THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

WORKING CLASS HERO

The story below is a sadly predictable example of a state agency failing to protect workers from the greedy corner-cutting of larcenous employers.  However, you'd think that a local public figure who proudly proclaims his solidarity with the workingman wouldn't have hesitated to alert those workers about the danger their employers were exposing them to.  You'd think, but you'd be wrong about First Ward City Commissioner James Jendrasiak who is more comfortable in a three-piece suit than wearing a blue collar these days.

As told elsewhere on this site, contractors Pioneer Inc. and Dykema Excavators Inc. had their workers excavate 26,000 tons of contaminated soil from the Boardwalk project site without any protective gear or controls to prevent their exposure to the hazardous substances that laced that dirt.  To maintain the pretense that the soil was clean and needed no special handling, Pioneer and Dykema Excavators concealed the truth from their employees who exposed themselves to the waste.

At the time the workers were digging up this poison in the fall of 2000, I tried to get MIOSHA to intervene.  Incredibly, MIOSHA refused to take my complaint because I was neither a worker on the site nor a union member.  However, I knew that Jendrasiak was a union member, so he could make the complaint.  I gave him all the information he needed to take up the cause of the construction workers at the Boardwalk project site.  But Jendrasiak refused to get involved.  So much for sticking up for the working stiff when it counts.  You West Siders might want to keep this incident in mind when J.J. comes trolling for your votes.

Of course, Jendrasiak's opponent in the First Ward city commission race, Dave Shaffer, could raise this issue.  It's a legitimate one.  After all, the Boardwalk project is in the First Ward and it's good example of how little Jendrasiak will stick his neck out for his constituents.  But remember, Shaffer is backed by the Mavericks, a leading member of which is Chris Beckering.  It was Beckering's father as then-owner of Pioneer Inc. who sent his men under that old furniture factory that became the Boardwalk to dig out the toxic soil there without ever telling them of the danger they faced.  If Shaffer is silent on this, I suppose that'll tell West Side voters something about how beholden he is to his financial backers.

SWAMP FEVER

Officials from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality charge that what Nile Young did was the worst violation of wetland law in years.  The evil Young wrought upon us was his expansion of 2-acre pond on his property in Mecosta County into a 7-acre lake.  In doing so he cleared out some of the swamp surrounding the pond.  The MDEQ claims he destroyed a wetland.  Hmm, I'm don't know how much wetter land can get than being a lake.  Nevertheless, Young must now pay a $21,000 fine and bring back the swamp.  So much for thinking ownership of property means anything.

Of course, while the MDEQ has been having a convulsions over Young's environmental terrorism, it has done nothing about the 26,000 tons of arsenic, lead, and mercury laden waste that Pioneer Inc. and Dykema Excavators Inc. spread all over the northeast side of Grand Rapids -- as followers of the Toxic Towers story know.  But then that wasn't a violation of a wetland, just a violation of the health of hundreds of construction workers and members of the general public.  Plus the potential fines for Pioneer's and Dykema's dirty work is only $40 billion and counting.  Certainly nothing to expend the MDEQ's limited resources upon when there are criminals like Nile Young to track down.

And by the way, what Young did was not the worst violation of wetland law in years.  For starters there was the dumping of all the waste soil from the excavation for Fifth Third ballpark in Comstock Park into the Grand River by Dykema Excavators.  The Grand River is public waterway which is what all of these so-wetland laws and regulations were originally devised to protect.  Of course, the MDEQ never did anything about that either.

THE HANGING JUDGE OF PYRAMID CITY

[Note:  An earlier version of this article appeared on June 28, 2005.  Our lawyer advised us that judges tend to stick together, so it wasn't prudent to criticize any judge while our hazardous waste lawsuit against the Toxic Towers polluters was active.  We pulled the article.  Since then we have had second thoughts.  If any judge were to not treat us fairly because we had used our First Amendment right to criticize the misconduct of another judge, let that rest on his conscience.  Nothing will ever end the "little emperor" syndrome afflicting so many judges without public exposure of their arrogance.  The courts belong to US not the judges who serve in them.  It's going to be an uphill battle to reclaim our turf, but it's got to start somewhere.  So it starts here.]

