I understand that tensions are high in an election year with highly controversial presidential candidates. But nonetheless, I urge people to attempt an open dialogue with each other before throwing the first blow.
Plenty of ink has already been spilled over some of our readers’ attempts to get the county or state to investigate the county’s Energy Futures Task Force. So far, there have been at least two allegations against the task force, which county departments, state police, and this newspaper have been taking seriously.
And while reporting on these investigations, I’ve seen no sign of people making a good faith effort to reach a solution before calling down the full force of governmental units on their fellow citizens in the form of investigations. Which may be understandable in times when there are unambiguous signs of wrongdoing, but in this case, there weren’t.
And ironically, because people did not try to talk things out first, these allegations didn’t go very far. The first claim was that the task force was covering up its activities by not posting meeting minutes and notices online, which the county prosecutor found was the result of an error and decided not to prosecute.
If the person making these allegations suspected that the task force was breaking the law to keep their meetings a secret, an easy way to prove it would have been to simply contact a task force member and request that they provide information on when they meet and what they discuss. If that member refused, then the complainant would have solid evidence of a lack of transparency.
Similarly, the second claim — that a task force grant application was intended for the personal benefit of two of its members — would have been much harder to dispute if the complainants had obtained clarification that these two members would ultimately receive pay for their work.
While the application in question says that these two members may receive an hourly salary “as required by project needs,” it does not guarantee that their services will be called upon by the project manager — as the county attorney was quick to point out in communication with the interim administrator.
I can understand worrying about tipping your hand too early and giving people the chance to hide evidence of a scandal. But with the grant application already in the hands of a third party, and free resources like the Wayback Machine able to access old versions of the county website before meeting minutes were posted, there is no real way to destroy the key evidence here.
Lastly, as far as scandals go, I think it’s important to put things back in perspective. In my brief time in Flint, the biggest scandal involved allegations against the city’s mayor. The mayor was accused of hiding evidence that local firefi ghters were responsible for the deaths of two children through negligence, allegedly in exchange for the firefighter union’s support in that year’s election.
For large parts of Michigan, a governmental unit posting their meeting minutes a month or more late is not a scandal. In fact, it’s a regular occurrence. These bodies are often just understaff ed and very, very busy.
And I’m not the only one in our newsroom who’s noticed that more people seem to be going on the offensive — either through open accusations or indirect swipes — before trying to reach a compromise with their perceived enemies.
