Mayor of Dillon, MT sics cops on blogger for his political reporting

[John Q. Citizen]

Blogger alleges misuse of mayoral power

By J.P. Plutt
Dillon Tribune staff
Ken Kailey, whose blogsite Pragmatic Revolt has been highly critical of Dillon Mayor Martin "Marty" Malesich and the city government, feels Malesich abused the power of his office when the mayor

played a role in Kailey receiving a ticket from the Dillon Police Department. Malesich defended his actions as an obligation of his office.
On Oct. 6, Kailey was dropping off packages at the Post Office. He noticed City Councilman Nils "Swede" Troedsson observing him from outside the building and later making a call on his cell phone. After driving off, Kailey was pulled over by Dillon Police Officer Ed Jones and cited for driving on a suspended license.

"Let me make one thing very clear," said Kailey. "I was driving on a suspended license."
Kailey feels the fact that the mayor doesn't like him should not allow his civil rights to be disregarded.

"In my opinion, this arrest was politically motivated," said Kailey Monday night. "For somebody to pull you over, they have to have a probable cause. I was pulled over on a complaint issued by Mayor Malesich. The problem with that is, the only way Mayor Malesich would have known that my license was suspended was if he abused the powers of his office to research my background.

"Since there was no probable cause for him to do that, this would suggest at least to me, that this was politcally motivated."

More... http://www.dillontribune.com/news/



This is Blogger Ken Kailey's take on what happened. Kailey, who bloggs as moorcat at his Pragmatic Revolt blog gave me permission to reproduce his blog entry.
12:54 pm by moorcat

We bloggers often give the reporting in our local Newspapers a bad time because of the lack of investigative reporting. Sometimes the criticism is deserved. Sometimes it isn’t. In the case of the Dillon Tribune, they proved that they CAN do investigative reporting today.

I posted about 10 days ago about my arrest due to the Dillon Mayor, Marty Malesich, filling out a complaint with the Dillon Police. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I have been VERY critical of the Administration of “King Malesich the First” (deservedly so in my opinion). It really shouldn’t come as any surprise that Malesich would retaliate. I also posted that the arrest itself was caused by Councilman Troedsson - a Malesich Supporter - calling in that he had seen me driving.


Today, the Dillon Tribune is carrying a story about this arrest - as the Top Headline on the front page.

I was aware at least one person at the Dillon Tribune reads my blog (Thank you….). I was also aware the Dillon Tribune tries very hard to investigate as well as report the news of the city. They proved that beyond doubt today.

The Headline was “Blogger alleges misuse of Mayorial Power” and does a pretty good job of quoting me about the story. Further, they actually contacted a number of people involved and got statements about the story. It was very informative.

According to the article -

Malesich contends he was doing his job. “I am the Chief Law Enforcement officer of the city,” said the Mayor. “If there is something wrong with that, oh well”.

So Mayor Malesich is claiming that he sees it as his job to get his Critics arrested?

He goes on to claim he was just running a check to see if I had a driver’s license. Malesich claims it is “Common Knowledge” that my license was suspended and that the information came from none other than my wife, Brittany Kailey telling her coworkers when she was working at the Forest Service. Right….

Let’s stop for a second and actually look at this statement. Malesich is saying that Brittany told the people she worked with that her husband had a suspended license. Why would she do that? In fact, this is just another Malesich spin. There were exactly three people who knew my license was suspended prior to this - my wife, my daughter, and my mother. I don’t talk about it and neither do they. I wonder if Malesich thought his statement would cause problems between me and my wife. It is obvious he doesn’t know either Brittany or anything about our relationship. Not Bloody likely….

To make matters worse for Malesich, it appears in the article that he did his normal spin routine with the reporter. When asked if he shared the information about my license with Troedsson, he replied that it was “common knowledge”. When asked about whether Troedsson called him about me being at the Post Office, he replied that he wouldn’t identify the caller.

Now even assuming that a news reporter would have gone this far in investigating the story, it is unusual anymore for a reporter to go any farther. Not the reporter from the Tribune…

When the reporter approached Troedsson, his responces were fairly straight forward. Troedsson admitted to calling the Mayor and telling him I was at the Post Office and went on to admit that it was the Mayor that told him my license was suspended. I guess I have to compliment Troedsson for being honest - something the Mayor obviously has an issue with.

Wouldn’t you just love to be a fly on the wall when Malesich and Troedsson have thier conversation over this? Malesich was being all coy and secretive and Slugger just spilled the beans….

more at... http://moorcat.com/pragmatic_revolt/2007/10/17/story-makes-front-page-news/#more-290