The Local Area Watch

A HEADSCRATCHER

This week's edition of the Grand Rapids Business Journal had an announcement that the local chapter of Junior Achievement is giving Silver Leadership Awards to Doug DeVos and Mike Lloyd and a Bronze Leadership Award to Bert Bleke.  I don't get it.  What is there to honor in being the son of a MLM scam artist, the editor who devolved the newspaper of record into happy-talk community bulletin, and the school superintendent who presided over the mass exodus of students to other districts?

I realize that these days we are awash in the exchange of tributes, honors, and awards for this, that, and the other thing.  It's all part of the mutual admiration society that River City mucky-ups hunger to join.  But JA has had some credibility as a substantial organization.  Are its honors now meaningless too?

WE'RE NOT ON OUR OWN, WE HAVE DICK JR!

I closed the preceding story with the statement that you're on your own when it comes to making sure that you and your loved ones get the proper health care from River City's medical monopoly, Spectrum Health.  Maybe some of you are tempted think that because Dick DeVos Jr. has now pledged to protect the little guy against rapacious Big Oil, he will do the same against Big Medicine up on the hill.

Don't count on it.  Gubernatorial candidate Dick Jr. won't be addressing the failure of both state and local governments to police the problems at Spectrum Health and the Kent County medical examiner's office that have been revealed by the tragedies of the Jennings and Sallie families.  The reason is simple.  The DeVos family has mired their business interests in the financial well-being of Spectrum Health.  The old man, Rich DeVos, was the founding chairman of the health care colossus and remains an active member of the board.  Dick Jr. headed the Butterworth Foundation, a non-profit that solicits funds for the expansion of Spectrum Health, and keeps his hand in the game with his recent investment -- ahem, gift -- to the Spectrum's children's hospital that bears his mother's name.

With this influence over Spectrum, the old man has hitched the family's star to the big Michigan Street medical complex which will be paid for with income from Spectrum Health and its affiliates, doctors, contractors, and other related business activities.  Plus, there are all the entanglements that the DeVoses' partners, the Van Andel family, have with Spectrum Health through the Van Andel Institute.  So, don't look to Dick Jr. to watch your back on this one, dear readers.

SPECTRUM BULLIES TV STATION TO PULL NEWS STORY

You may recall the story we posted at the beginning of the year about the mysterious fates of Phyllis Jennings's father and Kristi Sallie's mother at Spectrum Health facilities.  Despite plain evidence to the contrary, such as unusual wounds and bruises on the body of the father Edwin Jennings, Spectrum's in-house pathologists declared that in neither case was there anything suspect in their deaths.  (We then also learned of a third unusual death fitting the same profile that was whitewashed by Spectrum officials.)  The Kent County Medical Examiner Stephen Cohle poohed-poohed the complaints of the Jennings and Sallie families and closed the matter with a report, that a professional if not a layman would immediately recognize as scandalously vague and incomplete.

Come to find out, Cohle was highly unlikely to ever critically examine the work of Spectrum's pathologists, because they are contractors provided to Spectrum Health by Laboratory Pathologists P.C., a medical services firm he owns!  In other words, despite the duties of his public office Cohle was not about to bite the hand that feeds him.  Meanwhile, taxpayers are paying good money to have the fox watch the henhouse, and the Kent County Board of Commissioners has been despicable in its refusal to take effective action to rid the public of this gross conflict of interest.  And justice continues to be denied the Jennings and Sallie families.

On top of all this, the Jennings family was shocked to discover that Spectrum Health removed Edwin's brain and arranged to have it delivered to the Transplantation Society.  However, Edwin was not an organ donor.  Moreover, neither Cohle's pathologists working for Spectrum nor Cohle as the medical examiner mentioned in their official reports that Edwin's brain had been removed from his body.  The Jennings only learned of this horror when they had Edwin's body exhumed four months after his burial for an independent, professional autopsy.  Afterwards, Spectrum Health without explanation returned Edwin's brain in a vat of formaldehyde.

As it happens there is a booming market in the U.S. for human body parts and tissues.  Unscrupulous funeral homes, hospitals, and medical labs remove pricey parts of the deceased, who are then soon buried, which pretty much eliminates the evidence of the crime.  Once again, your medical examiner Stephen Cohle has no interest in pursuing this matter.  In light of the direct conflict of interest with his company, Laboratory Pathologists, which was involved in the disappearance of Edwin's brain -- his inaction is unacceptable.

