ANN ARBOR, MI – Communications between Ann Arbor residents and city council members are part of the public record and not exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, a Washtenaw County judge has ruled.

Judge Carol Kuhnke dismissed a lawsuit against the city Wednesday, Sept. 25, allowing the release of records requested under FOIA earlier this year by resident Luis Vazquez.

In his April 18 FOIA request, Vazquez was seeking copies of communications between resident Pat Lesko and any council members since Jan. 1, including emails, texts and direct messages over social media.

Vazquez also asked for messages from resident Tom Stulberg and attorney Tom Wieder to any city staff or council members during the same timeframe, and messages exchanged between five council members: Anne Bannister, Jeff Hayner, Jack Eaton, Kathy Griswold and Elizabeth Nelson.

Lesko, Stulberg and Wieder sued the city to stop release of their electronic communications with city officials.

In her ruling, Kuhnke said FOIA doesn’t exempt communications between a resident and a city employee when they are discussing a public body in the performance of an official function.

“(The communications) all involve the business of the city, the work of the city, the decisions of city council,” she said.

"... If the only reason they shouldn’t be disclosed is because they are communications by a citizen to a member of council, I reject that.”

Wieder, a local attorney who represented the plaintiffs, said he believes the judgment opens the city up to countless records requests from people seeking communications between private citizens and city employees.

Wieder said he doesn’t yet know if the plaintiffs will appeal the judge’s decision.

“I think the real loser here is the city and the citizens,” he said. “I think this will have a chilling effect on people communicating with the city.”

Michigan’s FOIA law is designed to promote transparency in government and the city is required by statute to comply with Vazquez’s request, City Attorney Stephen Postema previously noted.

Postema said the FOIA request has been fulfilled and will be released, other than the documents litigated in the lawsuit, which will remain sealed in the event the plaintiffs opt to bring the case to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

“We’ve been doing this consistently for a long time and it’s not targeted at any persons,” Postema said of the city’s application of FOIA. “The neutral application of the law is an important principle and we believe that we’ve done that.”

In an interview earlier this month, Vazquez said he filed his FOIA request because he wants to see how closely Lesko, Stulberg and Wieder are coordinating with members of the new council majority.

“Certainly it’s caused some people’s heads to explode,” he said of his FOIA request.

Vazquez, a former Ecology Center board member, is a supporter of Mayor Christopher Taylor. Taylor and his allies lost majority control of council after the November 2018 elections.

Vazquez said his curiosity was triggered by a recent article in the Ann Arbor Observer discussing Lesko’s behind-the-scenes involvement in city politics.

“It brought to my mind this kind of background manipulation engaged in by Pat Lesko,” he said. “What I suspected through some of the other communications that I was seeing was that Tom Stulberg, Pat Lesko, Tom Wieder and Kathy Griswold, Jack Eaton — they all collaborate and coordinate, it seems to me, politically.”

Wieder argued the point of the lawsuit was to seek a determination about what the city is required to disclose pursuant to FOIA, defining a set of parameters of what types of communications are or are not exempt.

Wieder said he ultimately wasn’t trying to stop the release of the more than 500 pages of documents included in the FOIA request in its entirety, but simply limit the documents provided in the request to those specifically related to a government function.

“Whether the city has discretion to release or to not release the type of documents at issue in this case is important both to the plaintiffs and the city,” he said. “These plaintiffs and other people who might be in their position will want to know if something they write to their council members must be released by law.”

Postema argued that Wieder’s interpretation of FOIA was incorrect on several instances throughout the Wednesday hearing, including his assessment that the plaintiffs’ communications with city employees were simply personal emails.

“No city or municipality, school board or school, anywhere in the state of Michigan, that I’m aware of, holds the view that communications with individuals in the city or officers or employees is not covered as a public body,” he said.