Evidence Surfaces That Council Member Rapundalo’s Web Site Misleads Voters About Opponent’s Voting Record

On September 15th, former Second Ward Council member Jane Lumm (pictured right), who is challenging current Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo, dropped what A2Politico described on September 15, 2011 as an endorsement “bomb.” Lumm’s press release announcing her candidacy included information about her campaign committee, a murderer’s row of politicos from both the local Democrat and Republican parties. The list of Lumm’s supporters even included the names of two of Council member Rapundalo’s 31 Facebook friends.

Second Ward incumbent Stephen Rapundalo, is a former Republican who switched to the Democratic party to run for Council after he lost a mayoral race against John Hieftje. In 2010, Rapundalo supported Republican Rick Snyder with a generous donation. Over the past two years on Council, Stephen Rapundalo’s most successful work has been in persuading Council to give tax dollars, including millions from the AAPS, to Ann Arbor SPARK. In 2009, he led a failed effort to ban plastic bags, and came out strongly in support of a city income tax. You can watch Rapundalo in this video, below, argue for the tax:

As chair (and long-time member) of the City Council Labor Committee, Rapundalo has had consistent difficulty overeeing negotiations with the city’s patrolman’s union, and his Committee has pushed city unions to arbitration hearings, each of which city officials lost—loses that cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the past 12 months, Rapundalo led a failed money-saving effort to outsource the operations of Huron Hills Golf Course, voted to cut services such as police and fire, and argued for mandatory home inspections in order to simply increase city revenues. You can watch a January 2011 video, below, of Rapundalo pushing for the use of mandatory home inspections as a “revenue generator.”

Rapundalo has also voted several times to protect funding for the controversial Percent for Art Program. That program most recently resulted in the fabrication and placement of a water sculpture in front of the new police-courts building—a sculpture costing taxpayers in excess of $1,000,000 dollars at a time when the city faces serious budget shortfalls.

There’s a lot on the line in this Ward Two race. For instance, John Hieftje’s Fuller Road parking garage project could be dead in the water as Lumm, a staunch supporter of parkland protection and a fiscal conservative, might be disinclined to support that project which city officials have not voted to support, but are quietly funding with money skimmed from a variety of different sources, including the water & sewer fund, as well as the General Fund. Should the parking garage project be deep-sixed, it could impact political plans higher up the food chain involving, potentially, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for train projects some pols in Lansing and Washington, D.C. want to see Michigan and Washtenaw County get. Train projects are notoriously prone to result in political corruption, because they mean big bucks for pols to throw around to political supporters. It’s also unclear whether Lumm would support repurposing millage money Ann Arbor taxpayers pony up to support the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority on the current county-wide transportation initiative. In short, Jane Lumm’s election could upset several political apple carts that John Hieftje and others have been pushing around for the past several years.

Stephen Rapundalo recently launched a campaign web site.

His list of endorsers represents many local politicos who have political or financial stakes in the projects Lumm’s election could threaten. Endorsers include AATA Board member Jesse Bernstein, and past Chair of the Downtown Development Authority, Joan Lowenstein.

Perhaps because Rapundalo’s record of accomplishments over the past six years is somewhat thin, and perhaps because he has supported increasing taxes—most recently with his support of the Street Repair Millage renewal, which includes a tax increase—and certainly because there is so much at stake, politically, Rapundalo’s campaign web site site is filled with distortions concerning his challenger’s voting record. The distortions, inaccuracies and falsehoods are revealed by minutes from City Council meetings which Lumm attended, the very same documents Rapundalo cites in footnotes.

For starters, Rapundalo’s web site claims that he “led the successful overhaul of the city’s outdated and expensive labor contracts” while his opponent “voted to support the rich labor contracts and buyout provisions that have cost taxpayers much over the years.” As proof of this claim he cites Jane Lumm’s August 4, 1997 vote for a police contract which had below inflation wage increases of 1.5 percent.  Records provided by city officials show the wage increases Lumm supported in 1997 were significantly less than the wage increases the police received in their 2009 arbitration award under Rapundalo’s watch as a member of the City Council Budget and Labor Committee.