Although the local media has not done a good job of covering this important story, Detroit's ABC affiliate WXYZ TV7 did.  After recently airing the story of Edwin's stolen brain on the evening newscast, reporter Ray Sayah posted the story on WXYZ's website on May 7, 2006.  According to Sayah, Spectrum Health then leaned on WXYZ to delete the story and the station capitulated.  You now can no longer find the story about Edwin Jennings on its website.  WXYZ is an aggressive news organization, so it makes one wonder what kind of threat Spectrum could have made that intimidated the station.  Whatever it was, it worked.

So, remember, folks.  Spectrum Health protects itself, not the health of you and your loved ones.  For Stephen Cohle, the Kent County medical examiner, taking care of his private business affairs trumps his public duty to you.  Your elected officials, in particular the Kent County Board of Commissioners, simply don't give a damn about that conflict of interest.  And the media in Michigan, if not already in the bag for Spectrum (like Grand Rapids Press publisher Danny Gaydou) have feet of clay when comes to the big hospital on the hill.  Therefore, never forget you're on your own.

UNCHARMING

I guess it's not enough for the Grand Rapids Press to be insipid.  It needs to be vile, too.  In yesterday's sports section was the headline "Not So Tasty Lucky Charms".  Below it was a photo of the trainer for the Costa Rican national soccer team helping one of the players in a stretching exercise.  The photo was shot from an angle that put the trainer's face near the crotch of the player, hence the prurient headline that only a thirteen-year-old boy could think is clever.

SAY ANYTHING

I've had a lot to say about Dick Jr.'s campaign ads for governor -- and none of it good.  But I haven't wanted to leave the impression that Guv Jen has covered herself in glory by a lack of commentary about her campaign, so I was working on an article about her economic illiteracy.  Alas, this morning Dick Jr. had a radio commercial that trumped any of the economic nonsense that Jenny has spouted.  So he's not giving me a chance to appear even-handed in this campaign -- even though I'm trying.

To wit, Dick Jr. pronounced that evil Big Oil is raping the consumers with record high gasoline prices while raking in record profits.  The problem with Dick's charge against the oil companies is that it's a load of cobblers, as any experienced businessman -- as he claims to be -- would know.  (Besides, who is Dick Jr. to complain about high prices for ordinary products in light of the extortionate amounts his Quixtar "Independent Business Owners" browbeat their relatives and friends into paying for soap and vitamins?)

Gasoline is expensive, because China and India have greatly increased the demand for the petroleum from which it is refined.  In time new oilfields will go into production, and supply will exceed demand and prices will drop.  Meanwhile supply is artificially restricted because U.S. lawmakers banned drilling for oil across large swaths of the country, including the Alaskan Arctic, the West Coast, the eastern half of the Gulf Coast, and the Atlantic Coast.  Another problem is that environmental regulations and petty NIMBY politics have prevented the construction of any new gasoline refineries in the U.S. since the late '70s.  That's another bottleneck that restricts the supply of gasoline.

On top of all this, the federal government has mandated a myriad of different gasoline formulas for different parts of the country.  Therefore, if oil companies don't estimate the need for different formulas correctly, one part of the country can experience a gasoline shortage of one formula while another part has plenty of another formula, which is illegal to sell anywhere else.  (Fortunately, the Bush Administration has recently suspended, but not abolished, this idiocy to alleviate shortages ahead of the summer travel season.)

Despite these problems restricting supply, gasoline is still a lot cheaper by volume than that bottled water you buy while filling up at the corner gas station.  That's because the competition in gasoline is intense.  There is no conspiracy to jack up prices above the level that the laws of supply and demand dictate.  (Indeed, it would be a criminal violation of federal law to do so, and repeated investigations have found no shred of evidence of such collusion.)  And that is why oil company profits net out at about 10% percent, which an experienced businessman like Dick Jr. should know is pretty typical for most large companies.

So what should we conclude from Dick Jr.'s latest ad?  Either he isn't the experienced businessman he claims to be, which is why he is spewing such tripe about oil company profits, or he is a political whore who will tell you anything to get your vote.  You decide.

WHEN WILL IT STOP?

When enough people of goodwill refuse to be intimidated by baseless accusations of racism and call out the racemongers as the evildoers who refuse to allow the wounds of bigotry, racial oppression, and segregation to heal.  I'm referring, of course, to the incessant refrain from so-called black leaders who decry as racist every public decision that doesn't cater to their special interests.

