AnnArbor.com’s Ryan Stanton reported Sunday that some private citizens have taken it upon themselves to FOIA six years of emails sent by our City Council members to each other during open meetings. The Ann Arbor residents involved have undertaken the task because on September 21st Council voted down a resolution put forward by Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin and First Ward Council member Sabra Briere to release the emails to the public on the City’s dime. (I wrote about that here.) City officials, including Attorney Stephen Postema and CIO Dan Rainey, broke out the old abacus and calculated that it would cost $45,000 in city man power to retrieve the emails from the server, examine and redact the materials. (I wrote about a way to get the job done more cheaply here.)
Since Council members and Mayor Hieftje felt that $45,000 was too much tax money to waste on the project, the resolution was voted down 8-3. Of course, it could also be that there are members of Ann Arbor City Council who would rather have bamboo shoved underneath their fingernails than to have any more of their puerile, arrogant and embarrassing emails released to the public. It could also be that there were emails sent between Council members during open meetings over the past six years that, say, are clear violations of the Open Meetings Act, or provide even more examples of our Council members vote-rigging, scripting debates and behaving like a bunch of graduates of the Tammany Hall School of Politics. It could also be that there are other past Council members— some big cheese local politicos—such as Christopher Easthope (now Judge Christopher Easthope), Joan Lowenstein (former Second Ward Council member and current Board member of the DDA), Wendy Woods (former Fifth Ward Council member and current member of the Planning Commission), Jean Carlberg (former Third Ward Council member and present member of the Planning Commission) and Heidi Herrell (former Third Ward Council member and current Third Ward Chair of the Ann Arbor City Democratic Party) whose emails could potentially involve them in the scandal.
There are a million reasons why this lot of politically connected people want their emails sent while they served on City Council kept out of the public eye, and why they want the media coverage of those same emails to just dry up and blow away. After all, wasn’t the sacrifice of Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden to the gods of the email scandal payment enough for the rest of them? They’re feeling Leigh’s pain, really they are. Sometimes, alas, the gods can’t be appeased by the take-down of a ring-leader. The gods can be dastardly in their demands of repayment when the bar tab for a decade of bad political karma comes due.
Call the group of people filing the FOIAs whatever you like: vindictive, crazy SOBs, or citizens devoted to transparency in local government, but the emails will come out, just as surely as Kwame’s (tip o’ the keyboard to Larry Kestenbaum) text messages did. Frankly, I hope we don’t have to read about Joan Lowenstein rigging any more votes (in July of 2009, the Ann Arbor News nabbed Lowenstein rigging the vote over her own proposed pay raise), or that Jean Carlberg and Leigh Greden wiled away time at Council meetings trading snotty emails about First Ward Council member Kim Groome, and scripting debates together. Will we read more about Christopher Easthope, getting caught by the newspaper working on his campaign for the bench via email with Leigh Greden in the middle of City Council meetings?
The people involved in this scandal are big fish in the small political pond that is Ann Arbor. What they got caught doing was embarrassing to them. It would be embarrassing to anyone who’d been foolish enough to engage in such stupid behavior at their jobs. However, to classify the pursuit of the remaining emails as a mere attempt to “embarrass” these people is to conveniently personalize the actions of those who seek nothing more than to have access to public documents created during public meetings by elected officials. That’s the right of a citizen.
To a certain extent then, when Council members voted down the resolution to release the emails, they set into motion what became the the duty of those residents who are filing the FOIAs to have the Council emails made public. After all, it was President Theodore Roosevelt who said in a speech delivered in January of 1886 that, “The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics.”
These Ann Arbor residents who’ve filed FOIAs for the release of the Council emails back to 2003, LuAnne Bullington, Libby Hunter, Lynn Meadows, Phyllis Ponvert, Doug White, Karen Deslierres, Shirley Zempel, Daniel Cunningham, Gordon Bigelow, Peggy Rabhi, Laura Lee Hayes, Jack Eaton and Josephine Rood have all taken Roosevelt’s advice to heart.
There is have one more name to add to the list of those who will FOIA the Council’s emails back to 2003: AnnArbor.com. I’ve been told, has plans to FOIA all of the emails requested by the Ann Arbor residents listed above. Looks like we can all expect more dirty talk about the F-word and Council emails in the local newspaper sometime in the near future.
Popularity: 16% [?]
feed://www.a2politico.com/?feed=rss2
It’s Kafka like–annarbor.com has FOIA-ed the names of the people who FOIA-ed the emails.
Comment by Alan Goldsmith — October 19, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
Alan,
The names of people who request information from the City through FOIA is public. One need only know the right person to ask. If you’re unsure whom to call at City Hall, you might check with the City Clerk.
Comment by A2 Politico — October 19, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
Not every local official thinks FOIA is a dirty word.
I’ve been a FOIA plaintiff — Kestenbaum v. Michigan State University, 414 Mich. 510 (1982) — and for many years I used FOIA to get information out of local governments and agencies. I think Michigan’s strong FOIA is a great thing, and I thank the late Perry Bullard for writing it and getting it through the Legislature.
Comment by Larry Kestenbaum — October 19, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
Larry, of course not every politician thinks FOIA is a dirty word. Just those who’d rather not see certain information released. As I wrote above, I hope those six years of emails show none of the shocking revelations written up in the Ann Arbor News about the few meeting’s worth of emails that the paper FOIAed. However, it stands to reason that the behavior revealed in the Ann Arbor News stories was not isolated (the News proved this with its subsequent FOIA, in fact). Just how widespread the misuse of email was will come out. The later emails could implicate a whole host of past Council members, as well as others involved in city affairs, such as officials from, say, the Chamber of Commerce. That would be sad for the individuals, but at base it’s less about their bruised egos and hurt feelings than it is about how elected officials performed in office while voting, setting public policy and spending almost $2 BILLION dollars of tax money over those six years.
Comment by A2 Politico — October 19, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
Just going by what I saw in the annarbor.com piece:
“AnnArbor.com filed a FOIA request with the city this month to get copies of all FOIA letters received by the city asking for e-mails. Those who have submitted FOIAs in the last month include: LuAnne Bullington, Libby Hunter, Lynn Meadows, Phyllis Ponvert, Doug White, Karen Deslierres, Shirley Zempel, Daniel Cunningham, Gordon Bigelow, Peggy Rabhi, Laura Lee Hayes and Josephine Rood.”
Maybe they could have picked up the phone…lol.
Comment by Alan Goldsmith — October 19, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Yes, a FOIA request is a public record and is itself available through the FOIA. Years ago, the AA News used to routinely FOIA all the FOIA requests the City received. I’m glad its successor has now started doing this again. I hope AnnArbor.com’s effort to enforce government transparency will continue beyond the e-mail scandal.
Comment by David Cahill — October 19, 2009 @ 2:49 pm