Yesterday, I posted about the latest in a never-ending string of charities and non-profits asking our city council for taxpayer money to support their cause either in the form of a direct cash payout or waiver of a fee to offset the taxpayer cost of providing a service they want (usually it’s to use Depot Park) that everyone else has to pay. In my post, I noted the latest organization in this long line of asks was SCAMP. I did not name the spokesperson because her identity wasn’t at all important to the point I was trying to make. I referred to SCAMP as a worthy cause; provided a date, time, and description of their next private fundraiser (the May home tour event); and I linked to their website in case people wanted to learn more about the good things that SCAMP does. Trust me, if I disliked SCAMP, I would have expressly said I didn’t like them and explained why I didn’t like them.
My last post was titled “Sorry SCAMP – the Clarkston City Council Has Exactly ZERO Authority To Give You A Financial Gift In Any Amount.” This is a legal truth, and it’s something that SCAMP board member Emily Ford should have been told when she initially talked with city officials about the donation request. Apparently, that didn’t happen. Ms. Ford reacted to my Clarkston Secrets website post by commenting on the Village of Clarkston Facebook page and suggesting our poor city officials simply didn’t know any better:
Here’s the other side for the record. I am the SCAMP Board Member who made the request. Since I’m not an attorney nor a CVC resident neither I nor any of my fellow committee members, for the record, knew this wouldn’t be allowed. Furthermore, it was put on the agenda so apparently the Village member(s) I corresponded with also didn’t know. Another complete waste of breath here. If anyone is interested in getting involved in SCAMP and donating their time and energy for our cause feel free to reach out
Ms. Ford, just so you are aware – and also for the record – they all know. They just don’t care about the law, so if you are embarrassed or offended that no one told you about this issue, then you should take it up with your friends at city hall.
I’d also note that someone named Dave Bihl made the following comment on the Village of Clarkston Facebook page:
Okay so this is several pages written about a violation of spending that might have occurred in the future but didn’t? Thanks for the clarification Emily. I used to work at SCAMP when I was a young kid. Use all those skills learned at SCAMP working in the ER. Maybe secrets could find something more productive to spend time on.
Ah, Dave (may I call you Dave?), I commend you for your volunteer work as a child (and your parents for encouraging it), and I’m delighted that SCAMP was able to provide you with skills that were useful to you later in life. I wrote that post because rather than telling Ms. Ford that the city cannot lawfully make charitable donations, her SCAMP request for half the parking revenue is on the city council’s agenda again for the March 10, 2025, city council meeting.
(Note: I originally attributed this comment to Dave Bihl, Evelyn Bihl’s husband. Evelyn is the Clarkston deputy clerk. Ms. Bihl advised me that this Dave Bihl is not her husband so I’ve made the correction but would also note that this Dave Bihl is obviously known to Evelyn and her husband since they are Facebook friends.)
I’m not sure who Ms. Ford communicated with at city hall, but if it was with mayor Sue Wylie or council members Ted Quisenberry, Gary Casey, Amanda Forte, or Laura Rodgers, then she should know they’ve received the same material from the Michigan Municipal League’s website that I posted here (and yesterday was not the first time I’ve posted it here). How do I know? Because I included it in an email that I sent to each of them last April when they were considering automatic Depot Park fee waivers for all 501(c)(3) charities, forcing them to remove the item from the agenda for further consideration. And all six city council members and the mayor attended the January 27, 2025, city council meeting when the city attorney told them they were not allowed to make a $5,000 cash donation to the Clarkston Area Youth Assistance (CAYA) program after being asked from the podium to do so. Here are the city attorney’s comments about the CAYA request, taken from the informal transcript of the meeting that can be found here:
(To Tom Ryan), Sue Wylie said did you have – Ryan said yeah, we can’t, I mean, you say sponsorship, we can’t make a direct, I mean, it’s a wonderful cause, but it would be, we have to have a contract. They’re going to provide us services that we can’t provide for ourselves, you know, youth assistance. So, it would be a contract and whatever money is, it’d be a service provided by them for us, which we can’t produce for ourselves. Ted Quisenberry said that would be if we’re going to use general funds, right? But if we could, we can still allocate the CDBG [Community Development Block Grants], a portion of the CDBG. Right? Ryan said yeah, yes.
Did Ms. Ford correspond with city manager Smith? If so, trust me, he knows more than anyone else about this issue because he’s also asked for taxpayer dollars on behalf of his own nonprofit, the Clarkston Community Historical Society (CCHS). Smith is not only aware of my specific objections over forced, unlawful charitable taxpayer donations to his organization and for his being on both sides of a financial transaction between the CCHS and the city over those donations, but he was also copied on that same April 2024 email that Wylie, Quisenberry, Casey, Forte, and Rodgers received and he was present at the January 27, 2025, city council meeting when the city attorney told everyone that a cash donation to CAYA was impermissible.
