ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – Delta Conservation District Board Chair Joe Kaplan is defending himself against an allegation of a “potential breach of confidentiality” by County Commissioner Bob Barron.
At a County Board of Commissioners meeting on March 5, Barron said, “It’s my understanding that the chair of the Soil Conservation Board has directed the technician that before they can work on any county project about MAEAP [Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program], they have to get clearance for that. That’s not part of this program. It violates the confidentiality, and it’s also very discriminatory that we would have an agency that’s supposed to be delivering this in a confidential matter discriminate against the county as being a landowner.”
Before Wednesday’s Conservation District meeting, Kaplan presented the situation and his version of events to the other board members.
“My interest in it is because of the proposed parking lot work, picnic area, pavilion at O.B, Fuller Park in what was formerly a trust fund day-use development that’s been kind of controversial for the last year,” he told WZMQ 19. “I was just interested in how we were assisting that program.”
Kaplan says he asked the MAEAP representative about the County’s enrollment in the program, telling the Conservation District Board he never obtained any confidential documents. He also acknowledged that if he had obtained them, he would have been bound by confidentiality not to disclose” the information.
“Under statute, we are not allowed to release details of any private landowner that’s enrolled in the MAEAP program,” said Kaplan. “No one in our office except for her has access to those confidential files. The confidentiality that Mr. Barron was talking about was that I had somehow had accessed those confidential files.”
Kaplan continued, “Under FOIA, all public records have to be made available upon request, but there are exemptions,” he said. “Under Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program, the legislature put in, ‘Information collected under this section is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.’ But if somebody wanted to know about the county lands that are enrolled in this program, they wouldn’t be able to use this exemption. Maybe that’s where Commissioner Barron maybe got confused. I mean, this is a learning process. I can assure you, we haven’t released any confidential information, but if someone wanted to know what the County is doing, they could FOIA the County.”
With other County Commissioners looking to obtain more information on the issue after their last meeting, Kaplan says any further action is in the hands of the County Board.
“It was just an internal conversation within the office that somehow made it back to Robert Barron,” he said. “I think what Mr. Barron was trying to figure out was how to attack this big change at the Conservation District, but we stand behind our staff. I think he’s just looking to make political hay in an agricultural field where he’s not even a participant.”
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