The rule was clear enough for citizens to read, but apparently too inconvenient for City Hall to obey.
Hillsdale Press
Truth • Liberty • Local Stewardship
June 10th 2026
A verified complaint has been filed in Hillsdale County Circuit Court challenging the City of Hillsdale’s handling of public comment at the June 1, 2026 City Council meeting.
The case is:
Lashaway v. City of Hillsdale
Case No. 2026-329 CZ
Formal service of process will proceed according to Michigan court rules. The lawsuit has been filed as a public court record; service is the next procedural step.
The question some people will ask is simple:
Why not just give your name?
That is the wrong question.
The real question is this:
Why did City officials enforce a rule before they voted to adopt it?
At the time public comment began on June 1, the City Council’s adopted Rules of Procedure stated that a person addressing Council was “requested” to state his or her name and address.
Not required.
Requested.
The proposed amendment changing that language from “requested” to “required” appeared later on the agenda under New Business.
Public comment came first.
The rule change came later.
But before Council voted on the amendment, Mayor Scott Sessions enforced the future rule as though it already existed.
A citizen objected, pointing out that the rule in effect at that moment said “requested,” not “required.”
Mayor Sessions disagreed, after agreeing his interpretation was wrong and enforced his interpretation.
Councilmember Matthew Bentley moved to override the Mayor’s ruling and allow the citizen to speak. Councilmember Joshua Paladino seconded the motion.
Bentley, Paladino, and Jacob Bruns voted to allow the citizen to speak.
Mayor Scott Sessions, Bob Flynn, Gregory Stuchell, Gary Wolfram, Robert Socha, and William Morrisey voted no.
The motion failed 3-6.
The citizen was then ruled out of order and removed from the meeting.
After the citizen was removed, Council later voted on the proposed amendment changing the rule from “requested” to “required.”
That is the lawsuit.
Not personalities.
Not party politics.
Not whether someone likes the speaker.
The issue is whether public officials may enforce a rule before adopting it, remove a citizen for refusing to obey that future rule, and then vote on the rule after the citizen has been removed.
Requested Does Not Mean Required
The English language has endured many attacks.
This may not be the final blow.
But it deserves mention.
“Requested” and “required” are not the same word.
A request asks.
A requirement commands.
If the rule already required speakers to state their names and addresses, there would have been no reason to amend it.
The amendment itself proves the distinction.
Council did not change the rule from “required” to “required.”
It changed the rule from “requested” to “required.”
That means before the vote, the rule did not say what the Mayor enforced.
That should matter in a city governed by written rules voted on by the representation of the people.
The Timeline Matters
The sequence is not complicated.
First, the rule said “requested.”
Second, public comment began.
Third, the Mayor required a name and address.
Fourth, the citizen objected.
Fifth, Council voted 3-6 not to override the Mayor’s ruling.
Sixth, the citizen was removed.
Seventh, Council later voted to change the rule to “required.”
That order matters because public bodies do not govern by retroactive convenience.
A proposed rule is not an adopted rule.
A committee recommendation is not a Council vote.
A Mayor’s interpretation is not an amendment.
And a later vote does not rewrite what the rule said earlier in the meeting.
Erring on the Side of Government
The most revealing part of this controversy is not merely that Mayor Sessions enforced a rule before Council adopted it.
It is that a majority of City Council voted to let him do it.
When Council had the chance to correct the Mayor’s ruling and allow public comment under the rule actually in effect, six officials chose not to.
They did not err on the side of public comment.
They did not err on the side of open government.
They did not err on the side of the citizen.
They erred on the side of government power.
That matters.
Written rules exist to bind officials, not merely to instruct citizens. The whole purpose of adopted procedures is to prevent government officers from making up standards in the moment, especially when the speaker is critical, inconvenient, or unpopular.
If a rule says “requested,” officials do not get to enforce “required” simply because they wish the rule said something else.
And if officials believe the rule should say something else, the lawful path is simple: amend the rule first, then enforce the amended rule going forward.
City Council did the opposite.
The Mayor enforced “required” before “required” was adopted.
A citizen objected.
The Council majority upheld the Mayor.
The citizen was removed.
Then Council changed the rule.
That sequence created the controversy.
Not the citizen.
Not public comment.
Not disagreement.
The controversy was created by officials who refused to follow the rules that bound them, then changed those rules after the fact.