The latest example is a gang led by retired advertising executive Bob Crawford and, no surprise, Kent County Commissioner Paul Mayhue, who have vilified as bigots the Grand Rapids Board of Education for not selecting their choice, a black-owned firm, to supervise the school district's substitute teachers.  According to the Grand Rapids Press, Crawford was "absolutely appalled" by the board's decision as appearing "very racist in nature" and typical of a "white power structure [that] leaves us out of most of the governmental and business decisions in mainstream Grand Rapids".

What is actually typical of these disputes is that Crawford's charges are a calumny.  He and his group of activists offer no evidence of racism.  They simply cite the fact that the board didn't hire the black-owned firm they preferred.  Instead the board hired the same firm as seventeen other area school districts because the choice saved the taxpayers the most money.  That's it.  Zero facts to support the ugly charge of racism.  It is for this reason I cannot reasonably conclude that Crawford and Mayhue and their cohorts are acting in good faith.

I would like to think otherwise, especially because I have made common cause with Mayhue in the past on an important issue.  But accusing people of calculated bigotry is a serious matter, and I would be ashamed of myself to do so without a shred of evidence.  Could it have truly escaped the conscience of both Crawford and Mayhue that they are tarring the reputations of people without good cause?  I suspect they are so free with their strident denunciations of the Grand Rapids school board, because they don't honestly believe their own accusations and don't expect anyone of consequence to take them seriously either.  Not doubt there is also a healthy amount of end-justifying-the-means sanctimony in that mix, too.

If so, what they are doing is particularly reprehensible.

That's because, if for no other reason, Crawford, Mayhue, and company are refusing to let the wrongs of the past slip into history by stirring distrust and paranoia in the generation raised since the collapse of government-enforced segregation that is now coming into power.  They are poisoning the well of comity and exhausting the goodwill of those who have learned the lessons of the civil rights era.  I have already explained how this is so here and here, so I won't reiterate those points now.  Suffice it to say that I am not giving up on the ideal of a colorblind society and will continue to call out those who would derail us from that destination, even if that means I will be perversely labeled as bigoted or heartless or ignorant for doing so.

THE NAKED TRUTH ...

... is not what the media around here usually reports.  Indeed, it's amazing how the hundreds of people who are paid in River City to collect and report the facts about town can't seem to get anything but the simplest stories right.

A current example is the defense fund that blue nose Judy Rose claims to have at the ready to pay for the expenses the City of Grand Rapids will incur in federal court defending the new adult entertainment ordinance the City Commission passed last month.  All of the local media, from the silly (Kevin Matthew's morning show on WLAV-FM) to the newspaper of record (the Grand Rapids Press), has parroted the city government's official line that the expenses the City Attorney's office will incur in defending the ordinance against a newly filed legal challenge in U.S. District Court by strip club owner Mark London will be covered by Rose's $100,000 defense fund.

With the notable exception of Anne Schieber of WOOD TV8 news, none of the media has reported the significant fact that Rose's fund has only a thousand bucks in it.  (A fact, dear readers, you already knew because you read it here first.)  The other $99,000 are a collection of promises from a group of unnamed backers of Rose's jihad against local strip joints.  Rose says she has compiled a list of these secret pledges, which she supposedly showed to City Attorney Phil Balkema on the condition that he not divulge to anyone what he saw -- not even the Mayor or the City Commissioners, who blindly accepted Rose's assurances of financial support and so voted 6-1 to approve the new ordinance.  Of course, by not demanding a copy of this alleged list, Balkema ensured that there would be no public record for residents and taxpayers to assess the reliability of Rose's pledges.  (But then, you really didn't think the City Attorney works for you, did you?)

So the cupboard's bare, except for a pile of IOU's.  However, the legal bills to the City of Grand Rapids will be real enough.  For reasons unfathomable to me, the City has hired Tennessee lawyer Scott Bergthold to represent it in federal court.  He is the character who represented the City in the Velvet Touch fiasco all of the way up to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and got the taxpayers of the City slapped with not only paying his bill but also the court's sanction to pay the legal bills of the Velvet Touch for a total of a quarter million dollars.  Bergthold got the job again after he lobbied the City Commission hard to pass this new ordinance that he drafted.  Genius actually.  Bergthold invented a good-paying case for himself.  Whether the City wins or loses, he'll be laughing all of the way to the bank with your tax dollars.  Just another set of facts about this story that have eluded the local media.

