Royal Oak Legacy Costs

City of Royal Oak Legacy Costs
The tabulation below, obtained from the City by resident Bill Shaw, is obviously for reference, not for casual reading. Depending on one's area of interest, one can find information about retirees or widows. . . how benefit costs surged between the Forties and the Seventies (as revealed when total benefits are compared to years of service) . . . time bought by early retirees (under headings: Military, ORD, and GOV) . . . length of service . . . total annual benefits paid to each individual.

As one who frequently chides CITCOM for always asking for more information than the Administration supplies, I'm embarrassed to find it would be helpful if this table included the date of retirement. In any case, even before Shaw announced during Public Comment (16 Mar 09) that he would be supplying the material to VersagiVoice, interest had already been expressed about sitting commissioners Semchena and Drinkwine and about long-serving staff who were purged during this or that local equivalent of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. Resentment has especially been expressed about the practice of permitting retirees to buy time not served in order to increase their benefits. With all that in mind, people have expressed interest in such remembered public servants as:

John Ball . . . Bill Baldridge . . . Dick Beltz . . . Dick Cole . .. Bill Crouch . . . Chuck DiMaggio . . . Larry Doyle . . . Dick Eva . . . Steve Gillette . . . Mary Ellen Graver . . . Mel Johnson . . . Dick Krupp . . . Chuck Lowther . . . Jim Marcinkowski . . . Tom Trice . . . Carol Windorf . . . Kelly Winters

VersagiVoice will leave this page and the spreadsheet in place indefinitely. -- FJV: 18 Mar 09

Click here to see the full spreadsheet.

The Bill Shaw effect
Civic activist Bill Shaw took action under the Freedom of Information Act which resulted in publicizing the list of Royal Oak retirees and the benefits they or their spouses receive. See Legacy Cost: The Text and Legacy Costs: The Spreadsheet. The Daily Tribune has also written a piece, and has posted the spreadsheet on its website.

Commissioner Michael Andrzejak plans to introduce a resolution specifying that the City's website post that spreadsheet and update it yearly, as well as posting a list of active city employees and their current compensation, to be updated quarterly. Commissioner Terry Drinkwine suggests he may introduce a related resolution which specifies "all elected officials make their source of income available . . . to include affiliations with anyone doing business with the city." -- 25 Mar 09

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
What reasons does government use to deny a "request for disclosure of Information"? I recently had occasion to make a FOIA request from the Port Huron, Michigan, Police Department. The form letter which denied the request carries the following language.

Your request for disclosure of information has been denied (in whole) (in part) for one or more of the following reasons. The disclosure of such records would:

_____ Your records check for criminal history information must be submitted to Central Records Division. Please see the attached form.

_____ Interfere with the enforcement proceedings.

_____ Deprive a person of a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.

_____ Constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

_____ Disclose investigative techniques and procedures.

_____ Endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel.

_____ Reveal Social Security Number(s)

_____ To the best of our knowledge, information and beliefs the information does not exist.

Each of  the items except the last is followed by the pertinent legal citation, such as (Act 553, Sec.13b.vi) The denial of my request was based on that last item. The Police Department emailed me an official denial first, then returned my $3.00 check in the mail. I had to supply a reproduction of the front and back of my driver's license

The form notifies me of my right to appeal to the Mayor of the City and "if the appeal is denied by the Mayor, you have the right to judicial review under Section 10 of the Michigan Freedom of Information Act."