Secrecy does not become usually respected Sea Grant

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

A usually respected research and educational arm of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University acts like a turtle hiding in its shell when confronted by a scrappy property rights group based in Bay County.

Save Our Shoreline Inc. is suing the Michigan Sea Grant Program in Bay County Circuit Court for a mailing list and information used in the production and distribution of a 12-page pamphlet on beach grooming.

Sea Grant is a joint program of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University for research, education and outreach on coastal issues.

It's a valuable endeavor.

Now tainted with the U-M Freedom of Information coordinator's decision that the mailing list and other information regarding the brochure, including e-mails, remain secret.

SOS is dead-right in its insistence that the information is public.

The Michigan Freedom of Information Act allows few exceptions to the rule that information paid for with public money and held by publicly funded offices be available for public inspection.

Sea Grant, by any definition, is a public institution, just like its parent universities.

The information it gathers and holds - published or not - is public property, and should be available to anyone upon demand.

Even to SOS, which makes no secret about what it wants to do with the mailing list.

The group wants to counter claims made in the Sea Grant brochure about beach-grooming activities allowed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

In publishing and mailing its brochure, U-M and Sea Grant stepped right into the shifting sands of a long-running debate.

SOS, the DEQ and the Army Corps of Engineers have, at various times, taken widely divergent views on what to do with plants that have sprung up on Great Lakes bottom lands exposed by low water levels.

Legislation in Lansing also has entered the fray with short-term fixes to shoreline problems that still aren't fully understood.

All sides to the debate have lately united to control the invasive plant phragmites. A federally funded demonstration project in Hampton Township aims to find the best combination of mowing, burning and blasting with herbicides to kill off the tenacious, invasive plants that spread like something out of a bad science fiction movie.

Sea Grant and the universities gain nothing in these shoreline debates by hiding information from SOS or anyone else.

Their claim that they are protecting the privacy of those who received the brochures made and mailed with public money is nonsense.

These researchers and educators should regain the respect they have lost with their pettiness over patently public information.

Declare a truce in this court battle and give Save Our Shoreline what it wants.

The debate over beach grooming will not be won or lost with such fine lines drawn in the sand.

It will be settled only through careful research, education and hearty, well-informed debate.

You know - freedom of information.

©2008 Bay City Times

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