The Local Area Watch

WHO TICKETS THE COPS?

Yesterday I was on I-96 outside of Lansing heading for Grand Rapids.  A woman passed me on the left and continued to pass other cars ahead of me.  She was going about the speed limit.  Then a state cop in a Michigan highway patrol car zoomed by me and pulled right up on the woman's tail.  Because she was still passing a line of vehicles, she had no safe way of moving over into the right lane.  Yet the cop continued to tailgate her.  Finally, she floored it, passed the last car, and shifted into the right lane.  The cop then zipped away at about 85-90 mph.

At no time did the cop have his flashers or siren on.  I soon learned why.  A few miles down the road, I saw the same cop in the median chatting with one his comrades in another patrol car.  It was apparent that they were setting up the spots where they would radar the oncoming evening rush hour.  Hardly an emergency.

Now why shouldn't I be disgusted with the conduct of this cop?  Had he observed me driving in the same reckless manner, he would have ticketed me -- and rightly so.  This cop flouting the law is only the half of it.  It was deadly dangerous for him to hang on that woman's bumper at 70-75 mph in heavy traffic.  For any number of reasons, she might have had to brake urgently, and WHAP! that cop would have plowed into the back of her car.  There was no excuse for the cop driving the way he did.  It was nothing more than the arrogance of man who thinks wearing a badge puts him above the law he is duty-bound to serve.

If this were an isolated instance, I would be making too much of a fuss.  The fact is that I usually see the state highway cops speeding and tailgating on the expressways without any indication that they are responding to an emergency.  Plainly they know there is no one who will be ticketing them for their reckless driving.

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

Dear Readers,

The crickets you may think you have heard chirping around here lately doesn't mean that the Local Area Watch is gone.  We've been quite busy.  Unfortunately, the things we need to do to be able to post articles on the website means we sometimes have to take time away from doing just that.  But we will be back with new stories before the end of the month, including the next installment in the scandal at the Kent County medical examiner's office.

Regards, Bill Tingley, Executive Director

CITY RELEASES BOARDWALK DOCUMENTS

We settled the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that we filed against the City of Grand Rapids last year.  We had requested, among other things, two letters that the City had received from the developers of the Boardwalk project (see related story below).  Both letters made statements as to the amount invested into the project, but those statements differed wildly.  One was $31.5 million and the other $20 million.  The City attorney's office refused to disclose these letters to us, hence the lawsuit.

The $31.5 million statement supported a valuation of the project that allowed the developers to borrow $26.5 million against it from Fifth Third Bank and National City Community Development Corporation.  The $20 million statement was used to justify a low-ball tax assessment of the project by the City of only $16.5 million.  So the developers got the best of both worlds:  A $31.5 million figure that let them borrow $10-12 million more than the $20 million figure would have permitted and a $20 million figure that cut their property taxes in half over the past five years compared to the $31.5 million figure.

Of course, both investment amounts can't be true.  If the $20 million figure is correct, that's evidence of bank fraud.  If the $31.5 million figure is correct, that's evidence of tax fraud (or at the very least, mind-boggling incompetence by the City Assessor's office).  If it's not bank fraud, then the city, state, and school tax coffers have been shorted by more than a million dollars because of a false assessment of the Boardwalk project.  Remember that when Heartwell beats the drum for city tax increases while telling you that park restrooms and swimming pools must stay closed.

Anyway, we got a copy of the $31.5 million letter from one of our readers during the course of litigation.  We posted that here.  So we focused upon the release of the $20 million letter.  Two weeks ago, we came to an agreement with the City to obtain its release.  We now have it, and it says what we thought it did.  (We'll post an image of it soon.)  Now we'll see if we can get our City officials to recover this huge loss of tax dollars, otherwise you'll be making up the difference instead of the crooks.

Stay tuned.

LATEST TURN IN TOXIC TOWERS CASE

The Toxic Towers case is the lawsuit we filed in June 2002 against the developers of the Boardwalk residential-commercial complex, their contractors Pioneer Inc. and Dykema Excavators, and the City of Grand Rapids to hold them accountable for illegally dumping 20,000 tons of hazardous waste on the grounds of the old water filtration plant on Monroe Avenue (now rechristened with your "Cool City" tax dollars as Clear Water Plaza).  As outlined here, this case has followed what must be the most bizarre procedural path through the state courts in Michigan history.  Nevertheless, we have stuck to our guns.

In response to the Michigan Supreme Court's split and contentious decision in April 2006 to remand the Toxic Towers case to the Michigan Court of Appeals for review of a legal question instead of the Kent County Circuit Court for resumption of normal proceedings, our attorneys filed with the high court a motion to reconsider.  With no surprise, this week the chief justice announced that there was nothing for the high court to reconsider.

Now the case rests with the Court of Appeals to decide a specific question about our legal standing that wouldn't be before it except for the fiat of the Supreme Court.  Fortunately, the Court of Appeals has previously decided the issue of standing in our favor (twice now).  Furthermore, the Kent County Circuit Court, after reviewing our evidence of Pioneer's and Dykema's illegal removal of hazardous waste from the Boardwalk property to the filtration plant, also decided the issue of standing in our favor within the strictures the Supreme Court has laid out.  So, we have good reason to think our case will go forward -- eventually.

The galling thing about all of this is that the polluter-defendants didn't appeal to the Supreme Court these decisions on standing made by either the Court of Appeals or the Circuit Court.  Their appeal was based upon a very strange and narrow ruling of the Court of Appeals which it soon corrected.  So this thrice-settled issue of standing was not even before the Supreme Court.  Oh well, so much for the court rules and the law.  The fact is, folks, our state supreme court just like the U.S. Supreme Court is about politics not the law.