The Strange Politics of Hillsdale
There is another irony buried in this controversy.
The council members who most consistently argue for limiting criticism, identifying critics, expanding government discretion, and changing rules after controversy erupts are often among the least criticized public officials in the county.
Meanwhile, the council members who argue for following the written rule, erring on the side of citizen participation, and allowing public comment are frequently subjected to intense criticism, online attacks, personal accusations, and political pressure.
That inversion raises an uncomfortable question.
Why?
Why is it that officials advocating for greater government control over public comment seem to receive less public scrutiny than those advocating for more public participation?
Why are officials who argue for following the written rule treated as troublemakers, while officials who seek to expand discretionary power are treated as guardians of order?
The question is not directed only at City Hall.
It is directed at Hillsdale itself.
This is, after all, the county that proudly calls itself one of the most conservative places in Michigan.
This is the home of constitutional government lectures, civic education programs, and endless speeches about the Founders.
This is the home of Hillsdale College, an institution nationally known for teaching the Constitution, limited government, and the American tradition of self-government.
Yet on June 1, the City did not err on the side of the citizen.
It did not err on the side of speech.
It did not err on the side of the written rule.
It erred on the side of government authority.
That does not automatically make every official malicious.
But it does make the outcome worth examining.
Did officials support the amendment because they genuinely believed it was lawful?
Did they support it because they misunderstood the implications?
Or did they support it because criticism has become so uncomfortable that identifying critics now feels more important than protecting criticism itself?
Only they can answer that.
But the public is entitled to notice the contradiction.
A community that speaks constantly about liberty should be the first to defend the citizen when government exceeds its written authority.
A community that teaches constitutional government should be the first to recognize the danger of officials enforcing rules before adopting them.
A community that celebrates self-government should instinctively favor the people over the convenience of government.
Yet on June 1, a majority of Council chose otherwise.
That choice is now part of the public record.
And that record is now before the court.
Bob Flynn and the Difference Between Promoting a Community and Governing One
It is important to say something plainly.
Bob Flynn is a nice guy.
In fact, saying Bob is a nice guy is probably an understatement.
Generations of Hillsdale County residents grew up listening to Bob Flynn on the radio. They heard him promote local events, interview local people, tell local stories, and give voice to the community. Many remember being interviewed by him at the Fair, at school events, at civic gatherings, and at moments that became part of local memory.
Bob Flynn has been woven into Hillsdale County’s public life for decades.
This is not about Bob Flynn the person.
This is not about whether people like Bob.
Most people do.
This is about the difference between promoting a community and governing one.
Those are not the same job.
Promoting a community requires warmth, familiarity, optimism, and the ability to make people feel seen.
Governing a community requires restraint, constitutional discipline, respect for written rules, and the ability to protect the rights of people even when their speech is uncomfortable.
Those are drastically different things.
During the rule-change discussion, Flynn stated in substance that if people are going to speak, criticize Council members, call Council members names, or affect their reputations, then it would be nice to know who is doing that.
That statement may sound reasonable coming from a beloved local voice who spent years building community goodwill.
But from a governing official, it is deeply backwards.
Public comment is not designed to protect the reputation of officials.
It is designed to allow the people to address their government.
The First Amendment does not exist because public officials enjoy criticism.
It exists because public officials often do not enjoy criticism.
That is the point.
The right to petition government, the right to criticize officials, and the right to speak on public matters are not privileges granted by City Hall.
They are rights government is supposed to respect, not manage into harmlessness.
Flynn’s reasoning turns self-government upside down.
Under that logic, the more critical the speech is, the stronger the government’s interest becomes in identifying the speaker.
But in the American tradition, the more political the speech is, the more protection it deserves.
Anonymous and pseudonymous political speech are older than the Republic itself. The Founders understood that citizens may need to criticize power without first placing themselves at the mercy of that power. Pamphlets, essays, letters, and political arguments were often published under names chosen for the argument, not for the convenience of officials.
That was not cowardice.
That was liberty.
The government does not need a citizen’s name in order to hear an argument.
It wants the name because names make pressure easier.
Names make retaliation easier.
Names make reputational punishment easier.
Names make it easier to turn the issue away from the government’s conduct and back onto the citizen who dared to speak.
That is why compelled identification before political speech is dangerous.