Another under-reported fact are the actual terms of Rose's defense fund.  Until recently there wasn't any enforceable agreement for Rose's group to pay for any legal expenses incurred by the City.  All the City had was Rose's letters pestering Mayor Heartwell to run London's new strip club out of town if her group creates a defense fund and Heartwell's plea to Balkema to find some way to appease Rose.  Now there exists a written commitment that Rose's group will ask its secret backers to make good their pledges to the defense fund when the City Attorney's office submits to it an invoice for "extraordinary" legal expenses in the London lawsuit.  Extraordinary?  I wonder what that means.  It certainly doesn't mean every cost.  Furthermore, the payment of those invoices from the City Attorney's office are not assured.  That happens only if the alleged pledges are honored.

Meanwhile, the City Attorney's office has a bill from Bergthold to pay for a private dick who visited River City's sex emporiums.  Apparently Mayor Heartwell and the City Commissioners needed to know what was going in those strip joints and dirty book stores.  While on the taxpayers' dime, Bergthold's detective needed have his face rubbed in the breasts and buttocks of several strippers to find out for certain, which he dutifully reported in a lengthy report Bergthold submitted to our esteemed local solons.  I wonder if Ms. Rose will consider that an extraordinary expense.

Whether she does or doesn't, don't expect to find out from the local media.

PICKPOCKET ALERT!

In the same article about DeVos, reporter Mark Fellows covered a statement by David Frey, co-chairman of the Grand Action committee, about public-private partnerships.  "We have never asked the city, county, DDA, state of Michigan, or our friends in Washington [i.e., the taxpayers] without first having private sector support in hand," according to Frey.  Hmm.

Keep in mind, folks, that one of Grand Action's big projects is a local campus for MSU's unwanted and unloved College of Human Medicine.  Some estimates of the cost of bringing the medical school to River City reach $600 million, along with a plethora of assurances (or at least double-talk) that the taxpayers won't be tapped for building part of the infrastructure that the Van Andel Institute demands for realizing its bio-tech dreams.

DEVOS NIXES LEGACY

Amway co-founder Rich DeVos made a curious statement after receiving the taxpayer-subsidized Woodrow Wilson award for public service.  According to Mark Fellows in the May 4th edition of Business Review Western Michigan, DeVos stated that he and his wife "have no concern about keeping a foundation alive" after they die.  He apparently has no plans of endowing, upon his demise, a foundation to carry out charitable works.

He then, once again, boasted about getting his name on various things in Grand Rapids and prided himself on his vanity which drove him to "outbid" everyone else to get his name on projects like the new convention center downtown.  Of course, vanity is of little use to a man six-feet-under.  Likewise, a foundation that has been the vehicle for that vanity.  So, DeVos's coolness to an enduring charitable legacy makes sense in that regard.

Then again, the old man may be setting the stage to pre-empt the embarrassing prospect of his heirs looting the cash from his foundation after his death in the way the children of his late partner Jay Van Andel sacked the Van Andel Foundation a month after their father's funeral and then permanently shut it down.

OF COURSE, IT'S OBVIOUS ONCE YOU THINK ABOUT: URBAN PLANNERS AREN'T HIP

I have poked fun at the Urban Planeteers, criticized the Cool City boondoggles, griped about Fowler's Folly, and explained how "planning" strips the muscle from a city.  My theme has been that government cannot plan a dynamic city.  All it can do is maintain the necessary order and basic municipal functions that allow individuals to privately manage their own property within the city.

The reason for this is that no central authority can ever accumulate sufficient information to determine what is the best use of all properties at all times.  (F.A. Hayek explained it best in "The Road to Serfdom".)  That's how we end up with hellholes like Cabrini Green where a vibrant neighborhood once stood and the demolition of architecturally grand public buildings to make room for concrete plazas.

Think about it, people.  Do you really believe that the humorless urban planning major sitting next to you in English 101 who was fascinated by zoning ordinances and building codes and now is a staffer in the city's planning department can really make downtown funky with a click of his bureaucratic pen?  Believing that is how $82,000 in taxes get spent on a P.R. campaign telling citizens to keep Grand Rapids a secret.  Yeah, that's hip and cool.