And then there’s the city attorney who’s sat through countless meetings where Depot Park fee waivers were requested by people representing what they always describe as good causes. (Are you kidding me? Of course they think that! They have no business speaking for their organizations if they don’t think that.) Yet it was only when I threatened to ask a court to review the fee waivers (and the fact that the fees had no relationship whatsoever to the service provided, something that also violates state law) that the city decided that gosh, maybe it was time to review the fees charged and the legality of fee waivers to charitable organizations. If they eventually come back with something that still gives away taxpayer resources to private entities and provides insufficient support for charging fees, then I guess we’ll fight that one out in court. Surprisingly, and proving the old adage that a stopped watch tells the correct time twice a day, the city attorney did manage to give the council legally correct advice about the $5,000 CAYA fee request at the January 27, 2025, city council meeting.
So, why was the city attorney silent when he reviewed the council packet containing SCAMP’s request for a contribution that wasn’t lawful for the city to make, which would have been the second point where the request should have been stopped? (The first point would have been with the people Ms. Ford originally spoke with.) While a layperson might erroneously think that donating a portion of yet-to-be-collected parking fees to SCAMP is somehow different than making a cash donation to CAYA in a fixed amount, and I don’t doubt that Ms. Ford didn’t realize that either, there is no excuse for an attorney’s silence – because both are cash donations for a private purpose. Our city attorney charged taxpayers to review the council packet and to sit through the February 24, 2025, city council meeting, yet he heard Ms. Ford speak and said nothing.
If Ms. Ford was misled, it was by my city government and she should be irritated with them, not me. I’m just a taxpayer who has had enough of a city government that not only thinks it’s OK to violate state transparency laws but it also thinks it’s OK to tax me to the fullest extent possible, spend every dime that comes in on frequently unnecessary nonsense, save nothing for a rainy day, is getting ready to ask me to pay more taxes because they’re fiscally irresponsible, and still thinks it can magnanimously give money we don’t have to organizations that city council members deem worthy enough for my tax dollars but hypocritically aren’t interested in opening their own wallets to support.
I give my own time and money to organizations that help people, and I think everyone should do that. It’s an unbelievable privilege to have a warm bed, a roof that doesn’t leak, food to eat, a healthy body, and not have to worry about personal safety. To whom much is given, much is required. I prefer to help the homeless, the hungry, veterans, people battling cancer, abused women and children seeking refuge, shared pregnancy centers, and animal shelters. Should anyone be forced to donate to my preferred organizations? After all, they do good work, too. The answer is clearly a resounding no. But when a charity asks Clarkston government for tax dollars to support their private organization, that’s exactly what it’s doing.
If Ms. Ford is upset with me personally for what I wrote, and it appears that she is, then her focus on her own feelings has caused her to miss the larger point entirely because my criticisms have nothing to do with a group of mostly uncompensated, kind-hearted people who work tirelessly to provide a summer camp for children and adults with special needs. My objection is that if I want to donate to SCAMP, it should be my choice, not the city council’s. And let’s be clear – it’s not even the city council’s choice because Michigan law prohibits public bodies from making charitable contributions unless there is a specific statute that allows it (and there aren’t many of those and none of them pertain to the SCAMP request). That was the point of the entire post.
But I do want to say something about what I’ve noticed about the nonprofit mindset generally that really bugs me, and it’s been on display almost every time the Clarkston city council has been asked to force taxpayers to make unlawful charitable contributions. Of course, all charities believe they are doing good work. I believe most do, and I don’t doubt that 100% of the charities that have come to city council meetings to ask for a financial contribution are also doing good work. And, for what it’s worth and despite my criticisms, I even appreciate the good work the CCHS does by preserving local history, running the library museum, and educating schoolchildren, which are also interests of mine. I just think I shouldn’t be involuntarily forced to donate to the CCHS, SCAMP, or any other charity, and Michigan law and the Michigan constitution back me up on that point.
So, what mindset am I talking about? It’s the suggestion that any 501(c)(3) charity is in any way entitled to additional taxpayer contributions beyond those they already receive by virtue of their 501(c)(3) status. If you’d like to get a flavor for what I mean, you should watch the June 26, 2023, city council meeting recording and see the CCHS representatives come out in full force to fight over what they perceived as their entitlement to a fee waiver to use Depot Park, not for the two hours the fee corresponds to but for the entire weekend so they could hold their private fundraiser, Art in the Village. (The informal transcript can be found here.) The link to the recording is at the bottom, and if you go there, you’ll hear a CCHS representative list all the good things they do and claim she couldn’t possibly understand what the downside to a fee waiver would be. Translation: We do good things, so Clarkston taxpayers should be forced to support us. Facts: You do good things, but taxpayers aren’t required to support you because you choose to do those good things. That’s what your fundraisers and voluntary contributions are for, and the amount of the contributions you receive are directly proportional to the value the public perceives you are providing. If you’re short on funding, look in the mirror.