And that is why the answer to “Why not just give your name?” is simple:
Because public officials are not entitled to convert criticism into a registry.
Bob Flynn may be loved as a promoter of Hillsdale County.
But government is not promotion.
Government is power.
And power must be restrained by written rules, constitutional limits, and the rights of the people.
The Local Press and the Silence Around Power
There is one more part of this story that deserves attention.
The local press.
The Hillsdale Daily News has been silent on the matter.
That is not surprising.
The Hillsdale Daily News is no longer truly a local paper in the old sense. It may still carry the name Hillsdale, but it no longer functions as the local watchdog citizens once expected from a community newspaper.
And when it does cover local government, it often seems to write from the perspective of government.
Not the written rule.
Not the citizen.
Not basic self-government.
Government.
Authority.
Official explanation.
Institutional comfort.
That is the old-media disease in full display.
The press becomes less interested in asking whether power followed the rule, and more interested in whether citizens made power uncomfortable.
WCSR, on the other hand, appears to have done something different.
For years, many people expected local media to avoid these fights or soften them into harmless noise. Yet WCSR has shown a willingness to step into controversy and report the citizen’s side of the story.
That is a notable shift.
It surely could not have been easy.
Especially when one of the names involved is Bob Flynn, one of the most recognizable retired radio voices in Hillsdale County.
Yet the issue is not whether people like Bob Flynn.
The issue is whether his stated reasoning reflects the American understanding of public comment, criticism, and self-government.
It does not.
When a council member argues, in substance, that if people are going to criticize officials or affect their reputations, government should know who they are, that is not a neutral administrative concern.
That is government wanting names attached to criticism.
That is the entire problem.
Then there is the Hillsdale Collegian.
Its silence is perhaps the strangest silence of all.
This is the student newspaper of Hillsdale College, the institution nationally known as a beacon of liberty, a herald of the Constitution, and a teacher of American self-government.
Yet the Collegian appears to have gone quiet on the very kind of local government controversy a serious student newspaper should be eager to examine.
Maybe that silence is coincidence.
Maybe it is caution.
Or maybe the Collegian is still living under the shadow of the last time it dared to ask the wrong questions and local officials complained that city government had been placed in “a bad light.”
That phrase, attributed to City Manager David Mackie, says more than perhaps it was intended to say.
Because the job of a free press is not to keep government in a flattering light.
The job of a free press is to shine light where government would rather have shade.
If government looks bad when citizens ask questions, the problem is not the question.
The problem is what the question revealed.
That is why the silence of the Collegian matters.
If Hillsdale College teaches constitutional government to the nation, then its own student paper should not be timid when constitutional government is tested across the street.
If the College celebrates liberty in theory, then local liberty in practice should not be too dangerous to cover.
If self-government is worth lecturing about, then self-government is worth defending when a citizen is removed from a public meeting before the rule is changed.
Yet here we are.
The old media has failed.
The new media is chaotic.
The online outlets are loved, hated, mocked, shared, cursed, and read anyway.
But chaos is not the same as uselessness.
Sometimes chaotic local media notices what polite institutional media refuses to touch.
Sometimes the messy local outlets are the only ones willing to ask the obvious question:
Did the government follow the rule?
That should not be a radical question.
It should be the first question.
Because a free press is not supposed to serve as a receptionist for government.
It is supposed to watch power.
It is supposed to ask why officials enforced a rule before adopting it.
It is supposed to ask why a citizen was removed before the vote.
It is supposed to ask why the majority sided with the Mayor’s interpretation instead of the written rule.
It is supposed to ask why the people defending public comment are treated as the problem, while the officials limiting it are treated as responsible adults.
And it is supposed to ask why, in the county that speaks loudest about liberty, so many institutions fall silent the moment liberty becomes inconvenient.
Is WCSR’s shift the result of new local media forcing old institutions to react?
Is it because the disregard for the written rule became too obvious to ignore?
Is it because even institutional media can only look away for so long?
Time will tell.
But the larger pattern is becoming difficult to miss.
When government is questioned, officials complain about the light.
When the written rule is inconvenient, officials reinterpret it.
When reinterpretation is challenged, officials change the rule.
When citizens object, they are removed.
And when local institutions should be asking questions, too many of them go quiet.
It is almost as if a pattern has emerged.
