Two Crystal Awards for One Dogged Reporter

Sometimes the universe gets the timing of an award just right. Such is the case with Chris Root having been recognized with two Crystal Awards for local service last week—one for her substantial work individually for this community, the other as a member of the ELi team.

Having worked alongside Chris on government reporting for ELi for over three years, I can tell you that she would deserve these awards on any day of any year. But in the last few weeks, she has been working so very hard on an incredibly difficult assignment: figuring out East Lansing’s pension systems.

As the person who asked her to take on that assignment, I feel more than a little guilty. Basically, what I was asking Chris to do is this: dig into hundreds of pages of complex reports and talk to as many experts as necessary to try to tell us, in English, what the City’s pension plans consist of, what’s been done to bring down pension costs and liabilities, and what additional actions might be taken.

It is fair to say that, without Chris, ELi could not bring you what we have brought you today—plain-English answers to readers’ questions about the pensions, along with deeper “read more” analyses of several important issues, like why our police and fire personnel don’t get Social Security benefits for their work for East Lansing, and how the Michigan Constitution specifies what we can and can’t do with pension obligations.

As you read what she’s found, you might wish we had a simple answer for you: “vote for/against the tax proposals because X has/hasn’t happened!”

But oversimplification isn’t what we do. And telling you how to vote is definitely not what we do.

As your independent, nonpartisan news source, we do try hard to get real answers to hard questions, and to make complicated issues easier to understand. With that in mind, Chris went through one draft after another of this work, checking in over and over, putting up with me asking for more clarification, fact-checking and chasing down sub-answers to sub-questions.

It would probably be safe to guess she’s now spent over 70 hours on this investigation.

So, it is a special joy for me to see Chris honored with two Crystal Awards right now, particularly as the individual award gives the people who see her at meetings a specific reason to say “thank you” for the work she’s done as a citizen-reporter for the people of East Lansing.

I happen to know that this past week, at the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), DDA Chair Peter Dewan specifically recognized Chris for her work and her award. How do I know that? Because Chris attended Thursday’s meeting and sent me her notes from it! Her notes said simply: “Peter – Acknowledged Chris Root Crystal award. She puts in lots of hours.” I laughed when I read that.

Like me, Chris opts not to be paid for the work she does for ELi. Like me, she donates to ELi and fundraises for ELi. She has told me how grateful she is to have ELi so that she has a way to share what she’s seeing happening at City meetings. I feel so grateful to Team ELi for the same reason. In fact, it’s a major reason I founded the organization.

If you appreciate the work Chris does, do me a favor: donate to keep it going today. Your donations help me pay the costs of technology, editing, distribution, and more—the necessary costs of bringing to you what Chris, I, and the rest of the team find out.

And feel free to drop a note of thanks to Chris via my address, publisher@eastlansinginfo.org, and I’ll be sure to pass it on to her.