SafeHouse Board Members Should Embrace Transparency, Not Fight FOIA and Public Attendance at Board Meetings

Michigan’s sunshine laws (the Open Meetings and the Freedom of Information Acts) apply to governmental entities and, under certain circumstances, non-profits. In Nov. 2021, The A2Indy submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for public records to the interim Executive Director of SafeHouse Center. Tara Mahoney, a lawyer and then-President of the SafeHouse Board of Directors, eventually refused to comply with the legal request. The newspaper’s recourse under Michigan law was to file suit in the Washtenaw Circuit Court to compel SafeHouse officials to comply. The SafeHouse Board of Directors has decided to fight: they don’t believe they are required to adhere to the State’s Open Meetings or Freedom of Information Acts. With respect to the Open Meetings Act, this means that the members of the SafeHouse Center Board—including the County Sheriff and the County Administrator, as well as a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District—would rather fight it out legally than welcome SafeHouse donors, volunteers, domestic/sexual violence survivors, the media and members of the public to the non-profit’s Board meetings. What, exactly, are these Board members hiding?

The Board members’ decision (made in secret) to fight rather than embrace transparency is concerning. The first question that comes up is this: Is the money-losing, scandal-wracked domestic violence non-profit now footing legal bills rather than embracing transparency and adhering to Michigan law?

The non-profit’s $3.19 million in revenue declared on its 2020 income tax return was raised from individual donors, city, county, state and federal sources, among others. Taxpayers rely on SafeHouse’s staff and Board members to provide critical services to vulnerable domestic/sexual violence victims and their children. Donors, taxpayers and elected officials must be told whether (and how) any actions by the Board members to fight transparency will impact funding needed to provide shelter, food and services to victims of domestic and sexual abuse. Furthermore, while the non-profit’s day-to-day finances are kept secret from the public, given past fiscal years’ losses, the Board’s decision to fight transparency could push SafeHouse Center into yet another six-figure, money-losing year.

Many politicians have been caught up in the SafeHouse scandal.

• Ann Arbor County Commissioner Andy LaBarre, who is running for re-election because “there’s more to do,” was informed about the serious problems at the facility by a domestic violence activist and allegedly shrugged off the woman’s concerns, and questioned her motives in bringing the matter to his attention, instead.

• County Commissioner Sue Shink said at a public meeting that her efforts to advocate for the women victimized by Niess-May and SafeHouse staff had resulted in a threat. Shink announced that she had allegedly been told her involvement in mitigating the SafeHouse situation could “impact” her political career. Shink, who is running for the Michigan Senate to represent western Washtenaw County, folded under the pressure, according to domestic violence victims and advocates.

• Ann Arbor County Commissioner Katie Scott, a nurse, when told on social media of the problems at SafeHouse, replied that those concerned should “call her.” Her phone number is unavailable on the County’s website. Like LaBarre, Scott is running for re-election.

• The County Sheriff and the County Administrator sit on the Board of Directors of a charitable organization that took public money for services not provided. This is a fraud that could, by all rights, be investigated by the Michigan Attorney General.

• U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell worked behind the scenes to make sure victims seeking shelter who were turned away by SafeHouse were not made homeless, or forced to return to their assailants.

• Ypsilanti’s Mayor signed a public statement urging the SafeHouse Board to investigate the allegations of mismanagement. Ann Arbor’s Mayor Christopher Taylor has remained silent.

As parents often tell their children, there are good secrets and bad secrets. Bad secrets hurt people. They hurt communities. Bad secrets involve ethical breaches, betrayed trust, impropriety and sometimes, illegal conduct. Is the SafeHouse Center Board of Directors fighting a public records request and against welcoming the public to Board meetings to hide bad secrets from the public? It’s an important question to answer. Why? An independent investigation (how much was spent?) of SafeHouse’s Executive Director, in response to a series of articles published in The Ann Arbor Independent, found that the Executive Director had failed to do her job over a long period of time. In the investigator’s complete report (kept secret from the public), commissioned by the SafeHouse Board of Directors, one person was keel-hauled—blamed for the non-profit’s many “lapses”: former Executive Director Barbara Niess-May. The investigator’s report was a “lone shooter” explanation for scandalous and long-time managerial incompetence. The report exculpated, by omission, the Board members under whose obviously inept and negligent “oversight” Niess-May’s long-term “lapses” occurred.

Of course, to call “lapses” what domestic violence victims housed in the SafeHouse shelter documented through photos, videos and audio recordings in their determined and brave efforts to expose the unsafe, unsanitary and filthy conditions at the shelter, is a linguistic dance worthy of Vladimir V. Putin. County Administrator Greg Dill, a SafeHouse Board member, allowed SafeHouse to moulder, to become an unsafe, unsanitary and filthy facility owned by the County’s taxpayers. Beginning in August 2021, an unknown number of domestic and sexual abuse victims and their children were turned away from SafeHouse. Victims seeking shelter were told by SafeHouse staff that the near-empty shelter was “full.” The County Administrator and the County Commissioners were made aware of this in Aug. 2021. In Oct. 2021, they allocated emergency funding ($75,000) to provide shelter and services to those refused shelter and services by SafeHouse.

The independent investigator failed to examine the actions of the members of SafeHouse’s Board of Directors who were responsible for oversight of the non-profit’s Executive Director. These Board members must be held accountable for the sake of domestic and sexual violence victims and our community. The Ann Arbor Independent intends to do just that, because the forced resignation of the Executive Director, while based on facts and merited, was just the tip of what domestic violence survivors and their advocates say is a Titanic-sized iceberg. SafeHouse continued to hold fundraisers and accept public donations even as the staff turned away victims in need of shelter and services. Accepting public money, soliciting public donations, and not providing the advertised/contracted services is the definition of public fraud by a charitable organization.

The decision of the SafeHouse Center Board members to fight to try to protect their “right” to conduct the people’s business in secret, suggests that the job of cleaning house at the domestic violence shelter is far from complete. The Board’s recent decision to fight transparency provides a partial explanation, perhaps, of how Barbara Niess-May succeeded in hiding her many “lapses” for so long. The County’s domestic violence shelter and its resources are supposed to provide protection to battered and sexually abused individuals and their children. Its resources and its good name should not be abused to protect incompetent Board members, the County Administrator, or self-serving elected officials from being held accountable.