The Opinion Journal has posted an interesting article about the late Jane Jacobs, author of the seminal book on the folly of urban planning "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".  A relevant snippet:

>>[Jacobs] felt it was foolish to focus on how cities look rather than how they function as economic laboratories. "The main responsibility of city planning and design should be to develop--insofar as public policy and action can do so--cities that are congenial places for [a] great range of unofficial plans, ideas and opportunities to flourish," Jacobs wrote.

>>Sadly, many in the Smart Growth and New Urbanism movements cite Jacobs as the inspiration for their efforts to combat so-called "urban sprawl" and make over suburbia with dense, walkable downtowns, mixed-use development, and varied building styles. While Jacobs identified these as organic elements of successful cities, planners have eagerly tried to impose them on cities in formulaic fashion, regardless of their contextual appropriateness and compatibility with the underlying economic order. In short, they've taken Jacobs's observations of what makes cities work and tried to formalize them into an authoritarian recipe for policy intervention.<<

Click here for the entire article.

DOOM, DESPAIR, AND AGONY ON US

That sums up what we can expect from the Grand Rapids City Attorney's office as it embarks upon another fool's errand.  Here are a few L.A.W. highlights of the City Attorney's past hijinks.

THE VELVET TOUCH FIASCO (first posted on April 14, 2005)

On Tuesday the Grand Rapids City Commission meekly acquiesced to a federal court order requiring the City to reimburse the Velvet Touch adult bookstore $125,000 for the attorney fees it incurred to stop the City Attorney's office from shutting it down.  Assistant City Attorneys Daniel Ophoff and Catherine Mish also racked up a similar sum in legal costs, including the retention of a private attorney out of Tennessee to help them.  Therefore, the Velvet Touch fiasco cost taxpayers a quarter-million dollars without a single benefit to be gained.

And a fiasco it was.  None of this would have happened had the City Commission been on the ball and modernized the zoning ordinance regulating adult businesses or had City officials not reneged on its original finding that the Velvet Touch complied with the existing ordinance.

Back in August 2000 the Velvet Touch looked into moving its store to its present location on 28th Street in Grand Rapids.  The City zoning ordinance would not permit the Velvet Touch to locate there without a variance if it fell under the definition of an adult business.  Under the ordinance at the time, which had been drafted in the '70s, if 5% of a retailer's stock were sexually explicit printed materials, then it was deemed an adult business.  As it happened, only 3% of the Velvet Touch's stock constituted the offending materials.  Much of the remainder consisted of pornographic videos and sex toys, which the archaic ordinance did not address.  So interpreting the ordinance by its plain language, the City board of zoning appeals ruled that the Velvet Touch did not need a variance and could operate at its new location.

An owner of property adjacent to the Velvet Touch challenged the City's decision in Kent County Circuit Court.  Then the Grand Rapids City Commission revised the ordinance restricting the permissible locations of adult businesses.  The commissioners drafted the revision in such a way that there existed almost no place within the city limits where the Velvet Touch would be allowed to operate.  Indeed, they targeted the new ordinance at the Velvet Touch.  When City officials then tried to retroactively apply the new ordinance to the Velvet Touch to shut it down, the Velvet Touch sought protection from the U.S. District Court.

In stepped Ophoff and Mish and everyone's legal bills began to escalate.  The U.S. District Court invalidated the City's new adult business ordinance as unconstitutionally restrictive of businesses engaged in the sale of legal goods.  Ophoff and Mish appealed the decision to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.  They hired an appellate attorney named Scott Bergthold out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to handled the appeal.  Again the City lost.

So, the Velvet Touch continues to operate at its new location and the taxpayers are now on the hook for a quarter-million dollars for this fool's errand.  Had the City Commission been competent enough to draft a modern and constitutionally valid zoning ordinance, or had City officials simply honored their original decision, or had the City Attorney's office had the wits to advise the City Commission they were fighting a losing battle -- none of this would have happened.  Be assured, however, that only you, the taxpayer, will be paying for this fiasco.

RIVER RAT OPHOFF SHREDS DOCUMENTS (first published on May 9, 2002)

This is outrageous. Today Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff told LAW’s attorney Peter Steketee that the City Attorney’s Office has destroyed the public records that LAW has asked the local court to disclose to it and the public under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead of turning these public records over to the court so that a circuit court judge can review them to decide whether to disclose them to the public, Ophoff had them destroyed.

