I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Lansing City Attorney Brigham Smith has directed staff of the city involved in Freedom of Information Act requests to review, and “likely redact,” private medical information from documents.
“We have reiterated the need for review (and likely redaction) in the small number of cases that involve personal medical information among the small number of people who handle such cases, pending formulation of a more comprehensive policy,” Smith said in an email to Michigan Messenger.
Smith says he will convene a working group to develop the new policy. The working group he said will include “stakeholders.”
The directive came after a months long debate about the release of a man’s HIV positive status. The information about the man was contained in an arrest report detailing his arrest during a May sex sting operation by Lansing police in Fenner Nature Center which Michigan Messenger requested under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The man was one of two men arrested on a charge of indecent exposure.One man plead guilty to the charge late last month. A second man plead guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly jostling in June.
Controversy surrounded the release, with Smith saying he was within his legal rights to release the information and activists saying the release violated a stringent state law which makes it a misdemeanor to release a person’s HIV status– negative or positive– unless that release conforms to very narrow and specific rules.
Lansing Mayor Virgil Bernero in July asked Attorney General Mike Cox to review the release for its legality, and on Aug. 28 David Tanay, head of the attorney general’s criminal division, sent a letter to the mayor exonerating Smith of any wrong doing in the release.
Lansing Police already have a policy which prohibits the release of HIV information.
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