Former Ann Arbor City Attorney Files Suit to Force City to Identify Staff Members in Report Used to Fire City Administrator

by P.D. Lesko

R. Bruce Laidlaw, the Ann Arbor City Attorney between 1978 and 1991 and an Assistant City Attorney for six years before that, sent an email on Feb. 25 to Ann Arbor’s Mayor Chris Taylor, City Attorney Stephen Postema and Jennifer Salvatore, a founding attorney at Salvatore Prescott Porter & Porter, PLLC, in which Laidlaw alleges the three engaged in “unprofessional conduct” in their handling of the investigation into anonymous complaints concerning the conduct of former City Administrator Tom Crawford. Laidlaw told the trio that he intends to file a grievance against them with the Michigan Bar. On March 22, 2022, according to public records, Laidlaw filed suit in Washtenaw Circuit Court against the City of Ann Arbor. Laidlaw’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain an unredacted copy of the June 2021 investigatory report written by Salvatore, and used as justification to fire former City Administrator Tom Crawford, was denied by City officials. A FOIA denial, according to the Michigan Freedom of Information Act statute, opens to the requester the right to petition a judge to force a governmental entity to turn over public record(s) which have been denied.

When asked in an email why he filed suit to obtain the unredacted June 2021 Salvatore report, Laidlaw said, “I want to gather as many facts as I can about the Crawford discharge before I submit the grievances. Knowing who talked to Salvatore may reveal whether there really was a group [of city employees] that on its own went to the Mayor. There is much to that story that doesn’t seem credible.”

Laidaw, in an email, said that after he stopped working for the City of Ann Arbor, “I successfully represented clients in Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act litigation against governmental bodies including The University of Michigan, The State of Michigan and the City of Ann Arbor.” Laidlaw added, “My successes led to requests for me to lecture on FOIA and OMA to the members of the Michigan Library Association and the Michigan Municipal  League. I ceased plaintiff FOIA and OMA litigation after being retained as attorney for a number of municipalities and public libraries.”

The Ann Arbor Independent submitted a series of FOIA requests to the City of Ann Arbor to obtain the names of the five city staffers whom Salvatore says she interviewed via Zoom prior between June 1 and June 18, 2021. Salvatore has said she did not record the interviews, but rather, “took notes.” The requests were all denied.

Council member Kathy Griswold (D-Ward 2) recently announced she is running for re-election. “I have spent four years standing up for the rights of Ann Arbor citizens,” said Griswold. “I am not going to stop now.” Griswold says she has been concerned about the mishandling of the Crawford dismissal “since before Jennifer Salvatore was hired.” Griswold has also repeatedly said in public that Jennifer Salvatore’s work product delivered to Council in June 2021, is riddled with errors, and inconsistencies.

“The Mayor is a lawyer,” said Griswold, “and he accepted a flawed, poorly-done report from Jennifer Salvatore. He accepted from her the kind of work that he would never offer to his own clients, I’m sure.”

Griswold brought a resolution to Council to ask that Salvatore’s report be corrected. The motion failed.

Council member Griswold believes that the identities of the five, anonymous individuals whom Salvatore interviewed should not have been withheld from both City Council and the public.

“It’s outrageous,” said Griswold. “Those people interviewed by Salvatore were not whistleblowers.”

Griswold believes that the City must practice transparency and that the Mayor and the former City Attorney, Stephen Postema, mishandled the Crawford investigation. She also believes that Crawford was fired, in part, as payback for the 2020 forced resignation of former City Administrator Howard Lazarus, and also to allow the Mayor and his allies to spend $24 million in American Recovery Funding (ARPA) received by the City, unimpeded by the fiscal restraint that was Crawford’s trademark.

In April 2021, Elizabeth Nelson (D-Ward 4), a lawyer, wrote in a blog post titled “An Irresponsible Termination”: “I pleaded for my colleagues to seek more background and context, anything that would help inform decision-making. Mr. Crawford’s work record within our city organization is significant and knowable. I asked that new Council Members take the time to review and study recent staff assessments to better understand if reports were a concerning pattern, reflective of a bigger problem. It was suggested that new Council Members review the staff survey that preceded Mr. Crawford’s hiring. There was no interest.”

Nelson added, “The many members of our community who know Mr. Crawford well—people who have worked with him for many years — are horrified by the actions of a majority of Council.”

Bruce Laidlaw is one of those people.

