Raiding the newspaper wasn’t Marion’s first attack on democracy and the 1st Amendment | Opinion

The lawsuit filed this week by the Marion County Record against Marion city and county officials has been expected since the day the local police and sheriff staged an illegal and ill-advised raid on the newspaper, and contributed to the death of its 98-year-old co-owner.

Legal action is inevitable when out-of-control law enforcement actors try to shut down a newspaper whose coverage they hate, on trumped-up charges of identity theft against journalists doing their job — which is to act as a watchdog by gathering and confirming information that the public should know, but the local government wants to keep hidden.

Probably millions of words have been written across the country about what happened Aug. 11, 2023, when Marion city Police Chief Gideon Cody and Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez sent their combined forces to seize computers, cell phones and records at the paper and at the home of the city’s then-vice mayor, Ruth Herbel, who had a rocky relationship with the town’s then-mayor, David Mayfield.

And how Joan Meyer, 98, was so stressed by the raid that she couldn’t eat or sleep properly, and died the day after police invaded the home she shared with her son, Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Record.

But the really remarkable thing about the lawsuit filing is the evidence it lays out of a deeper corruption that was going on in Marion, and how local government not only tried to destroy a newspaper that it found too critical, but actively sought to undermine democracy itself.

On Page 30, the complaint outlines an effort by former Mayor David Mayfield to make elected council members sign a form containing this bizarre statement: “I also understand and acknowledge that my term with the council of the City of Marion, Kansas, is at will.”

The legal definition of an at-will employee is one who can be terminated at any time by the employer for any reason or no reason at all.

In the case of Marion, it was a trick question. The city code states that the mayor shall “have the superintending control of all officers and affairs of the city.”

In other words, as the lawsuit contends, “This would have effectively allowed Mayor Mayfield to simply remove Herbel, given that her term would be “at [the] will” of the mayor.”

Herbel saw through it and crossed out the offending language. The city administrator, Brogan Jones, refused to accept her form.

This is a problem because elected office is practically the definition of a job that is not, and cannot be, “at will.”

Elected officials are picked by the voters, and have to be removed by the voters (which Herbel was in the November election; Mayfield chose not to run for another term).

The only legal way to unseat an official without voter consent is a process called an “ouster” that has to be initiated by a prosecutor on the grounds that the official broke the law, willfully neglected duties of office, or is mentally incompetent to serve, none of which applied to Herbel.

This effort to subvert democracy in Marion followed a failed recall of Herbel led by the mayor and his wife, Jami Kay Mayfield.

The case against Herbel couldn’t have been flimsier.

Unlike other states, Kansas law limits the acceptable grounds for a voter-initiated recall to “conviction of a felony, misconduct in office or failure to perform duties prescribed by law.” “Misconduct in office” means a violation of law that impacts the officer’s ability to perform their official duties.

The recall petition alleged that Herbel had violated the Kansas Open Meetings Act by replying “Thanks” to a text message council members received about an event the city was planning with a local hospital, and for complaining to the Record about the process that Mayfield used in a closed meeting to fire Mark Skiles, the former city administrator. She was well within her rights to do so.

The real goal of the recall was spelled out in a Facebook post written by the mayor’s wife and reposted by him: “If anyone is interested in signing a petition to recall councilor Herbel and silence the MCR (Marion County Record) in the process, let me know.”

Bogus recalls and attempts to silence dissident council members and newspapers?

That’s not democracy.

It is, as Joan Meyer told me in the last interview of her life, “Hitler tactics and something has to be done.” And she lived through World War II, so she knew what she was talking about.

So may the Record’s lawsuit be the wake-up call that Marion the city and Marion the county have needed for a long time.