My two biggest public records fights were both in 2016, during my time at the Lansing State Journal.

First, I and another reporter were trying to gauge how much work court-appointed defense attorneys — who are underpaid and overworked — perform on behalf of their clients. To do so, we filed requests through Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act with the three counties in the LSJ’s coverage area, seeking copies of bills submitted by public defenders over the previous year.

Ingham County told us it would cost several thousand dollars to provide the records because their forms included attorneys’ tax ID numbers, each of which would have to be redacted. We appealed to the county board, citing a portion of the public records law that says governments are required to maintain documents in a way that keeps public information separate from private, and we shouldn’t have to pay for the county’s poor record-keeping.

We ultimately settled, paying somewhere around $1,000 for copies of the bills.

Meanwhile, the longtime Ingham County prosecutor had been arrested and charged with soliciting prostitutes and with coercing a woman who was not a prostitute into letting him pay her for sex. He faced up to 20 years in prison.

We learned it was pretty common knowledge — among police and certain Lansing criminals — that the prosecutor ran around with women other than his wife, yet he’d only been arrested after the FBI picked up on it while investigating a sex trafficking ring (the prosecutor had slept with one of the prostitutes run by the pimp in that case).

We filed a FOIA request for the investigative records, trying to figure out if, a.) police or county employees should have known the women the prosecutor went around with were prostitutes, and, b.) if the prosecutor ever abused his office to cover up his affairs.

Our request, filed after the prosecutor had taken a plea deal that allowed him to avoid that 20-year felony, was denied, because state law allows police to withhold records during an open investigation. We appealed to the county board, arguing the case was closed because the prosecutor had pleaded, and the board ordered the sheriff to hand over the records.

We learned that then-Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office was pressuring the sheriff to slow-foot the documents until after the prosecutor was sentenced. We had our attorney draft up a strongly worded letter, which I hand-delivered to the sheriff, and we got our documents that afternoon.

I’ve had other fights.

Just recently, here at The News, we argued with Alpena Township after the township board refused to provide the wording of a motion approved after the board met in closed session to discuss the township’s ongoing court fight with the City of Alpena over water and sewer rates. It took a full day of back-and-forth before the township attorney told us the board had voted to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Just this week, we went to bat with Alpena Public Schools after the district sent two classrooms home because a student in each class showed signs of coronavirus infection. The district had informed parents with a letter and robocall but had not released any information to the public (a parent shared the letter with The News).

Interim APS Superintendent Susan Wooden told me she was still working on the district’s communication plan for such cases, and the district intends to inform the public of future infection scares. The plan was finished by Thursday, and the district issued a news release when one of the classrooms was cleared to return to school.

“Whether they are potential cases or positive cases, we know that more information is better than less,” she said.

With the court-appointed attorney bills, the LSJ was able to show that public defenders are paid a fraction of what they make in the private sector, and therefore rarely put up much a fight for their clients, meaning the government failed to provide poor people the fair fight to which they’re constitutionally entitled (see the story here: https://tinyurl.com/y544fpns).

With the records in the prosecutor-prostitution case, we were able to show the prosecutor had routinely interfered inappropriately in court cases on behalf of women. But it wasn’t until an outside agency got involved that he was brought to justice (https://tinyurl.com/y57vz4gx).

The township’s decision extends a court fight that has already taken years and cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees alone. And, certainly, parents have the right to know whether the coronavirus may be floating around their child’s school.

With that information, readers can better judge the attorney general, legislators, county commissioners, prosecutors, sheriffs, township trustees, and school trustees they elect, and can make more informed decisions about whether to advocate to those elected officials about changes they’d like to see.

And that is why newspapers exist.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.