Laidlaw suspects Crawford may have been fired because he released public records related to a domestic violence call to the home of Council member Jen Eyer (D-Ward 4) and her husband Mitchel Irwin (father of Michigan state senator Jeff Irwin). Irwin was arrested, charged, tried and sentenced on the charge in March 2021. MLive and The Ann Arbor Independent sought the records and City Attorney Stephen Postema illegally withheld them.

“I know there are a number of people who think the Eyer/Irwin FOIA FOIA matter was involved in the Crawford discharge,” said Laidlaw.

Laidlaw explains: “Postema was clearly wrong in claiming the Eyer/Irwin [AAPD] report could have properly been withheld. Even if there were grounds for denying access to the whole report, the City would have had to respond to the FOIA request by saying it was denying part of it. The City could probably have gotten away with the FOIA violation had there not been a conviction of Irwin. The best the City could have done to protect privacy was to have released the report with a redaction of Eyer’s name. Crawford had no real choice about releasing the report.”

After Crawford released the police records to MLive and The Ann Arbor Independent in 2021, Mayor Pro Tem Julie Grand took to Twitter to publicly criticize the City Administrator for adhering to Michigan law. Grand is married to federal Judge David R. Grand, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan. It was recently revealed by the The Washington Post that Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had sent texts that urged Trump officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election. There are growing calls for Justice Thomas to resign, and for Congress to impeach him. Like Virginia Thomas, Grand spewed conspiracy theories related to Crawford’s release of the Eyer/Irwin public records. In her Tweet, Grand publicly criticized Crawford’s adherence to Michigan’s FOIA statute.

Laidlaw said in an email, “If he [Crawford] had refused to release the report, a lawsuit would have forced the City to pay the plaintiff’s attorney fees. In addition, the FOIA now authorizes a court to assess fines and award punitive damages upon a finding that the public body “arbitrarily and capriciously” violated FOIA. The civil fine provided by FOIA is “not less than $2,500.00 or more than $7,500.00 for each occurrence.”

Just months after the AAPD records of the domestic violence call to the Eyer/Irwin residence were released and made public, former City Administrator Tom Crawford was accused by five, unnamed city employees of having broken no state or federal laws, but rather having engaged in inappropriate speech. The City Attorney hired Jennifer Salvatore to investigate.

“All of this leaves me wondering about the reason for the Crawford vendetta. It sure looks like Taylor was very angry about the Eyer FOIA issue,” said Laidlaw. 

Crawford vehemently denied several of the allegations in Salvatore’s June 2021 report. Nonetheless, even though Salvatore’s report did not recommend Crawford’s dismissal, a majority of City Council members, including the Mayor, decided to fire the Administrator. The Michigan Whistleblowers’ Protection Act, enacted in 1980, governs the treatment of public employee whistleblowers, and lays out the procedures for governmental bodies and public employees engaged in whistleblower complaints. In Michigan, a public employee qualifies as a whistleblower when “reporting a suspected violation of a law (federal, state, or local), including by a governmental entity and/or a public employee.”

Since July 2021, The Ann Arbor Independent has filed multiple FOIA requests for the unredacted Salvatore report, as well as requests for the names of the five city staffers whom Salvatore says she interviewed. The newspaper, in its public records requests and appeals, argued that because the five city employees had not accused Crawford of having broken a local, state or federal law, the five anonymous accusers were not entitled to any Michigan whistleblower protections, including anonymity.

In his court filing of March 22, 2022, Laidlaw argues that the City of Ann Arbor is required by Michigan law to provide him a copy of Salvatore’s June 2021 report unredacted. Laidlaw writes,”The public’s interest in government accountability must prevail over an individual’s, or a group of individuals’, expectations of privacy. Full disclosure of the document requested is needed for public understanding of the termination of Defendant’s chief administrative officer.”

Read Laidlaw’s 20 page complaint (including exhibits) against the City of Ann Arbor filed on March 22, 2022:

Laidlaw’s suit asks for the following relief: “Order Defendant to provide Plaintiff with an unredactd copy of the requested document. Order Defendant to pay costs and reasonable fees.”

Stephen Postema retired from his job as City Attorney in March 2022. Kathy Griswold says that Postema still comes into the City Attorney’s office 10 hours per week. “I think he is working on these Laidlaw issues, HR issues and wrapping up ongoing litigation,” said Griswold.