City Attorney Toasts Incriminating Records

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.