IN 2007 A FORMER Ward 3 Council member emailed his Council colleagues “talking points” for a meeting to be scheduled with Mayor John Hieftje. Hieftje had threatened to veto the police-courts building and Leigh Greden suggested to fellow Council members Joan Lowenstein, Stephen Rapundalo, Christopher Easthope, Marcia Higgins and Margie Teall that they meet in private with Hieftje and deliver this message: “If you follow through with your veto, it will change the nature of our working relationship with you on this Council. We will not announce this to the public in order to give you a chance to do the right thing w/out our position being made public.”

Until 2009, the public remained unaware of such plans to privately bully the mayor. That year a group of citizens used Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover that email—along with others that revealed vote-rigging and secret email discussions during open meetings. In June 2009, the former Ann Arbor News, thanks to its own FOIA of Council emails, broke the story. An Open Meetings Act violation lawsuit ensured which the city eventually settled.

At a February 2014 City Council meeting Ward 4 Council member Jack Eaton proposed a quid pro quo: there would be support for a proposed contract extension for the public art administrator in exchange for over $900,000 dollars in road repair, water and sewer fund money diverted to pay for public art being returned to the original funds. The money was returned and the contract was extended.

In March 2014, Council member Eaton co-sponsored a resolution seeking approval for a 12,000 square foot park on the Library lot parcel downtown. Eaton said at a City Council meeting the sale of the Library lot would require eight votes, and unless there was support for open space on the publicly-owned parcel, there would not be 8 votes for the sale.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was greatly admired by his colleagues for his ability to hammer out compromises with Republicans. Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said that one of Kennedy’s great strengths was the ability to “separate his often fiery liberal rhetoric from his desire to compromise.” Likewise, 19th-century Speaker of the House Senator Henry Clay, Jr. was known as the Great Compromiser. For this skill, in part, President Lincoln referred to Rep. Clay as “my ideal of a great man.”

In 2009, the former Ann Arbor News roundly criticized local elected leaders, including our current Mayor Pro Tempore Margie Teall, for engaging in the antithesis of open compromise: secret deliberations during open meetings. We commend Mr. Eaton for practicing the art of political compromise out in the open. He has not only suggested reasonable compromises, but kept his word when the time came to execute the proposed compromises. Compromise is badly needed in government at all levels. Mr. Eaton’s ability to hammer out compromises at the Council table and his push to make the City Attorney’s written opinions public, bring much-needed compromise and transparency to local government.