So, having donned my rhetorical hip waders and sloughing my way through the first round of emails of the city of Fort Smith email dump (which only cover a period from the middle of 2017 through January 17 of this year), I can say emphatically that the repository is going to do exactly what it is designed to do.
Which is show us enough stuff to hopefully shut us up, and not to show us too much so we can say "I told you so".
The bottom line? The more things change the more things stay the same.
We did pull out one fact out of the first "dump" that had been kind of just a rumor.
The city spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees ($394,435 to be exact) linked to the termination cases of former police officers Rick Entemeir and Don Paul Bales as well a fending off the Civil Right's lawsuit brought by Wendall Sampson. And while one of those cases is still in the negotiation stages in what appears to be an effort to stave off an appeal by Don Paul Bales, the city "won" the other two cases, depending on how you define "won".
They actually settled with Entemeir and his attorney for $9000 after spending untold thousands of dollars in legal fees. They settled. As in why-in-the-hell did they spend all that money on legal fees in the first place if there was anything to settle on?
The city "won" the Sampson case, again with a big chunk of the $394,435 going to legal fees. The repercussions to Sampson for suing the city and costing the taxpayers untold sacks of money in defending the city against his totally unfounded (according to the court) Civil Right's claims?
They made him a sergeant.
Bales remains as the sticking point. He and his attorney are seeking a settlement for way more than the city seems willing to pay, although they did up the ante to $18,000 for Bales and his attorney to split. On the low end, Bales and his attorney want either $266,000 and reinstatement of Bales to the force or, on the high end, $331,000 for their trouble and Bales and the appeal to just go away.
Man. All that money they gave Senator Jake would come in handy right now.
This, for me, is not about the merits of the individual cases. I said my piece about that a long time ago. Right, and/or wrong, and reasonable expectations of a modicum of common sense doesn't figure into the equation for several characters in this drama.
Whether it should be classified as a tragedy or a comedy is best left to the reader's discretion.
As for the "email dump" there is some other good stuff in there. Just not the "good" stuff. Like I said up at the top. They're not ever going to show us enough to derail their plans.
I figure at this point the Three Musketeers and their Fearless Leader have figured out that Gmail accounts are free, plentiful and pretty much untraceable. As are cellphone calls and text messages, backroom conversations and handshake deals made outside the scope of a legal meeting.
Lest you are appalled at the suggestion of shenanigans, one would think the contempt of court they have shown to this point for their misdeeds concerning the state FOIA laws would be a clue. These clowns are not going to stop climbing out of that tiny car until judges named Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Thomas, and Gorsuch tell them to stop.
And then they may still try to appeal to the International Court of Justice at the U.N.
And lawyers--even ill-advised ones --don't come cheap.
The fact that they even think that this "email export" lends some creditability to their claims of transparency is an insult to the intelligence of the electorate they are supposed to be serving. Even if they weren't skirting the issue of FOIA through other means and putting up all of the actual electronic correspondence between them, it still falls short in both the "advanced public notice" and "timely notification" categories
Three last thoughts.
We all knew how Lau, Good and Lorenz were going to vote since the fix was in from the outset and apparently they knew they had the other vote needed to carry the day.
They needed one extra... and got three.
Only Ward 4 Position 4 Director George Catasavis voted no. I'll leave that disappointing tidbit for you to ponder for future elections.
Second point.
I was told today the "email exports" are supposed to be posted weekly.
The last email in the system right now is dated January 17. I must have missed the January 24 and 31 updates as well as the February 7 rendering. Just sayin'.
And third (but not least)...
Combine all the legal fees, past and present, for bad decisions on cops and FOIA. Throw in the monies handed to Senator Jake with no strings attached, money spent on the illusion of "recycling", money lost when someone forgot to "true-up" past water charges to a neighboring community and the money spent relocating a cop who was or wasn't a cop (depending on who you ask) from Detroit to lend his expertise for ten days in an effort to appease the call for diversification.
Just think...
We could have us one of them fancy new skate parks in all four wards in the city with money to spare.
For real, dude.