Mark Brewer, AG FOIA Flap Documents - Part 1 - His Request

The man who has bedeviled state Republicans for years, Mark Brewer, is attempting to shine a light on State Attorney General Mike Cox. And Cox wants to charge him $143,000 for his trouble.
He’s accusing Cox of overcharging for an open records request related to a multi-million dollar settlement with Countrywide Financial Group. The money was in theory earmarked to help people who are hitting the financial skids keep their homes. But Cox also sent $500,000 of the cash to Grand Rapids to help with the cost of a couple of local parks/projects. One payment was $250,000 to the city. Another a donation for a park.
Many folks believe this is a case of political payback, some fiscal help to a friend or two in GR.
The $250,000 gift from the settlement for Kent County's Millennium Park is a obviously open to question. Peter Secchia is head of fundraising for the park, and Secchia donated nearly $10,000 to Cox campaigns in 2002 and 2005. This is, of course, political business as usual. But that doesn't make it immune from analysis. And it sure does a good job of helping voters make an informed choice.
Brewer filed a FOIA over the issue seeking records for “each federal or state lawsuit, complaint, of civil, criminal or administrative legal proceeding…involving corporate, commercial or business defendants brought, joined or participated in by the Attorney General and resolved by any means…”
Brewer seeks some simple things, including docket numbers, parties and venues. But he also asks for disposition of proceeds, all communications, including email text and phone records from the AG and his staff pertaining to the cases. It is a well-written, comprehensive request.
Cox fired back with a bill for $143,000 to comply. But he also says “Please be informed that nearly 8,000 pages of settlement documents currently are available on the Department’s website: www.michigan.gov/settlementcenter and the department continues to add to this site. The Department believes, based on your most recent media statements, that the settlements you are most interested in may be available on the Department’s website at no cost.”
Of course if they are available there at no cost, it would seem that the $143,000 in charges might be whittled down a bit.
This is often where open records hit a wall. When a body does not want to give them up, it simply trumps up the charges for processing those records, which usually discourages the filer and keeps the records sealed. It has happened to us before with this state.
We obtained copies of the FOIA and ensuing correspondence between Brewer and Cox’s office. We are posting it all here in two parts in an experimental fashion – you now have the tools to decide who is right and who is wrong, if there is such a thing here.
We also emailed John Sellek at the AG’s office last night asking for a copy of Brewer’s FOIA. After all, he is said to have claimed that “…Brewer is seeking to exploit the issue by filing a request so broad it would require the searching of thousands of boxes of documents dating back six years.”
We have yet to hear back from Sellek.

One More Michigan School District Contracts its Bus Service - Union Angry (Again)

One more school district sees the wisdom in privatizing its school bus service.
Benton Harbor’s move to use First Student Inc. of Cincinnati, owned by mass transit giant First Group drew a lot of ire from the unions. It even got Iris Salters, the $256,340 a year chief of the Michigan Education Association, to march around in a huff.
None other than the Federal Transit Administration has advocated for private school bus services, noting in a release to school district that “Many school districts throughout the nation contract with private school bus companies to provide cost-effective supplemental service or full service to students in their communities. Likewise, public transit agencies may find that private school bus companies can help keep their communities safe and mobile, by providing supplemental services to regular public transportation. Working with private school bus operators to provide supplemental public transportation service can help communities make more efficient use of their resources, while increasing mobility for community residents.”
Unions have long battled school districts who converted their bus services to a private firm in order to prune costs and avoid onerous union rules. We like this feeble effort to discredit privatization in that it bases its argument on a study by a guy named Mark Cassell, a board member of a labor advocacy group named Policy Matters Ohio. Apparently, there wasn’t a credible source to use.
At the same time, let’s allow that a reasonable source is in the eye of the beholder, and here’s our idea of credible when it comes to this issue.
But privatization of school bus service can often be a sound idea, allowing use of technology such as GPS that cash-strapped school districts can’t afford.
On the other hand, let’s recall that former Michigan Gov. John Engler - who now earns $1.3 million a year as head of the National Association of Manufacturers - so loved privatization that he did so even when it cost the taxpayer more. We’re still smarting over that folly.