How about if the CCHS could just simply be grateful that we have a beautiful park, maintained by taxpayers, that we allow them to use for a pittance, rather than asking taxpayers to waive a small fee that compensates for the wear and tear on the park for their event (wear and tear that is far greater than that which is caused by a wedding couple renting the gazebo for two hours) and how about not fighting about paying us for 100% of the DPW labor they use for their annual event so they don’t have to find more volunteers to do the work? And, whether Ms. Ford realizes it or not, the SCAMP request has the same flavor. Rather than seeing the SCAMP fundraiser as a benefit to the city because more people might pay for parking and wouldn’t it be great if SCAMP got a piece of that, how about being grateful that taxpayers provide two public parking lots and our residential streets so people attending her fundraiser can park their cars and in exchange, we ask only for a dollar an hour to park in the parking lots to help pay for the wear and tear of those lots and city streets? After all, if we didn’t have parking available, fewer tickets would be sold, and SCAMP would make less money to put on its home tour for the same amount of work. See the difference when the gestalt is changed to one of gratitude?
I’d like to talk further about the generosity that our tax code provides to organizations like SCAMP and the CCHS because I think it’s important for them to remember and for everyone to understand. The 501(c)(3) organization designation, sometimes called a “non-profit” or a “501(c)(3) non-profit,” simply refers to an organization that is excused from paying federal taxes. “501(c)(3)” is a reference to the United States Code, more fully cited as 26 USC § 501. “501” is the section, and “(c)(3)” is the subsection. (I’ve linked to the code section here.) If you’re interested, the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) website has a page devoted to non-profit organizations that I’ve linked to here. Essentially, entities that are organized for the purpose of “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals” are eligible to apply for this very generous financial benefit.
The favorable treatment given to 501(c)(3) non-profits doesn’t stop with the privilege of not paying federal tax; it also extends to State of Michigan tax avoidance as well. As the Michigan Nonprofit Association’s (MNA’s) website explains in its step-by-step guidance, once an organization receives 501(c)(3) status from the federal government, they are excused from paying the Michigan income tax and Michigan sales and use taxes that everyone else has to pay. (I’ve linked to the MNA’s website here and the Michigan statute governing nonprofit corporations here.) That is a significant benefit that you and I are indirectly paying for in the form of additional taxes, because we obviously have to make up for the shortfall created by giving more favorable tax treatment to 501(c)(3)s. I know some people make the mistake of confusing “non-profit” with “poor” and many 501(c)(3)s do operate on a shoestring, but that’s not always the case. Forbes publishes an annual list of the top 100 charities, and their 2024 list can be found here (note that the top charity reported $5.16 billion in total revenue last year).
Given all that, my simple wish is that these 501(c)(3) organizations would show more appreciation for the great gifts they’ve already been given through their tax waivers. Most of us would kiss the ground in the public square if we didn’t have to pay federal or state taxes on our income – or even if we could just avoid paying state sales taxes. If you’d like to know more about individual 501(c)(3) organizations, ProPublica has more up-to-date financial data on nonprofit organizations than the IRS, including the North Oakland SCAMP Funding Corporation that your city council will be discussing making a donation to at the Monday meeting. Charity Navigator is also a great place to research charitable organizations.
And to dispel any notion Ms. Ford or David Bihl may have that I have some sort of a personal problem with SCAMP, here is a link to their donation page if you are so inclined. Everyone should find causes that touch their soul and act on that. If SCAMP touches yours, I’m sure they would welcome your time and treasure.
To summarize, this was never about Ms. Ford or SCAMP. I would object – and have objected – to any charitable organization that asks for Clarkston taxpayer dollars. It’s illegal, whether the requester is aware of it or not. And if city officials cared a whit about Ms. Ford, they wouldn’t have encouraged her to stand at the podium and make an ask like this. Her request should have been stopped by the “Village member(s)” she spoke to, and failing that, the city attorney should have asked that her request be removed from the agenda and made a public statement at the council meeting to explain why that happened. They did this to her, not me.
No Clarkston resident should have to resort to a lawsuit to force the city to obey the law concerning charitable contributions or anything else. The city government has gotten away with a LOT over the years because lawyers, and lawsuits, are expensive, most people don’t have the resources to fight, and the city took advantage of that. Heck, if they had just given me my FOIA records back in 2015 without trying to destroy me and my husband, I probably wouldn’t be paying attention to city council meetings today. But the city made its choice and lost not only the lawsuit but also the benefit of my inattention to what they were up to. Just because I haven’t sued the city at every opportunity – or errant city officials individually where the law allows – doesn’t mean I won’t choose one opportunity from the panoply of bad city government conduct and go forward with it. I haven’t yet done so because quite frankly, I find lawsuits to be a pain in the butt and believe they should be a last resort. But I have to be honest – these unlawful charitable contributions are at the top of my list to litigate.
Since I mentioned gratitude, let’s just say that one of the many things I’m grateful for is that Clarkston will soon have a new city attorney. Let’s hope the advice is better.