What the City Won’t Report

The City of East Lansing has apparently decided to start providing regular news of City Council. In the last two weeks, the City has issued e-Dialog reports on what’s happened at Council that week.

The City is encouraging you to tell your friends and neighbors to sign up for its government-issued news. We encourage you to do the same. We think getting more information is always good.

But we also want to remind you to sign up for ELi’s free weekly news summary. At ELi, we’re able to do a lot more news provision than City staff can do. Just today, for example, we published a report you won’t find in the City’s news feed.

We have more resources for news production, but we also don’t have to worry about ticking off City leaders by telling you when they’re hiding something, doing something that looks not so ethical, or saying something considered impolitic.

In ELi’s reporting, you’ll find the reasons members of Planning Commission, City Council, and the Downtown Development Authority are giving for their votes. You’ll hear about their debates as well as their decisions.

We also tell you about what votes are coming up so that you can weigh in, if you want, before decisions are made.

We connect the dots on complex stories, whether the subject be the firing of a whistleblower, the illegal use of public funds involving a conflict of interest by the City Attorney, the City threatening to arrest a man over construction of a driveway, or a law outlawing noisy air conditioners based on one neighbor’s complaint. (Two, if you count her husband.)

Every week, we use the Freedom of Information Act to get information that’s supposed to be public but isn’t. Then we bring you the results.

Love ELi? Pitch in today. We’ll keep bringing you more real news than what your local taxes ever can.