These public records were minutes of closed sessions of the Grand Rapids City Commission held on March 6, 2001, and May 8, 2001, in which Mayor Logie and City Commissioners made decisions to NOT investigate the dumping of hazardous waste at the old Grand Rapids Water Filtration Plant located on Monroe Avenue, just north of Leonard Street. Because these decisions were made in secret instead of in an open meeting, where Boss Logie and the Empty Suits would have been accountable to the public and the media, it looked like those closed meetings were conducted in violation of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

Because I was twice tipped off by Commissar – ahem – I mean, Commissioner Jendrasiak (you know him, the self-proclaimed champion of the workingman who keeps his blue collar neatly tucked beneath his pinstripes) as to what transpired in those closed sessions, last June I, as your executive director, sent Boss Logie a FOIA request for those closed session minutes and other public records concerning the dumping of hazardous waste at the old filtration plant. After jerking me around for several weeks, City Manager Kurt Kimball finally refused to publicly disclose the minutes.

Consequently Peter Steketee filed a FOIA action in the Kent County Circuit Court (Local Area Watch v City of Grand Rapids, Case No. 02-00218-CZ) in January of this year to compel disclosure of the closed session minutes and other public records the City was withholding. LAW then made a discovery request of the City for those minutes and gave the City until the end of February to comply. When the deadline for producing the minutes came up, Ophoff asked Steketee for several extensions of the deadline because he needed the extra time to answer our discovery request.

Now we know that Ophoff was lying to Steketee. Instead of using the extra time we had given him in good faith to produce the closed session minutes, he used that time to destroy the documents. So much for FOIA and the Open Meetings Act, the tools that the State legislature created a quarter-century ago for mere citizens like us to keep on an eye on our government if stooges like Ophoff can make toast of embarrassing records to prevent their public disclosure. If he and the City gets away with this, we’re just one step away from the Ministry of Truth here in ol’ River City.

Well, we’ll see. Steketee is teeing up an injunction request to stop Ophoff and the City from destroying any further evidence of what happened in those closed sessions. Keep your fingers and we’ll keep you informed.

TORMALA DENOUNCES GUTLESSNESS OF CITY ATTORNEYS (first published on March 1, 2005)

Last Tuesday City Commissioner Rick Tormala used his position on the Fiscal Committee to block a $7,500 settlement that Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers had negotiated to resolve a personal injury claim brought by a Kentwood man arrested by the Grand Rapids police a few years ago.  The man, Raymond Gallagher, complained the police hurt his wrists when they handcuffed him.  However, there is no dispute that the police acted properly or that Gallagher was permanently injured.

Tormala is right to take the City's attorneys to task for their gutlessness in settling cases that have little going for them other than a feared (and not necessarily real) emotional appeal to a jury.  After all, it's the taxpayers' money being thrown down the drain when City attorneys run away from a jury when the law is on the City's side.

Then again, why is Tormala silent when a City attorney makes common cause with malefactors, such at the Toxic Towers polluters, in a personal vendetta, destroying incriminating public records, filing false statements with courts, racking up big costs for the City, and leaving the taxpayers exposed to potentially billions of dollars in fines once a jury sees videotape evidence of the very acts the City Attorney's office is denying happened?

Why the silence about such folly?  Oh, that's right.  Because the City Attorney's Office ordered Tormala and his fellow commissioners to say nothing.*  So who's really working for whom at City Hall?

________________________

* Both Mayor Heartwell and Commissioner Tormala informed me last year that all of the elected officials in the City government were prohibited from discussing the Toxic Towers case upon the orders of the City Attorney's office.

This is outrageous. Today Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff told LAW’s attorney Peter Steketee that the City Attorney’s Office has destroyed the public records that LAW has asked the local court to disclose to it and the public under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead of turning these public records over to the court so that a circuit court judge can review them to decide whether to disclose them to the public, Ophoff had them destroyed.

These public records were minutes of closed sessions of the Grand Rapids City Commission held on March 6, 2001, and May 8, 2001, in which Mayor Logie and City Commissioners made decisions to NOT investigate the dumping of hazardous waste at the old Grand Rapids Water Filtration Plant located on Monroe Avenue, just north of Leonard Street. Because these decisions were made in secret instead of in an open meeting, where Boss Logie and the Empty Suits would have been accountable to the public and the media, it looked like those closed meetings were conducted in violation of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

Because I was twice tipped off by Commissar – ahem – I mean, Commissioner Jendrasiak (you know him, the self-proclaimed champion of the workingman who keeps his blue collar neatly tucked beneath his pinstripes) as to what transpired in those closed sessions, last June I, as your executive director, sent Boss Logie a FOIA request for those closed session minutes and other public records concerning the dumping of hazardous waste at the old filtration plant. After jerking me around for several weeks, City Manager Kurt Kimball finally refused to publicly disclose the minutes.