Charles “The Fixer” McCallum is not the only prominent blight upon G.R. law.  There is also Judge Robert Holmes Bell, the chief of the U.S. District Court of West Michigan.  (Always all three names, lest anyone dare think "Judge Bob" will fly.)  Bell is not a crook, but he has indulged in mendacity to conceal his prejudices that no judge should ever indulge.  Bell has cultivated a ferocious bias against ordinary laymen in his court and has blithely disregarded the facts and the law to drive them out of his courtroom under severe sanctions.  It appears that he has long forgotten that the laymen he holds in contempt are the public he has sworn to serve.

By way of illustrating this point, let's take a look at an incident from last June when the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati slapped down our very own Judge Bell.  Bell had thrown the book at Daniel Broucek, who was found guilty of defrauding local investors out of $50 million in a Ponzi scheme.  (Nothing like the grandaddy of all Ponzi schemes here in River City -- or should I say Pyramid City? -- but a pretty respectable haul nonetheless.)  Anyway, the Sixth Circuit told Bell to try again, because he violated federal sentencing guidelines with the excessive prison sentence he gave Broucek.

I suppose it's good that the Sixth Circuit has gotten all riled up over Bell giving a major-league con artist 8 years in the pokey instead of the maximum of 7 1/2 years per the guidelines.  (That's right, a whole six months difference.)  But whither the Sixth Circuit in the several cases over the past few years in which the dyspeptic Bell hammered plaintiffs with unprecedented penalties and sanctions for the temerity of bringing cases before his court as pro se laymen –- i.e., without representation by an attorney?  The crickets have chirped as the judges on the Cincinnati bench waste energy feuding over the politicized administration of big-time cases while neglecting the appeals of the unrepresented and unconnected citizens they think they can sweep under the rug.

(Yes, folks, I do understand that the Sixth Circuit's bench is undermanned because of the recent Democratic filibustering in the Senate.  All that means is that it’s even more outrageous that the judges down there waste any time with infighting.)

And so a sarcastic ol' bastard like Bell carries on lambasting and defaming laymen who peeve him, unchecked by anyone.  I'd say his ill-temper shows that he's too long in the tooth as a judge, but I've been assured by every lawyer who knows him well that Bell has wielded his acid pen from the very beginning a quarter-century ago on the Ingham County bench.  These lawyers tell me he gotten away with his often nasty disposition because he's clever.

I can vouch for that.  Bell used his clout as chief judge to take over a case I and two co-plaintiffs had filed against the Toxic Towers polluters.  He then solicited briefs from the defendants to make completely irrelevant defamatory statements about my character.  (Well, OK, maybe not every statement.  Not even my mother will deny the one about me being a loudmouth and a pain in the ass.)  More seriously, Bell uncritically accepted the accusations from the defendants' lawyers that we had made false statements of fact about the defendants' illegal dumping of hazardous waste.  On that basis, he cooked up a nonsensical legal argument to hit me and my co-plaintiffs with nearly $200,000 in sanctions.

When we presented Bell with the irrefutable evidence of our allegations against the defendants, did the judge do the right thing and admit error?  No.  He dropped the original rationale for the sanctions and cooked up an entirely new one.  He had prejudged us and our case, and no fact, no law was going to shake him loose of his bias.  Bell was clever enough to know if he were vociferous enough in his denunciation -- damn the facts! -- no higher authority would double-check him.  (More on this gripe in an upcoming article examining the little lords who rule our courts.)