For those with eyes to see.
And ears to hear.
A Local Symptom of a Larger Disease
What happened in Hillsdale is not isolated.
It is local, but it is not merely local.
Across Michigan and across the country, citizens have watched government at every level drift further from the basic American rule: when in doubt, err on the side of liberty.
Instead, government increasingly errs on the side of itself.
When laws are unclear, officials interpret them in favor of power.
When rules restrain officials, officials reinterpret the rules.
When reinterpretation fails, they amend the rules.
When citizens object, they are accused of being disruptive.
When citizens insist on the written law, they are treated as the problem.
And when citizens finally ask the obvious question “Where did you get the authority to do that?” too often the answer is not a statute, not a rule, not a constitutional principle, but a police officer walking toward the podium.
That is the sickness.
For decades, Americans have been told that government mistakes are isolated, accidental, technical, procedural, or too complicated for ordinary people to understand.
But ordinary people are beginning to understand.
They understand that laws are not supposed to bind citizens while remaining flexible for officials.
They understand that public bodies are not supposed to change the rules after citizens catch them violating the old ones.
They understand that open meetings are not supposed to be managed like private boardrooms.
They understand that public comment is not supposed to exist only when officials approve of the speaker.
And they understand that the phrase “rule of law” means nothing if government officials may enforce rules before those rules exist.
The question is bigger than one council meeting.
The question is whether government still remembers that it is subordinate to the people.
In American self-government, liberty is supposed to be the default.
Speech is supposed to be the default.
Public access is supposed to be the default.
The burden is supposed to be on government to justify restrictions, not on citizens to beg permission.
But that presumption has been reversed.
Government now too often assumes authority first and searches for justification later.
Citizens are told to comply first and challenge later.
Officials violate the spirit of the law, then demand respect for the institution.
But respect for institutions is earned by obedience to law.
Public trust is not restored by silencing criticism.
Order is not preserved by removing peaceful citizens.
And legitimacy is not created by changing rules after the fact.
The country is full of citizens who were told to sit down, be quiet, wait their turn, file the form, trust the process, and let the experts handle it.
If the “Most Conservative County in Michigan” cannot err on the side of the citizen at public comment, then the problem is not merely partisan.
It is institutional.
It is cultural.
It is a failure of self-government.
And self-government cannot survive if officials believe their own convenience matters more than the written rules that bind them.
The Public’s Podium
During the June 1 meeting, Mayor Sessions made a statement that cuts directly to the heart of the matter.
He said the public comment podium is the public’s podium.
That is correct.
But if the podium belongs to the public, then access to it cannot depend on a rule that had not yet been adopted.
Public comment is not a favor from City Hall.
It is part of open government.
Michigan’s Open Meetings Act provides that a person must be permitted to address a public body under rules established and recorded by that public body.
It also provides that a person may not be excluded from an open meeting except for a breach of the peace actually committed at the meeting.
Refusing to obey a proposed rule before it is adopted is not a breach of the peace.
Standing on the written rule in effect at the time of public comment is not disorderly conduct.
Disagreeing with the Mayor’s interpretation is not violence, disruption, or chaos.
It is exactly the kind of dispute written rules are supposed to settle.
What Happens Next
The complaint seeks declaratory and injunctive relief under the Michigan Open Meetings Act, constitutional relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and invalidation of the June 1 rule-change vote.
The filing also asks the court to prevent enforcement of the amended name-identification requirement while the case is pending.
As with any civil case, the allegations will be tested in court.
But the central facts are not complicated.
The rule said “requested.”
The City enforced “required.”
The citizen was removed.
Then the City voted to make “required” the rule.
That is the whole problem.
And now it is in front of a judge.
The Law Is Not a Costume
Open government is not ceremonial.
It is not something public bodies recite before doing whatever they intended to do anyway.
Rules matter because they restrain power.
If a public official can turn “requested” into “required” by interpretation, then written rules become suggestions for citizens and weapons for officials.
That is backwards.
The people are not bound by unwritten rules officials wish they had already passed.
Officials are bound by the rules actually adopted.
That is not radical.
That is basic self-government.
So the next time someone asks, “Why not just give your name?” the answer is simple:
Because the question was never about a name.
It was about whether government still has to follow the rules.
And in Hillsdale, that question now has a case number.
in liberty,
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
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