Consequently Peter Steketee filed a FOIA action in the Kent County Circuit Court (Local Area Watch v City of Grand Rapids, Case No. 02-00218-CZ) in January of this year to compel disclosure of the closed session minutes and other public records the City was withholding. LAW then made a discovery request of the City for those minutes and gave the City until the end of February to comply. When the deadline for producing the minutes came up, Ophoff asked Steketee for several extensions of the deadline because he needed the extra time to answer our discovery request.

Now we know that Ophoff was lying to Steketee. Instead of using the extra time we had given him in good faith to produce the closed session minutes, he used that time to destroy the documents. So much for FOIA and the Open Meetings Act, the tools that the State legislature created a quarter-century ago for mere citizens like us to keep on an eye on our government if stooges like Ophoff can make toast of embarrassing records to prevent their public disclosure. If he and the City gets away with this, we’re just one step away from the Ministry of Truth here in ol’ River City.

Well, we’ll see. Steketee is teeing up an injunction request to stop Ophoff and the City from destroying any further evidence of what happened in those closed sessions. Keep your fingers and we’ll keep you informed.

TORMALA DENOUNCES GUTLESSNESS OF CITY ATTORNEYS (first published on March 1, 2005)

Last Tuesday City Commissioner Rick Tormala used his position on the Fiscal Committee to block a $7,500 settlement that Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers had negotiated to resolve a personal injury claim brought by a Kentwood man arrested by the Grand Rapids police a few years ago.  The man, Raymond Gallagher, complained the police hurt his wrists when they handcuffed him.  However, there is no dispute that the police acted properly or that Gallagher was permanently injured.

Tormala is right to take the City's attorneys to task for their gutlessness in settling cases that have little going for them other than a feared (and not necessarily real) emotional appeal to a jury.  After all, it's the taxpayers' money being thrown down the drain when City attorneys run away from a jury when the law is on the City's side.

Then again, why is Tormala silent when a City attorney makes common cause with malefactors, such at the Toxic Towers polluters, in a personal vendetta, destroying incriminating public records, filing false statements with courts, racking up big costs for the City, and leaving the taxpayers exposed to potentially billions of dollars in fines once a jury sees videotape evidence of the very acts the City Attorney's office is denying happened?

Why the silence about such folly?  Oh, that's right.  Because the City Attorney's Office ordered Tormala and his fellow commissioners to say nothing.*  So who's really working for whom at City Hall?

________________________

* Both Mayor Heartwell and Commissioner Tormala informed me last year that all of the elected officials in the City government were prohibited from discussing the Toxic Towers case upon the orders of the City Attorney's office.

Last Tuesday City Commissioner Rick Tormala used his position on the Fiscal Committee to block a $7,500 settlement that Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers had negotiated to resolve a personal injury claim brought by a Kentwood man arrested by the Grand Rapids police a few years ago.  The man, Raymond Gallagher, complained the police hurt his wrists when they handcuffed him.  However, there is no dispute that the police acted properly or that Gallagher was permanently injured.

Tormala is right to take the City's attorneys to task for their gutlessness in settling cases that have little going for them other than a feared (and not necessarily real) emotional appeal to a jury.  After all, it's the taxpayers' money being thrown down the drain when City attorneys run away from a jury when the law is on the City's side.

Then again, why is Tormala silent when a City attorney makes common cause with malefactors, such at the Toxic Towers polluters, in a personal vendetta, destroying incriminating public records, filing false statements with courts, racking up big costs for the City, and leaving the taxpayers exposed to potentially billions of dollars in fines once a jury sees videotape evidence of the very acts the City Attorney's office is denying happened?

Why the silence about such folly?  Oh, that's right.  Because the City Attorney's Office ordered Tormala and his fellow commissioners to say nothing.*  So who's really working for whom at City Hall?

________________________

* Both Mayor Heartwell and Commissioner Tormala informed me last year that all of the elected officials in the City government were prohibited from discussing the Toxic Towers case upon the orders of the City Attorney's office.