Ward 1 Incumbent’s Campaign Literature Criticized As Full of “Half-Truths”

THE DICTIONARY DEFINES propaganda as the deliberate spreading of information, ideas, or rumors in an effort to either help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, or nation. Most commonly propaganda is used in the political arena. Campaign literature to the closest thing to propaganda most people ever get hand delivered to their doors.

After Ward 1 incumbent Sabra Briere’s fundraising letter in which she claimed her U of M student opponent (who has since dropped out, but whose name will still appear on the ballot), and the self-employed small business owner in the trades opponent could be funded by “big out of town developers” and by “major financial and political interests,” Briere’s campaign literature is being delivered to homes throughout Ward 1. Click here to download her campaign piece.

Briere’s campaign literature is rife with what critics claim are “half-truths, distortions, over-generalizations and outright whoppers.” For starters, they point out, the photo of Briere on the handout being given to voters is dated. Below, the photo on the left is from Briere’s campaign lit. The photo on the right is from her September 2013 e-newsletter.

Sabra Briere sells herself as the “independent candidate.” On her campaign literature, Briere writes that she is “an independent voice on Council.” Her independent opponent’s campaign website says, “I am running because we need more independent voices on city council.”

Since 2011, records indicate that Briere has voted in lockstep with John Hieftje more than 90 percent of the time.  Briere’s voting record has come under intense scrutiny since November 2012, because she and her Ward 1 colleague Sumi Kailasapathy now frequently vote on opposite sides of bell weather issues, including restoration of lost services (Briere, no), bolstering parkland protections (Briere, no), funding more police and firefighters (Briere, no), and most recently support of the standard that mayoral appointees avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest (Briere, no).

The issue of ethics should be of interest, because Briere’s opponent Jeff Hayner says he “wants to work together with Ward 1 Council member Kailasapathy, Ward 2 Council members Petersen and Lumm, Ward 3 Council member Kunselman, Ward 4 Council member elect Eaton and Ward 5 Council member Anglin to craft and institute a strict conflict of interest policy for council members and political appointees.”

Briere, who was rapped across the knuckles by AnnArbor.com in April 2013 for plotting in behind-the-scenes emails to the Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority against her colleagues Sumi Kailasapathy and Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman, assures voters she is “committed to greater transparency” in city government.

Ward 4 Council member elect Jack Eaton posted a comment to AnnArbor.com in response to the April AnnArbor.com piece documenting Briere’s ill-mannered treatment of her colleagues via emails to a third party. Eaton writes:

At the bottom of every email Council Member Briere sends is a reminder that her emails are subject to disclosure under the FOIA. Yet, she sends out a series of emails that she now regrets. That does not seem to demonstrate the character or skills one would want in a Mayor.

I am not faulting Briere for disagreeing with Kunselman. I am questioning her doing so in emails to others while voting in support of the Kunselman/Kailasapathy resolution in public. This is just so very reminiscent of her co-sponsoring the park land protection amendment to the Charter, only to undermine it in the end. I am not being critical of mere human behavior, I am expressing alarm at her snarky remarks and her failure to realize the possibility that her emails would be disclosed under FOIA.

In 2009 Sabra Briere voted in favor of a resolution proposed by outgoing Ward 3 Council member Leigh Greden that restricted the city’s Freedom of Information Act request policy. The rule changes, which Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin and Ward 4 Council member elect Jack Eaton have expressed serious interest in lifting, made it more expensive for citizens and news outlets to request public records and easier for public documents to be shielded from scrutiny. Greden lost his seat as the result of citizens and the Ann Arbor News filing FOIAs for Council emails.

Briere’s literature also includes this reminder: “I am a Democrat. I don’t check my values at the door.”

Under former City Administrator Roger Fraser, whom Briere directly supervised, Ann Arbor slashed hundreds of middle-class jobs and paid upper-level managers six-figure salaries, lump sum bonuses and plentiful perks. She has proposed no resolutions nor has she objected over the past six years as the city filled the once full-time jobs with low-paid temporary workers.

Briere’s contribution to the city’s mushrooming homelessness among school-age students, families and individuals? She headed a 2011 task force which came up with the bright idea to give the homeless a printed card with the contact information of social service organizations. How’d that work out? Under her “Democratic” watch between 2007 and 2012 the number of homeless students and youths has almost  quadrupled from 370 individuals to 1,282.

Since Sabra Briere was first elected, the need for food assistance in Ann Arbor has jumped 138 percent with some 44,000 people county-wide in need, according to a 2012 report put together by Food Gatherers.

Affordable housing your thing? In October 2009, John Hieftje announced that he and Sabra Briere were working together to “double” the 60 units of affordable housing which had been built since 2005. Between 2009 and 2013, Briere and Hieftje added 10 units net of affordable housing to the city’s stock. Councilmember Sabra Briere sat inside Hieftje’s Carnival tent collecting tickets from the rubes and praise from the turnips who have no idea that 60 units of affordable housing over five years would get the lot of them burned in effigy in towns like Boulder or Berkeley. According to the City of Ann Arbor’s own 2005-2009 strategic plan to address the lack of affordable housing: “What should the community look like in 2010? 500 plus new units of supportive housing for under 50% AMI.”

Sabra Briere hasn’t checked her Democratic values at the door, perhaps, because she came to City Council without them. That’s okay. She’ll have less stuff to cram into her knitting bag when she leaves City Council in November, because I’m pretty sure Ward 1 voters don’t have plans to check their values or their hearts at the doors of their local Ward 1 polling places.