Fortunately, to Bell's shame, my co-plaintiffs and I have since been vindicated as truth-tellers in another court.  Meanwhile, let's hope the Sixth Circuit gets its act together soon and does more than nitpick at Judge Robert "Hang 'Em High" Bell's excesses.  Either that or maybe Bell will take advantage of his recent rise to senior judge status that allows him to draw full salary without doing much work as a judge.  That’s a boondoggle not unlike double-dipping, to be sure, but better that than he continues to wield an increasingly malign influence on the local federal bench.

A RIVER RAT'S RANT

I saw in the Press the other day a letter-to-the-editor screed by River Rat lawyer Gary Schenk.  His ruminations frequently appear on the editorial page where he uses his post as a Grand Rapids Community College trustee as a soapbox.  Shyster Schenk's most recent rant had to do with his completely-discredited fever-swamp bloviations of collusive price-fixing on gasoline by oil companies.  (I suppose someone has to represent the Michael Moore contingent of political paranoia in River City.) His "evidence" is the failure of gas prices to fall in anticipation of a drop in crude oil prices.

Well, as far as the economics of gas and oil prices, Schenk has his head up his, well you know where.  But the man likes dark places, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.  Actually Schenk's proof of collusion by oil companies is no proof at all.  Anyone who has charted gas and oil prices knows that gasoline prices don't rise and fall ahead of moves in the crude price -- they trail it.  It's pure supply and demand in a very competitive market.  Moreover, it's not the only thing pushing the price of gas.

The other major factor in gasoline prices in the U.S. is refining capacity.  (Well, actually excise taxes are big component too -- let's leave that for another day.)  Because that capacity is tight, especially in a country that hasn't built a new refinery in a quarter-century, while oil companies build up stocks of gasoline (in all the myriad of formulas dictated by the federal government) in anticipation of the summer travel season, that also pushes up the price this time year.  It also falls like clockwork every year when demand falls in the autumn.

Even with all that, gasoline is still cheaper than that bottled tap water you and I pick up at the gas station.  I suppose it's too much to expect a trustee of one of our institutions of higher education to grasp the basics of Economics 101.  Then again, maybe we shouldn't be too dismissive of Schenk's ravings about what crooks the oil barons are.  It takes one to know one.

BIG BUCK BIO-TECH JOBS?

The Press ran a feature in the business section that illustrates the amorphous nature of the bio-tech boondoggle that state and local government officials are touting.  Perhaps it is a good sign that bio-tech boosters are beginning to reckon with reality, because it looks like the new p.r. thrust for bio-tech is the wealth of opportunity the "life sciences" offer existing manufacturers in River City.

The feature focused on the ups and downs of Rose Technologies Inc., a small "bio-tech" company on the West Side.  Rose Technologies makes components for medical devices.  Nothing really new for Grand Rapids, which is a major center in North America for machine shops and tool-and-die makers manufacturing any manner of precision parts needed in a sophisticated, high-technology economy.  (The photo to the left will give you an idea of the type of medical devices that our local shops can already produce.)  Nevertheless, Rose Technologies is being promoted as an example of what a bio-tech future holds for us if only we will embrace it.

Todd Grimm, president of Rose Technologies, reports that his fellow manufacturers are not too eager to join the bandwagon.  He said to the Press, "When I ask tool and die makers for a tool, they just run because they're afraid of the liability."  No kidding.  Product liability insurance premiums are stiff for medical devices compared to other products.  So, most of the shops in the area don't carry the insurance for that unless it's an important part of their business.  Until the class-action hyenas (a bio-tech buster the boosters never get around to mentioning) are neutered, it's just not reasonable to expect local shops to take on medical device work on a sporadic basis.

Well, they would if paid enough to cover the risk.  But if Rose Technologies is a typical example of the customers for medical device work that local shops can expect, I'm not sure where the money will come from to make taking that risk worthwhile.  Rose Technologies does $2 million a year in sales and feeds 25 employees off that revenue.  Even at the low wages it pays, running between eight to thirteen bucks an hour, that's a pretty skinny financial profile for a manufacturer.  No wonder Grimm can't find tool and die makers to do work for him.  He can't pay them enough.