Rapundalo claims that Lumm supported buyout provisions. This is nothing short of huckster propaganda. It was actually Stephen Rapundalo who introduced an ordinance change (May 4, 2009 City Council minutes, pages 8-9) for an $6.7 million 2009 police early retirement program.

Rapundalo claims to have saved taxpayers millions from his leadership in reforming healthcare and pension plans. He neglects to mention that these costs skyrocketed under his watch. During Rapundalo’s tenure on City Council, the bill for city-provided benefits doubled. The unfunded liability for the pension and retiree healthcare plans was over $200 million dollars as of June 30, 2010, and has continued to rise. Conversely, city records show that when Lumm left City Council, the city employee retiree healthcare plan liability was about $50 million, and the pension plan was overfunded by $63 million.

The implication that Lumm did nothing to reform employee benefits or improve efficiency is false. She pushed to modernize benefits and for advance funding of retiree healthcare (June 2, 1997 City Council minutes, pages 23-24). She also worked to establish a Competitiveness Steering Committee that would go on to lower costs by introducing more competition into provision of city services right up to her last council meeting (July 6, 1997 City Council meeting minutes,  page 10; November 5, 1998 City Council meeting minutes, pages 11-12).

Council member Rapundalo is sharply critical of Lumm and alleges she voted against allowing Ann Arbor residents to decide on a proposed parks maintenance millage. Rapundalo’s web site includes a link to a vote Lumm cast on August 4, 1997. A review of the minutes makes it clear that Lumm’s no vote was a parliamentary maneuver to split the parks maintenance and repair millage proposal into two ballot issues to give voters as many choices and as much information as possible (City Council meeting minutes August 4, 1997,  page 26). At the subsequent meeting on August 18, 1997, Lumm presented her alternative, which was defeated. She then voted to support the single millage proposal she had voted against on August 4, 1997.

Rapundalo’s web site misrepresents Lumm’s political views, as well as her votes.

For instance, on his campaign web site Rapundalo accuses Lumm of consistently opposing recycling and environmental programs. He cites votes cast on May 25, 1995 and May 28, 1997. Both meetings involved debate about how to deal with budget deficits. Lumm preferred cost cuts to tax increases. The cuts she proposed included halting work on an education center at the landfill, requiring a business plan for the recycling drop-off station showing proposed net savings, and eliminating $30,000 in spending on a new commercial solid waste recycling program. During her time on City Council, Lumm supported environmental programs. For example, minutes from the City Council August 4, 1997 meeting, page 8, show she voted to extend the solid waste education contract with the Ann Arbor Ecology Center.

Rapundalo also claims Lumm neglected our roads, water and sewer systems and pats himself on the back for securing funding for the Stadium Bridges. On Rapundalo’s watch, residents have had to put up with bridge lane closures for two years and the third worst roads in the state, while the streets millage fund amassed a $30 million surplus. Our public services director, Sue McCormick, has told the media that the city is not replacing the water and sewer pipes as fast as they are wearing out.

The icing on the cake, if you will, comes when Rapundalo claims his opponent supports “dense development projects in neighborhoods.” He bases this claim on the fact that she supported accessory dwelling units (mother-in-law apartments).  Conversely, Council member Rapundalo has voted in support of such neighborhood developments as City Place/Heritage Row, 601 Forest, and 42 North. The latter was a proposed student housing development that would have included 640 bedrooms as part of five four-story residential buildings and a clubhouse all on property that is wooded and contains 12 natural wetlands, surrounded by single-family housing—support of development than would qualify as significantly more dense than the addition of a mother-in-law apartment to house, one presumes, an elderly relative.

Stephen Rapundalo’s misrepresentation Lumm’s votes and political positions is ham-handed and sleazy. Rapundalo refused to comment when asked if he stood behind the accuracy of the information contained in his campaign web site.