East Lansing Info’s publisher – Alice Dreger – explains why it can still be pretty hard to “follow the money” in East Lansing:
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/east-lansing-governments-record-transparency-failures-abound
Reply to Ruth Beier:
There is no nice way to say this, but it is simply not true that “the property owners gave up valuable property so that the sidewalk could be widened to improve pedestrian safety.”
Number 1: The sidewalk was not “widened to improve pedestrian safety.” Please look at the attached email which lays out the City’s rationale for replacing the retaining wall. Here’s the relevant part of that email, and it should be noted that this is the oldest document I … Read more →
Cronyism is not a “mistake.” Doing favors for those with connections is cronyism. No one familiar with government in general and East Lansing government in particular thinks retaining wall gate was an innocent mistake. That’s why it was called retaining wall gate in the first place.
Remember this happened in the context of even worse government misconduct with City Center II and St Anne’s Lofts and all the lies and cover up.
I said long ago the only way to restore credibility is accountability.
This is a response to Council Member Ruth Beier’s post this morning to Public Response.
Before responding to that, please note that East Lansing Info (ELi) provides sourcing (with links and PDFs) for all of its reporting on Phil Bellfy’s lawsuit against the City and City Attorney under the federal False Claims Act, so you can check our reporting for links to things like the settlement agreement, the City Manager’s request for a waiver from the federal conflict of interest rules, and HUD’s determination … Read more →
There is no question that the City of East Lansing made a mistake when it made its application to HUD to use CDBG funds for the project in question. Specifically, the city should have disclosed to HUD that one of the four properties abutting the sidewalk housed the City Attorney. This was the city’s error. People make mistakes, and the city owns this one.
The problem with Mr. Bellfy’s accusation and the reporting by ELi is that both imply that the City Attorney was … Read more →
Phil Bellfy
“Abott Road Project” Qui Tam Relator
The three elements in the title of this post might be considered the three legs of the legal “truthfulness” stool.
Rule 60(b)(3) states that a judgment may be set aside if an “opposing party” lies to a federal official (which clearly includes federal judges) “fraud, misrepresentation, or misconduct.”
§ 1001 might be called the “Don’t Lie to a Federal Official” Act.
And the charges of committing a “fraud upon the Court” strictly deal with lawyers … Read more →
Phil Bellfy
“Abott Road Project” Qui Tam Relator
The three elements in the title of this post might be consideredthe three legs ofthe legal “truthfulness” stool.
Rule 60(b)(3) states that a judgment may be set aside if an “opposing party” lies to a federal official (which clearly includes federal judges) “fraud,misrepresentation, or misconduct.”
§ 1001 might be called the “Don’t Lie to a Federal Official”Act.
And the charges of committing a “fraud upon the Court” strictly deal with lawyers who lie to the … Read more →
Eliot Singer is right on about the need to get rid of the private-practice lawfirm posing as East Lansing City Attorneys. Long-time readers of PR may remember the numerous posts that called them out on just about everything, ranging from “assigning” the City’s right of Eminent Domain to “third parties” so these private parties could avoid paying their taxes, to the latest “splattering the blood of a women on the floor of a bar is really nothing more than ‘littering’ in East Lansing” BS … Read more →
ELi has another story about the city trying to keep secret information surrounding what us old-timers call retaining-wall-gate.
The city spent a significant amount of HUD Community Development Block Grant money to fix the retaining wall of the city attorney’s firm’s building. There were people yelling and screaming about it at the time, so pretending they didn’t know is absurd. Secrecy over this or over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in Lotto 1 fees to pay the developer’s lawyer and the … Read more →
for publication:
Public Response has long been a location for ongoing discussion of concerns brought by East Lansing residents about governmental actions and policies. One of the stories that Public Response contributors and readers have tracked for years is of the use of taxpayer funds to reconstruct a retaining wall and sidewalk running along the east side of the City Attorneys’ property.
Today at ELi ( eastlansinginfo.org ) we have a report up on a whistleblower suit brought on this case jointly by the United … Read more →
