Leigh Greden is a true political genius and visionary who shaped Ann Arbor city government during his tenure on City Council. His attempts at introducing a municipal incime tax would have had a profound impact on the city treasury. He was the guiding hand behind the creation of what one former First Ward City Council member termed the “Gang of Seven” and what Vivienne Armentrout later called the “Council Party”. The controversial police/court project was largely spearheaded by Greden.

What Leigh Greden may have lacked in charisma, he certainly had in political savvy. He attended homeowner’s association meetings and was readily accessible to his constituents. Some considered him the most powerful elected official in Ann Arbor – in large part due to his Council Party affiliation.

While he did take considerable heat over was has been jocosely referred to as E-mailgate, Greden initially shrugged it off as a manifestation of his mordant sense of humor. Mr. Askins characterization of the content of these e-mails was undoubtedly sophomoric and did cost him votes in the August of 2009 primary.

Perhaps he is attempting to rebuild his political persona, which took a beating after E-mailgate.

Greden will no doubt go down as one of the most controversial members of Ann Arbor City Council. The question is will he move forward and learn from his previous shortcomings?

Regarding the Leigh Greden appointment to the Housing Commission: I am glad to see someone has mentioned the possible Michigan Campaign Finance Act violations in addition to the Open Meetings Act violations. What should have been emphasized also that voters reportedly voted against Greden for his support of a proposed city income tax at a time when many Ann Arborites were struggling due to the economic conditions. I wonder if Mr. Greden is considering challenging Steve Kunselman for his former Third Ward seat?

Leigh and his family have remained active in local campaigns, supporting the primary candidacy of Ned Staebler in 2010 for his State House run. He joins many former City Council members, including Jean Carlberg, Joan Lowenstein, and Wendy Woods who have received board and commission appointments after leaving City Council.

Greden earns over $133,000 per year in his EMU post, which had been formerly held by Freeman Hendrix.

Steve,

There are myriad reasons why an incumbent might be voted out of office besides voter dissatisfaction. For example, one can contemplate a scenario in which some voters know nothing of an incumbent’s record, but are impressed enough with what they know of a challenger that they cast a vote for the challenger. One could imagine the possibility, for example, that LuAnne Bullington drew support from voters who may well have known nothing about Greden’s performance in office, or even been pleased with it, but who simply felt that they wanted someone on the council with a stronger voice for the disability community than Greden.

In the case of Greden’s defeat, however, based on conversations with several people who voted against Greden — not necessarily for either Kunselman or Bullington — it’s clear that he lost at least in part due to voter dissatisfaction, as opposed to a desire to see either Kunselman or Bullington sitting on the council.

So, even a much shorter sentence would have not been redundant: “… until he was voted out of office in the 2009 Democratic primary, due in part to voter dissatisfaction.”

That sentence, of course, would have prompted the obvious question: Voter dissatisfaction with what? And the answer to that question is provided with the explanation that the dissatisfaction was related to Greden’s use of email during council meetings.

I think this clearly refutes any contention that the sentence in question is redundant. An actual example of redundancy would be something along the lines of “Greden was voted out of office when he didn’t receive enough votes to win the election.”

Regarding “sophomoric humor,” it is a fair and accurate description of some of the subject matter in Greden’s emails, which included the kind of base material that is part of the semantics of “sophomoric” [e.g., Golden Vomit Award]. As such, it is a useful summary of the kind of content Greden’s emails included — which I think was a reasonable choice as an alternative to republishing the content of any of Greden’s emails as a part of this meeting report.

I also don’t agree with your coarse dismissal of Vivienne Armentrout’s suggestion that there was useful history in the summary in this meeting report.

As for your suggestion that linking to previous coverage would be helpful, that’s true. You may have noticed that some other readers include links in their comments — something you can also do when you’re feeling helpful — by just pasting the whole URL into the comment, which we then manually convert to an HTML link.

Here’s a link to an opinion column that probably provides a useful starting point for rummaging through Chronicle archives on the topic of council emails during meetings: “When’s An Open Meeting Open?“

Welcome back. Lol.

Greden was scripting a large proportion of what Council did, including writing speeches for other Council members. So the fix was in. Now that he is gone, the fix is no longer in. Council is turning into a real legislative body, not just a rubber stamp for Greden and the staff. Its behavior is impossible to predict.

This change in behavior is will illustrated by the controversy over medical marijuana. Three times Postema has proposed extremely repressive legislation – the moratorium, the zoning ordinance, and the licensing ordinance. Each time Council has removed most of “Postema’s Poison Pills” on the Council floor. More deletions may be on the way, particularly considering Mayor Hieftje’s comments on felonies.

The attorney I quoted is actually Matt Newburg.

Happy New Year!