Poor Mojo's Newswire

This is a little hard to summarize, but I'll try to cut to the chase:

Here in Michigan we legalized the Medical Use of Marihuana back in 2008. Our particular law defines what you need to do (and not do) in order to use marijuana legally, and also what you should (and shouldn't) do if you want to grow it legally. It doesn't really discuss--or even conceive of--what needs to happen in order to *broadly distribute* marijuana legally, which turns out to be sort of a problem. As oodles of folks acquired their cannabis-treatment cards (the legitimacy of their affliction notwithstanding--more of my opinions on this here), the demand for legal marijuana grew, and the marketplace predictably responded with dispensaries. Dispensaries--existing in a legal grey-zone--have quickly become something of a pain in the ass, and it's fallen to the municipalities themselves to figure out how the hell to regulate them. This is contentious (duh).

So, last summer here in Ann Arbor, our City Council trotted out a new dispensary-regulation policy that, it became apparent, seemed to have been crafted in a closed meeting. This isn't permissible under Michigan's Opening Meetings Act, which defines a narrow set of situations under which a city council can discuss issues in secret--because, you know, the whole point of government is to have things decided out in the open, where regular folks can argue about them, voice their concerns, etc.

As it turns out, the Ann Arbor City Council was calling *a lot* of closed sessions under the auspices of "attorney-client privilege"--including the closed session during which they arrived at this new medical marijuana dispensary strategy.

In case it doesn't go without saying, closed sessions aren't for strategizing--because that's exactly the process you want to have *open* and *obvious* to your well-informed electorate, and is exactly the time folks *want* their voices heard.

Attorney-client closed sessions are specifically for asking the city attorney to clarify a written opinion he/she has already given to the council; no coming up with new policies, no posing hypothetical "what if we tried changing X?" situations, no discussing surprise birthday parties or which City Council member would do best on American Idol. Just asking for clarification on an existing *written* opinion.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle (for whom I've written now and again, and which is owned and operated by some very nice folks whose banter I much enjoy) subsequently filed suit, calling bullshit on this whole pattern of calling closed session under "attorney-client privilege" and then discussing christ-knows-what in secret, with no input from or disclosure to the people who elected them. The Chronicle didn't really get any traction in court (The Ann Arbor Chronicle -- Column: Lawsuit Aftermath – 6 Months Clean), but the whole thing has uncovered a pattern of low-grade fuckery that, at best, shows a pretty convenient ignorance of how the hell Michigan wants its cities run. One of the funny little highlights from this is the following video. Basically, what you'll see is City Council Guy A (on the right) saying "Hey guys, remember how we discussed all that marijuana jazz in that closed session last time, and told the city attorney to get the wheels rolling on this new mandate; that was rad!" City Council Guy B, on the left, pretty much looks like he's totally nodding in a "Yup, that's what we all said!" way.

This is, in fact, the moment that got the Council in court: Guy A is *saying* that a new policy was *set in motion* in secret, when the Council was supposed to be *asking questions about existing advice,* not making new decisions.

Anyway, when this was all questioned--because, you know, it had been broadcast on TV, for everyone who actually watches the televised City Council meetings to see--Guy A said "I totally misspoke; we didn't do any deciding or whatever at the closed session," and the rest of the council members basically said "We didn't even hear what Guy A said, and he was mistaken anyway, so it's no big whoop." This includes Guy B. When Guy B was directly asked "If you knew Guy A was wrong, why the hell were you nodding?" Guy B replied that he wasn't nodding.

It looks like nodding. I can go as far as to say that it also sorta looks like what a duck does when it swallows a minnow. So it's either nodding, or swallowing a minnow. I never saw Guy B put a minnow in his mouth, but maybe he did that before the camera cut to him and Guy A.

Anyway, all of this is fun, in a small-town politics sort of way, but not necessarily interesting. What's more interesting is this chart from the Chron's reporting on the fallout, and what the chart means. Here's the chart:

Basically, from left to right, this tracks City Council meetings from January 2009 through March 2011. The green dots are meetings where there was no closed session. The blue and purple dots are meetings where there was a closed session, with purple denoting the meetings where the closed session was justified as protecting "attorney-client privilege." So the big black line? That's when the Chronicle filed their lawsuit. See how there are no purple dots after the line, and a shit-ton before it? That's because the city was using attorney-client privilege to justify discussing christ-knows-what in secret. Once they got sued, they realized that either a) they *shouldn't* do that because it is *illegal* and violates the public trust, or b) realized they'd been caught, and should *stop* doing that because they were gonna get their ass in the wringer about it soon.

So the takeaway is actually broadly interesting, and is this: The Chron's lawsuit *failed*: No one is getting censured, no one is getting fined, no one is getting in trouble, no one is getting publicly embarrassed, the Chron is out a bunch of money in legal fees, and the City Council gets to act like everything is honky-dorey. But, even with all this failure, we--the folks that live in Ann Arbor--still get a slightly better government, because there is one small kind of fuckery that *isn't* gonna happen any more.

This is what the Free Press is for: It isn't here to win legal fights, and not it's not here to print pictures of snow on snow days, or to tell me what time Jeopardy is on what channel, or to syndicate bullshit from AP and UPI, or to distribute goddamn Garfield and crosswords, or to print a bunch of alarmist partisan demonshouting. The Free Press are folks with a little more dough, and a little more time, and a little more salt than the rest of us, folks who are willing and able to apply a little pressure so that the basically good, basically competent people in government don't let Things Go Bad.

Democracy is a basically OK train that basically runs on time, but the track is worn down, and the wheels are old, and there's lots of rattle in the system: The Free Press nudges the train back towards center, so that it doesn't derail--which is rare--and so that none of us complacent regular joes standing near the tracks get pulled under the wheels--which is otherwise all too common.

So that's what the Press is for: The reduction of fuckery. If you run a Media Outlet and you aren't reducing fuckery--or, Heaven forbid, are actually *causing* fuckery--then you'd best straighten up, 'cause you're doing it wrong.