Budget Bert

• Benzing’s opening prayer: “Creator God. . . we thank you for the rain.”

County Sheriff Body Cameras

Lil’ Bert Leininger wants to spend a quarter million dollars from the 2024 radio bond millage on thirty police body cameras. The millage was sold to the public as repayment for a bond to pay for 800 megahertz radio towers. Now Bert plans to use unspent money from the bond to pay for other things not made remotely explicit in the millage ballot language or promotional material.

• Ingles: “The funds are coming from the millage?”

  • Bert: “The funds are coming from the leftover proceeds of the bond of the 800 megahertz system.”

  • Ingles: “What’s available to spend?”

  • Bert: “We’ll end up with about $800,000.”

What else could be done with the $800,000 in excess taxes? you must be asking yourself as you prepare to shell out for your summer bill. . . Well, the Board could use it to pay down the bond, effectively lowering taxes. Alternatively, and more likely, Bert could use it to shift around money for the purpose of bolstering his personal slush fund to create budgetary space for his favorite NGOs.1

• Benzing, on the amusing timing of the request to spend the bond money on something not explicitly stated in the millage language, just after the public passed another Countywide tax millage: “I’m rather disturbed to see this resolution the week following last week’s vote on making the 9-1-1 surcharge permanent, particularly because of concerns raised by citizens. . . regarding what would happen with the ten percent contingency.”

  • On Bert’s shirking of the relevant committees: “I am also concerned because this proposal was not discussed at all at the Emergency Telephone Services Board meeting. Not once. I’m further disturbed that our Sheriff’s Department—and not the other law enforcement within Hillsdale County. . . is the only one benefitting form this body camera purchase.”

  • On the body cameras purchased just a few years ago: “Also, the body cameras that we have are only a couple years old, and we need to replace them already? I wonder about that. . . Evidently they are unsatisfactory, and we did a poor job vetting that, and now we have to pay a quarter of a million dollars out of the megahertz fund.”

  • “I’m really saddened by this, that we would have this discussion and we would not go through the Public Safety Committee, not go through the 9-1-1 board, but mere resolution from our Budget Chair. So therefore, even though I support the use of body cameras. . . I do not like how we got to this, and so therefore I will be voting No.”

• Ingles: “If this hasn’t gone through the normal process, is it better to move this and refer it to the Public Safety Committee, and then bring it back to Board of Commissioners?”

• Bert: “This is really a budgetary item, in my view.”

According to the logic of Bert’s view, all questions that could potentially face the County must go through the Budget Chair, and in fact could only ever go through the Budget Chair. More: the Budget Chair would have the power to initiate any project that could conceivably affect the Budget, which is to say, every project. All hail the Budget Chair and his view!

• Ingles: “We don’t need to pass this today.”

• Bert: “I disagree.”

• Wiley, having previously showed signs of waffling, caving to Bert’s will on a matter apparently kept in the dark until the last possible moment: “We need to pass this today.”

Benzing motioned to table the resolution, and Ingles supported. Dark Kev! came through once again as the swing vote in favor of the motion to table. The resolution will presumably come before the Board at its next meeting, and seems likely to be passed in some form or another.

In the mean time, if you’re still out there voting for tax millages—particularly in light of this proposal and the recently-passed 9-1-1 forever tax—we’re sorry to say, but you’re not going to make it. Though if you were to try to repent, you could begin by taking long look in the mirror, and then (after much self-scrutiny) consider the ways in which these millages are the product of shenanigans pulled by our local political class (namely in funding essential things by millage so as to secure Yes votes while funding superfluous things with the General Fund). In so doing, you might be forced to confront a simple—dare we say, Negative—fact: that most of these people cannot be trusted in positions of political power, no matter how petty.

And it’s bad for them, too: they’ve proven it time and again. Some are filled with delusions of self-importance: consider that local Councilmen throw around their title as if it’s a badge of honor—how laughable! Others are simply too dim or lack the sturdiness of constitution required for the job: recall how casually the follower types in the Council and Commission majorities reach into your pocketbook and pluck out just a little bit more without even having searched for alternatives. No—they can and will take all they think they can get away with.2

District Court Mediation

Bert noted that the judges have proceeded with the first steps of legal action against the County due to his decision to move the District Court to the Courthouse.

• Bert: “The Court can file any lawsuit against the County or funding unit. They must go through a mediation procedure; it’s a requirement of the courts. We have received a letter, I believe, from somebody from the State Court Administrators’ office. They have selected a. . . lawyer from the Dickinson-Wright law firm to work on behalf of the judges. We need to decide on the Commissioners’ side if we want to meet with them, and if we want to look at a law firm that specializes in this type of situation.”

• Ingles, on possibly rescinding the resolution to move the District Court to the Courthouse: “One of the options is to not participate in mediation. If we are going to participate in mediation, it seems to me a good faith response from the Board is to rescind resolution 26-081.”

Ingles’ suggestion was not entertained. Bert moved to create a mediation committee—appointed by Chair Wiley—to secure legal counsel and enter mediation with the judges. All in favor. Wiley and Bert were selected to populate the committee.

• “According to Leininger, it would not have been a pr[oo]dent decision’ to give the voters a chance to vote again on the millage, which currently funds—but by no means must always fund—the county’s 9-1-1 system.” Hillsdalian. Proodence, Bert says, dictates that you have forever taxes passed upon you. You are not to be trusted; only Bert can be trusted. Do you feel insulted yet?

• “I believe Hillsdale residents deserve a local government shaped by open debate and personal accountability—not by political influence carried out through page names while the people behind the pages remain unclear.” AI writes on Penny’s behalf—but it refuses to say which platform it is. Where is the accountability? Who is responsible for the AI’s words?

• “The so-called ‘mental health crisis’ is one of the great disasters of modern life.” Lomez.