An Open Letter

Iron County Doings                                   
William J. Vajk
Iron River MI 49935
18 March 2013

An Open Letter To:
Governor Rick Snyder
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing  MI  48909

Dear Governor Snyder:

I recently sent you a carbon copy of a letter to Attorney
General Schuette regarding violations by the municipal
governments of Iron County and Iron River of state laws,
an Attorney General Opinion, and the Headlee
Amendment of the Michigan Constitution, asking his
intervention. For his part Mr. Schuette’s office has chosen

to shift the burden of enforcing the Michigan statutes and
the Michigan Constitution away from the State of Michigan,
where it rightfully belongs, to a private citizen who is
complaining about being currently illegally damaged.

In this letter, I on take the burden of pointing out to the
executive branch of Michigan State Government that:

1) Just because only one citizen is complaining about
violations of state laws and the state constitution does
not imply that only one individual is being damaged.
State laws apply to all equally, as does damage to any

one of us.

2) Similar ordinances and practices are common
throughout this state’s upper peninsula.

3) It is the responsibility of the executive branch of state
government to assert total control over all municipal
adherence to state laws and the state constitution. The
state creates the municipalities, and is ultimately responsible
for everything they do. If this is unclear, please see Dillon’s
Rule and all that implies.

4) It is clear that the state has abrogated this responsibility
for decades. The fearless violations by municipalities in this
region is testimony to that fact.

Attached are several articles I recently published on topics
pertinent to this discussion. Besides the city thumbing its
nose at state laws and the constitution, Iron River also has
a city councilman whose very presence on the council
violates (conflict of interest) the city charter, yet nobody
has done anything about it despite the fact that the violation
is common knowledge and discussions about it have
appeared in the minutes of the city council. Iron County
Doings awarded him a “Lump of Coal” award for this
conduct. Iron River, Iron County, and Iron River Township,
have been running amok in too many ways to detail in a
letter like this!

Please advise the undersigned just what the heck (remaining
polite in choice of expression) is going on here. Just because
there’s a long bridge between the main body of this state and
the upper peninsula does the state think that we can be cut
loose to become some third world backwater unworthy of the
same attentions the rest of the state receives? Is UP law
enforcement implicating local governments a joke to those
of you in lower Michigan? What law enforcement concerned
with municipal misbehavior has the state undertaken up here
in the past hundred years? Is the UP part of the United States
and Michigan?

Please take special notice of the article questioning the
complicity between the Treasury Department and local politics.
The response I received from Mr. Schuette is reminiscent of
the failure of the department of treasury to act in the case of
Mrs. King having two properties concurrently receiving
Primary Residence Exemptions. At the time of this writing I
have no reason to think that any department in the executive
branch is capable of acting independently of local politics,
which is the state’s primary mission.

In fact, as this letter is being mailed I am concurrently
publishing it for public consumption. I would have emailed
your office an advance copy but you have chosen isolation
from the daily troubles of the state by making yourself and
your office unavailable to the public through email. Did you
know that I can email the Pope (Francis, who just assumed
the office) at benedictxvi@vatican.va? There’s a man who
exposes himself to the entire world, including more than a
billion faithful congregants, but I can’t email you who answers
to less than 10 million? I find this amazing and inexplicable!
How can you possibly justify isolating yourself from the
people that way?

Dear Governor, I ask you, where does the buck stop in
Michigan if not at your desk? This is a serious question, so
please let me know. Any failure to address these issues is
taken as an answer that the State of Michigan doesn’t care
what its municipalities do, no matter what state laws and
what part of the state constitution your mignons, the
municipalities, chose to violate, the state will turn a blind
eye to it. If what appears to be true is really true, it is only
fair that the choice by the state to chose non-enforcement
should be formalized so all of us can understand the
situation during all future elections. I eagerly and
respectfully await your prompt reply to all the questions
above.

Best regards,

Bill Vajk