So much for the bio-tech promise of high-paying jobs and robust businesses.

FOREST HILLS SUPER QUITS

On the news last night I heard that Mike Washburn, superintendent of the Forest Hills public school district, is retiring at the end of the school year.  It's been a long and successful run for him over the past two decades.  Forest Hills is one of the top-performing districts in the state.  A bureaucrat to the bone, Washburn gave all the credit to the teaching staff.  Actually, I would've thought the parents deserved most of the credit for producing the good students in the Forest Hills district.

As it happened, we mentioned Washburn yesterday in another story, "Double-Dipping Epidemic", in which we commented upon the results of a Grand Rapids Press survey documenting the rise in public school administrators retiring with full pension benefits and then immediately returning to their old jobs at full salary as private consultants.  Washburn is a proponent of the practice.  Apparently he has tried to talk some of his top administrators in the Forest Hills district to double-dip.  As I said, he's a bureaucrat to the bone.

No takers so far.  Maybe, Washburn will be the first Forest Hills employee to double-dip.  He told TV-13 news that he will stay on after his retirement, if necessary, to help with the transition to a new superintendent.  I hope that in light of receiving a $200K+ annual compensation package from Forest Hills taxpayers, Washburn will be gracious enough to not double-dip if he thinks his help is needed.  We'll see.

THE PRESS PLAYS CATCH UP WITH L.A.W.

We're always pleased to see the Grand Rapids Press catch up with us.  A couple of weeks ago, we remarked on the mixed news on West Nile virus in Michigan.  On the one hand there have been no reported cases this year.  On the other hand the City Manager Kurt Kimball has axed the $220,000 a year mosquito control program that may have played a role in this good result.  On Monday, the lead editorial in the Press echoed our concerns.  Better late than never.

DOUBLE-DIPPING EPIDEMIC

Most taxpayers probably don't know how good a pension deal many public employees get.  Unlike your 401(k) that your employer may or may not contribute to and all you can expect from it is whatever it's worth by the time you retire, most public employees get a defined-benefit pension.  Typically a public employee receives for the rest of his life a fixed percentage of his top salary upon leaving his job, provided that he has served a certain number of years.  For example, an employee of the City of Grand Rapids is entitled to receive one-quarter of his salary as a pension after only ten years' service with the City.

That's a swell deal.  Even better is that once you qualify to receive a City pension, you can quit your job with the City and then the City hires you back as a private consultant at your old salary minus benefits.  So now you receive both a paycheck and a pension check from the City!  We reported on this double-dipping scam a few months ago regarding the City Engineer.

Double-dipping is not restricted to the City of Grand Rapids.  A lot of the public school districts in the area do the same thing.  Senior administrators retire, begin drawing their pensions, and resume their old positions under a private consulting contracts.  The practice isn't cheap.  The annual salaries paid out can exceed $100,000, while the pension may be as much as $50,000 a year.  This is the sort of deal GRPS Superintendent Bert Bleke has set up for himself when his pension vests after only five years on the job.

The lame excuse that school superintendents give for this crap is that it saves the school district the cost of paying benefits to a retired administrator while retaining his experience.  What they never explain is why the re-hired administrator is allowed to draw his pension in the first place, which typically costs the taxpayers double the savings from not paying benefits -- which, by the way, overlooks the fact that these pensioners often do receive retirement health plans and the such.  Another lame justification is that businesses do this.  Of course, if a business owner miscalculates he loses profits or may even go bankrupt.  There is no such discipline in a public school district.  If the taxpayer cannot be tapped for more to cover double-dipping by senior administrators, then they can instead cut programs for the students.

