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Jesse Osmer, the county administrator, in an obedient and servile missive believed to have been written for an audience of one, wrote an editorial for The Alpena News a couple weeks ago chastising county residents who participated in the school board recall effort.
It's clear what Osmer's intentions were with his preachy, self-serving diatribe, but it's surprising that he decided to bring Dennis Schultz into the rant by reminding the community that Schultz has digital copies of the almost 2,000 petitions that were gathered during the school board recall. It's known that Schultz shared these petitions with others because AJ MacArthur told the community exactly that during a school board meeting.
In his editorial Osmer questioned why anyone would suggest those documents could be used "nefariously". To spotlight that notion for a moment.
Dennis Schultz, using a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act), received the petitions in digital format and shared that information with others. Digitized signatures can easily be copied and transferred to anyone anywhere. The petitions also contain addresses. Another nefarious use would be to troll addresses found on the petitions, photograph those properties and post those photos on social media sites, as what happened to me and others. Stalking is intended to intimidate and frighten; to make people afraid in their own homes. All because they participated in a democratic process.
Wouldn't it be great if the community could do a FOIA request on Dennis Schultz to get the names and addresses of every person he shared our information with? Could we also have digitized copies of their signatures with that FOIA?
On a related note, can you imagine our city manager or our mayor berating the community as Osmer did in his editorial? Who exactly does Osmer believe he serves?
Diane O'Connor
Alpena