively preventing the light from shining all around.