ITHACA — This is a short item, not a full investigation, and we want to be upfront about that.
In the administrator’s report at the Sept. 15, 2026 Gratiot County Board of Commissioners meeting, the minutes record this sentence: “Simmons vs Gratiot County FOIA appeal the legal team submitted wanting everything to be dismissed and the ruling came back in the Counties favor.”
That is the complete extent of what we have found. We searched every Gratiot County Board of Commissioners meeting packet, agenda and set of minutes posted for 2026 — more than 30 meetings — for any earlier reference to a requester or appeal named Simmons, the kind of written FOIA fee appeal letter the board has filed publicly in other cases this year. We found none. There is no case number, no filing date, no description of what records were originally requested, and no copy of any ruling in the public meeting record.
A lawsuit with that name may exist in the Gratiot County Circuit Court’s own docket, separate from the Board of Commissioners’ meeting records we can access online. We have not yet obtained that docket.
We are not speculating about what the underlying FOIA request or dispute involved. A records request for the court file is planned; if it produces the case number, the filing, and the ruling, we will publish a full report.