“The law is only as effective as the people who respect it.”

My Civil Duty 2024

I’ve been a happily retired volunteer for the past 4 years or so, at least as it relates to my self-adopted role of journalist and publisher of localized content for my community.

Before I stopped writing and publishing, I had spent well over a thousand hours attending local government meetings, wrote thousands of posts relating to local matters, sent hundreds of FOIA requests for information (a few still outstanding by years, but that’s for another conversation), filed numerous complaints with various bodies that agreed with my submissions and even influenced a candidate being removed from a ballot for 30 forged signatures I caught on their petitions.  It took a few decades to rack up these kinds of stats, but well worth the effort in too many ways to explain.

Quite frankly, I was busying giving major media outlets a run for their money for many years, without earning any money for the effort, something I hold no regrets over.  There also are times in our lives when it is important to leave one well-defined and predictable road behind, even if the alternate road is filled with severe uncertainty and risk and my retirement has been good to me.

I also wasn’t successful with my journalistic endeavors due to any intelligence factor, rather I noticed a severely under-served niche and did what I could to fill it with original ways to articulate commonly found problems in a community.  For example, I created the most comprehensive index of municipal code books in the United States twice.  The first time around, I couldn’t even locate 50% of these books online, although some states were more thorough with their accessibility than others.  It still didn’t hit 50% when I did it again some years later.

But even that idea came from sticking it out with three types of documents all government bodies create (including committees, commissions, districts, boroughs, etc):  agendas, meeting minutes and municipal code books/corporate by-laws.

And over the years, I constantly pushed myself to learn and grow my understanding of just how impactful this collection of publications is on everyone’s day to day lives.  One illegal meeting could cost a local community thousands, if not millions of dollars, depending on the actions taken at the meeting.  Lack of access to the local laws can lead to literal battles over whose pocketbooks carry more dollars, rather than what the laws actually call for.

I have long believed these three document types must always be approach with a guaranteed protection from any and all efforts to hide their content.  It is always worth the intellectual fight, even when resources and recourse is virtually non-existent, for our laws truly are only as effective as those who choose to respect them.

2023 was a year in which the writer in me mourned the loss of so many I had never even heard of, until I learned why they were no longer with us.  For example, an owner of a local paper died of heart failure after an illegal raid on the newspaper and its assets.  All because a local government official had enough power and influence over their local police department to initiate the chain of events that brought about death and yes, even destruction.  Even the grounds being used to generate a banning of books at great negative cost to the audience these writers have a right and reason to reach out to, let alone the logistics of people attempting to police those who might violate one of these book bans.

For many months, I wrestled with my own conscience as to whether or not my choice to remain retired from this topic was influencing some of the excessive liberties government officials have been taking, especially over these past 6 years.  I am fully aware the world as a whole does not revolve around me, or any single individual, but this fact does not diminish the value of the efforts of just one individual in the world of journalism, including myself.

I even decided to attend a few meetings at a nearby library just to see for myself what was going on in a local government unit.

After sitting through 3 illegally held meetings in August, I went back in September, still uncertain on whether or not I was going to speak out simply because I didn’t know the September meetings would also be illegal meetings until someone attempted to convene them and I chose to keep the hope they would be cancelled by the library.

The library cancelled the three regular meetings in September only after I did choose to stand up during the audience participation portion of the meeting and even that set off so absurd and ludicrous of a chain of events, this same board went ahead and held an illegal meeting for their December 2023 regular meeting.

I was already sketching out a draft of this site years ago, but my retirement put the notes on the side.  Now, in 2024, it’s time for this site to become capable of living up to a vision I know has been technologically possible for decades, that of a reliable source of information regarding public meetings on a local level, including the publishing of all regularly scheduled meetings for all public bodies throughout the nation.

So while news articles might be far and few between on this site, it will certainly act as a reliable news source for every single agenda published by a government unit because it remains fact that every single public meeting agenda represents a set of headlines just waiting for a story or two to be written above and beyond the taxpayer-funded versions of agendas, meeting minutes and laws being labeled as “prima facie evidence.”

The law is only as effective as the people who respect it.  And as long as thousands of government officials across the nation are allowed to continue to abuse the gift of governing for the people, by the people and of the people, the public at large will continue to seek out ways to protest such disrespect.

This project is my way to be as constructive as possible with my protest against any and all local officials who can’t even conduct one public meeting in a legal manner…

Let alone in a civil manner.

Singed,

My Civil Duty

2024 The Year of the Journalist