Monday, April 21, 2008

More on the Ada billboard controversy...

Remember when a certain House Republican cleaned up on a DeVos land deal when Ada township officials bought the land to stop him from erecting a billboard? In a new twist, it turns out the minutes from the original township meeting were altered...

On November 7, 2007, those minutes were altered and eight words were added about reviewing the township's billboard ordinance.

That ordinance became big news last fall when the township purchased a piece of land on the bank of the Grand River to avoid a billboard from being erected there. It cost the township more than $300,000 to buy that land. Members of the community raised some of the money to pay for it.

During an investigation, Ada Township Supervisor George Haga said there was proof where the tampering occurred - inside township offices on a township clerk's computer.


Someone went into the computer and altered the information; they also went into the vault and replaced the original document.

"The passwords were kept inside the vault, which there was unlimited access to by other people," said Millhuff.

An original copy of the 2003 minutes was also kept in the vault. The one page in question about those minutes is missing and an altered one was put in its place.


Why would they do that?

"If this was done, and it was done to look as if I did this, it was done politically," said Millhuff.


Political motivation in Ada Township... could be many different people, right? I'll let you draw your own conclusions, logical or inferred. Ada is moving to increase security on their computer systems, and this is going to the Kent County prosecutor for investigation of the crime of altering official government documents.