It is uncertain how many school district condone the double-dipping practice.  The Grand Haven public school district is a particularly aggressive promoter of double-dipping with at least eight administrators drawing two checks from the taxpayers.  Other area school districts that have double-dippers are Allendale, Caledonia, Wyoming, and Zeeland.  The superintendent of the Forest Hills district, Mike Washburn, is pushing double-dipping although he knows how obnoxious the practice is to taxpayers.  (Interesting how normally craven public officials become profiles in courage in the defense of lavish compensation.)  Also, as indicated above, it appears that the Grand Rapids public school district has no objections to double-dipping if it allows Bleke to do it a year from now.

Meanwhile, kudos to Kentwood Superintendent Mary Leiker who has flat out declared double-dipping to be unethical and absolutely will not permit it in her district.

FATTER PAYCHECKS FOR TEACHERS FIX NOTHING

Readers Mark Williams and J. Minore took exception to my remark in a recent article about the "fat salaries" local teachers receive.  I think their comments merit a follow-up article from me.

The problem with public education is not a shortage of funds.  Of course, current cutbacks on state funding is making it harder to maintain pricey teaching staffs, but that assumes that we should continue increasing the salaries and benefits of public school teachers.  There is absolutely no evidence that paying teachers more has resulted in better educated students.  The principal argument for paying teachers high salaries and benefits doesn't wash.  Higher compensation has not attracted a higher caliber of professional.  All that has happened over the past forty years as teacher compensation has exploded under the Michigan Education Association monopoly has been to foster careerism among teachers.

(I have yet to see anyone explain why only MEA teachers are allowed to bid on public school teaching contracts.)

Yes, there are plenty of dedicated teachers in our public schools today who would be there regardless of the pay because they love the job.  However, we had more of those souls in the past.  Indeed, some of the best teachers I had in my thirteen years attending Grand Rapids public schools were not careerists.  They were teachers as a stop along the way to other careers.  We need more of those folks in our public schools.  We also need more people who work in the real world and can teach our kids part-time.  That would improve the caliber of instruction and probably halve the cost of the teaching staffs.

All that said, the fundamental cause of poor student performance is a lack of parental motivation and guidance.  A good teacher may be able to mitigate the adverse effects of poor parenting, but he cannot solve it.  Paying him more isn't going to fix that problem one bit.  So I suggest that everyone getting paid by the public school system stop making false promises to taxpayers that with a little more money they will improve the quality of students in their charge.

CITY MANAGER BUDGET GIMMICK: RENT OUT THE GRFD

Grand Rapids City Manager Kurt Kimball wants to rent out the fire department.  In exchange for $500-800K a year, the City's east side fire stations would respond to alarms in Grand Rapids Township.  Kimball says that the fire department is overstaffed and the deal would be a money-maker for the City.

It should not surprise us anymore, but it looks like Kimball has forgotten what his job is.  It is not to run the City as a for-profit enterprise.  (Indeed, the gaping $130 million hole in the City's budget that opened up under his watch suggests that Kimball might not be the best guy to rely upon if you want to turn a profit.)  Kimball's job is to ensure that the City performs its essential functions for the benefit of its residents.  Public safety is number one on that list.

Kimball's plan would mean that the Plainfield Avenue, Chester Street, and Burton Street stations would each have to respond to an additional 120 alarms in Grand Rapids Township every year.  Plus the LaGrave Station's rescue squad would have its load increased by over 400 calls a year.  On top of that, stations now responding to emergencies within a couple miles of the firehouse would have their response range quadrupled.

How good a deal is this for Grand Rapids residents?  What does it matter to a city resident in an emergency if the township is tossing some change into the city coffers, when a fire unit that was once a few minutes away is now out on call in the boondocks?

It would be one thing for Grand Rapids Township to pay the Grand Rapids Fire Department enough money to add the capacity needed to service the township and then enjoy some savings from the economies of size, but that is not the proposal here.  It's nothing but a budgeting gimmick by a city manager who is either too gutless or too exhausted to make the necessary reforms in the City's budget.  It's time for Kimball to either do his job or quit ... and if he won't do either, then it's time for the City Commission to fire him.