CITY GETS TO SIT ON DOCS FOR NOW

On Friday, we appeared before Judge Kolenda in Kent County Circuit Court to oppose the request by the City of Grand Rapids for a protective order to stop discovery in our Freedom of Information Act complaint against it.  (Click here for background.)  Judge Redford is the judge assigned to the case, but he was absent.  So Judge Kolenda picked up his Friday caseload.  With the courtroom packed with lawyers for a few dozen cases to be heard, Kolenda basically punted the issue for Redford to hear later.  In doing so, he OK’d the protective order subject to modification by Redford for all the documents we had requested in discovery that were the object of our FOIA requests.

During the hearing, Assistant City Attorney Catherine told the judge that we had not paid previous FOIA bills.  In fact, It was the City who failed to pay us for copying back to it documents it had disclosed under FOIA in 2001.  After that she tried to obscure the fact that City has never released to anyone the letter from the Boardwalk developers in which they claimed to have invested only $20 million in that project by implying that the disclosures to Robert Harrison and Karen Thomas on that score were complete.  Finally, Mish admitted to the court that the City did in fact shred public records, the infamous minutes of City Commission closed sessions, after we had asked for their disclosure under FOIA.

We had hoped that the court would simply deny the protective order and direct the City to turn over the documents we asked for in discovery.  That’s what happened the last time we had to go to court with a FOIA complaint against the City.  Instead, it looks like this case is going to get dragged out a bit.