School bus image by Flickr user wheany, CC 2.0

More Reports on Michigan's Roads

The disrepair of our roads has been discussed here many times, and new reports on the problem keep coming. One from inside the state and another from outside.
We especially enjoy the latter report coming from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which we have posted below.
Inside the report, Michigan is given some special attention: "The Michigan DOT Asset Management program encompasses all the physical transportation assets in the state, including more than 9,700 miles of road, 5,679 bridges, 450,000 signs, 4,025 traffic lights, 8 million linear feet of guardrails, 83 rest areas, 13 travel information centers, 85 roadside parks, 27 scenic turnouts, and more.
The program is built around five major functions: policy goals and objectives, information and data collection, planning and programming; program delivery, and monitoring and reporting.
[MDOT Chief Kirk] Steudle said the program begins with setting a broad policy about the current condition of the asset and then setting a goal for where you want that asset to be within a specific time frame. For Michigan, the goal was to increase the condition of all its roads and highways, moving from 65 percent of state roads in good condition in 1997 to 90 percent in 2007. Pavement preservation was the primary tool for achieving that goal.
The department met its 90 percent goal and improved to 92 percent in 2008. A similar goal-driven asset management process is now underway for the state’s bridges. "
We appreciate that the state has met its goals. But how ambitious were these targets? Anyway, it continues:
"Michigan has a statewide Transportation Asset Management Council, which brings together all the agencies in the state that have jurisdiction over roads. Its purpose is to broaden the use of transportation asset management throughout the state and ensure that groups are working together, sharing methodology, collecting the same data, and speaking the same language."
To read this, you'd think things were going pretty well here. But we question the association’s heed to the head of a somewhat failed department, MDOT.
The association sees higher taxes/more revenue as a solution for the ailing roads as it sits with net assets - this is the association we're talking about - of $14 million in its FY 2007 tax filing. It paid out over $20 million to one consultant that year, Info Tech of Gainesville, Fla. And the association's executive director, John Horsley, was paid a package worth $400,000. And this is the group that just let us know that, well, our roads are pretty bad and transportation departments need more money.
It's hard to understand sometimes, these lofty places that hand down our public policy. Perhaps they could do a better job of explaining, and perhaps we could try a little harder to grasp their ideas. And ask more questions, hard questions, that force an actual response rather than a buck-passing non sequitur.

RoughRoads_FullReport

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Follow Up on Privacy of Michigan Film Incentive Tax Revenue

The other day we questioned the notion that a tax information derived from a governmental policy is subject to privacy laws, especially in the case of a corporate interest benefiting from public policy, or more directly, taxpayer dollars.
We followed up with a call to Michael Shore, a spokesman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. He was admirably quick with a response, which he left on our voice mail, referring to a section of the Michigan Revenue Act.
Under 205.28 (1) (f) “Except as otherwise provided in this subdivision, an employee, authorized representative, or former employee or authorized representative of the department or anyone connected with the department shall not divulge any facts or information obtained in connection with the administration of a tax or information or parameters that would enable a person to ascertain the audit selection or processing criteria of the department for a tax administered by the department. An employee or authorized representative shall not willfully inspect any return or information contained in a return unless it is appropriate for the proper administration of a tax law administered under this act…”
State law in this case would trump our open records notions, we think, but there may be some room in here for interpretation. This has nothing to do with criticizing the idea of these film incentives - the plan keeps generating activity and is saving a lot of money for some people. What we demand is some openness about the whole thing. We are seeking specific details about spending of money by those receiving these breaks and the amount of tax dollars returned to each production. And we will keep pushing.

