Think Kwamegate is big? A bigger story is out there

Sometimes small is big.

And sometimes big is small.

The steam rising from the Detroit Free Press’ revelation of the text messages between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff and former paramour Christine Beatty has really roasted the mayor, what with allegations and now charges of perjury and the threat that his lies-under-oath, possible crimes, could endanger his law license. And there is the possibility of prison time.

A big story it is, no question.

But it may still prove small compared to a much bigger story that looms over this whole text message landscape.

For late tuners-in, the city was sued by cops who claimed they were fired for looking into reports of a wild party at the mayor’s mansion a few years ago. The mayor lost in a court trial, then abruptly agreed to an $8-plus million settlement after the cops’ lawyer, apparently, let hizzoner’s lawyers know he’d got hold of those 14,000 potentially incriminating text messages through a subpoena to Kwame’s phone company. Oops. Forget the appeal. The attorneys on both sides agreed to suppress the messages. Some of Kwame’s attorneys lied, saying the messages didn’t exist.

The Free Press has done a terrific job of ferreting out these mayoral shenanigans. Anybody who thinks newspapers don’t have a future needs to read these articles. This is big.

Yes, big, and yet potentially small.

Small, when placed in perspective.

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Think about what the city did on Kwame’s behalf. Never mind the lies. Never mind the cover-up. The blockbuster is this: They connived with a plaintiffs’ attorney to suppress the terms of a settlement. That is illegal. Actually, it’s, well, unconstitutional.

This is something even journalists tend to forget. There’s all this hoopla about filing Freedom of Information Act requests with governments. In fact, the state Constitution says all financial records must be open to public examination during normal business hours. Furthermore, the Michigan Penal Code makes it a crime for a public record-keeper to withhold documents from anyone — not just journalists — during normal business hours.

By the way, if you decide to file a FOIA request, remember that if you’re forced to take your case to court and the government loses, they’ll have to pick up all your court and attorney costs. Ask Royal Oak Township about that — they learned the hard way after ejecting me from a public meeting and stonewalling my requests for records. An Oakland circuit judge ordered them to turn over the records and reimburse Free Press attorney Herschel Fink’s law firm some $14,000 in court and lawyer’s fees, with Herschel billing at the rate of $365 an hour.The bankrupt township had to pay on the installment plan.

You can be sure Herschel’s got a motion ready to dun the city for his firm’s costs in the Free Press text message case. Besides the $8.4 million payout to the cops, the city will be disgorging considerable amounts to Honigman, Miller, Schwartz & Cohn that will be a hell of a lot more than the piddling 14 grand Royal Oak Township paid out. I hear Herschel’s billing at $400 an hour now.

But lawyers’ bills will be small change compared to the story that now is seeping out. Remember, the state Constitution forbids secret financial records. All money matters are to be open to public scrutiny. That includes court settlements. And Detroit is not the only municipality that enters into secret court settlements. Ask the guv. Actually, Jennifer Granholm opened some settlements to me back in the early 1990s when I covered Wayne County for the Free Press and she was corporation counsel for Wayne County. But I could never get traction for a larger story I pitched then and a few years later that would have looked at suppressed settlements across metropolitan Detroit.

I wrote a story a few years ago about a suppressed settlement in the case of a man who died in custody at or on his way to the Oakland County Jail. Should have heard the lawyers yell. “That settlement was suppressed! You’re not supposed to have that!”

In fact, I’d made copies of the settlement terms, which were lying with the rest of the case file in the clerk’s office of the U.S. District Court in Detroit. Nothing secret about it, except in the lawyers’ minds.

I’ve got a feeling that if some enterprising reporter with lots of spare time (hah-hah!) surveyed all the records of all the suppressed settlements in Detroit area courts, both federal and state, over the past decade or two, the total dollar amount would would dwarf Kwame’s eight-point-four mil.

Of course, that is why these cases are suppressed. So we won’t know how much governments are paying plaintiffs and their lawyers to go away.

Paying them to go away rich.

Money is not everything, either. Remember what I said: It’s a violation of the criminal code to deny records to the public. Seems to me that applies not just to government clerks, but to attorneys who order government financial records suppressed.

See what I mean about big? Dollar signs are only part of it. If courts rule that people who took part in suppressing records have violated the penal code, Kwame and his legal team might share the dock with droves of so-called public servants who’ve broken the law by hiding records.

A big story, for sure, and Kwamegate is just part of it.

Joel Thurtell is a seasoned veteran of the Detroit Free Press and more recently of his own blog, JoelOnTheRoad.com. He is the author of “Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River,” featuring photos by Patricia Beck, 30-year veteran Free press photographer. “Up the Rouge” is in production now and will be published by Wayne State University Press early in 2009. Joel is also working on his second book, “Dirtiest Rivers,” about the Rouge and other polluted American waterways. You can contact him at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com