Michigan Court Delays a Decision on Courtroom Dress and Propriety

The Michigan Supreme Court has delayed a decision in the case of a woman who, dressed in traditional Muslim garb, refused to remove her veil for a judge.
Some stories have couches the issue a bit by stating that “a proposed statewide court rule would specifically let judges regulate the appearance of parties and witnesses.”
I’ve covered cases in courts that disallow t-shirts, jeans and other dressed-down garments, so this simplistic statement is somewhat misleading. The crux of the argument is the term “religious purposes.” Can this defendant wear a veil in court because it is part of her religion?
There have been similar cases in which law enforcement won out, and rightly so – we think of the 2003 Florida case of a convert named Sandra Keller. She refused to remove her veil for an updated driver’s license photo, then litigated with the help of the ACLU and lost it at the state appellate level in 2005.
Then there are the judges who just don’t screw around with this stuff, like this guy in Georgia.
And even our neighbors to the north are not convinced that allowing court participants to cloak themselves is wise. In this Canadian case from earlier this month, a court said that it is at the judge's discretion.
It all provides a good discussion for just how far lawfulness and religious freedom extend. We think that when you partake in the U.S. court system - be it at a local, state or federal level - you play by the rules of the court. And for the record, we dislike most rules.

Here's the Executive Order for Budget - Lists All Cuts by Item

We have the full detail of the state's budget cuts in terms of departmental impact and it looks pretty good.
There are some key cuts, although we see that again, some of the usual groups including unions and other special interests came away in fair shape. The executive office was hacked by $197, 200 while $9.5 million in day care funding at the Department of Human Services was cut. Education took a measly $363,500 hit, while the Department of Education gave up $3 million. Department of Civil Rights is out $655,800 but the Attorney General’s office is down $1.7 million. And we’re still not sure where the outcry over the cut in AIDS education is. But there is it, $540,400 hacked from the AIDS risk reduction clearinghouse and media campaign.
We’re a little amused at how the media always runs to the services that are cut and we hear how many people will suffer without the good hand of the big government to help them. But things work out remarkably well even after cuts are made. Which really leads to a conclusion that a government, like a household, can run on less when needed.
Budget Cuts Exec Order

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Film Incentive $ - How Much is Staying Here?

As we touched on the state's film incentive program a week or so ago, noting that it is mired in partisan political squabbles. Now comes a report from Livingstondaily.com that much of the tax break dough is leaving the state. There is a serious problem here, though, with getting to the real numbers because a state agency refuses to give out much of the financial information needed to properly assess the effects, good and bad, of the film incentive plan.
“Pressured by hearings conducted by state Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, the Michigan Film Office reported last month that 30 films made in Michigan last year reported expenditures of $104 million, of which $71 million went for salaries. State officials, however, would not say how much of that money went to the approximately 2,800 Michigan residents who snagged part-time jobs that averaged only 23 days in length.”
We dislike the word ‘only’ when used in writing a story. It betrays some form of bias in the reporting, so we are led to believe this story – a well written, finely reported one – may have a slant.
Still, there is this:
“…The Michigan Department of Treasury is required to protect all individual or company tax information, according to Michael Shore, spokesman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp., a state agency charged with business development in Michigan.
"You're now talking about someone's tax information," he said.”
We are looking into just what is public record and what it not. Tax-exempt entities are required to make their tax info public, so Shore’s defense of withholding these records, of which taxpayer money is part of, seems a little flimsy on its face. And this is not “someone’s” tax information that we care about here. It is that of a corporation which has opted to do business with the public's money. If you want your private business to stay private, then don't accept breaks that require a public concession.
And we aren’t here to do the bidding of one side or the other – it could well be that the film incentive plan is a good one. Much of the work analyzing the plan has been done by the Mackinac Center, and it is extensive. The Center for Economic Analysis at Michigan State University has done a study as well.
We’ll keep moving on this. Our guess is there is much more here than just the usual, predictable statehouse rabble.
Film Incentive Plan Assessment

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