Bernie Sanders is an avowed Marxist socialist who had his honeymoon in the Soviet Union in 1988.

Their podcast producer is another very far left Metamora Democrat who yells and shakes with anger when she speaks during public time, wants to ban Metamora Days and ORVs, and has publicly insisted that "it might not look like it [she has very pale complexion and blonde hair] but I am a descendant of slaves" as she angrily advocated at a county commission meeting for the recently concocted Juneteenth holiday.

The language of this group's recall does not allege any unlawful behavior. There are no allegations of any violation of public trust in any way. They are recalling Mayor Hing simply because they hate him.

Stefan Brady has boasted in a public setting that he was responsible for the recall language, per multiple sources. We reported that Brady told Hing after his very first meeting as mayor that Hing would be recalled.

We also reported on how Brady attempted to direct the city attorney to provide a legal opinion that was inconsistent with the city charter so that he could apply for a city grant to get free money to repair his own home -- despite clear warnings of a conflict of interest. He then claimed it was all "lies" and "slander" from the podium at a public meeting.

Josh Atwood, who also is openly assisting with the recall effort, has also allegedly violated the city charter's rules about self-dealing when his wife's business applied for a Downtown Development Authority (DDA) administered grant. More on that soon.

While the commissioners behind the recall effort have allegedly violated the city charter, Mayor Hing has not violated the charter, any law, or public trust.

But he has exposed and helped defeat efforts that Atwood and Brady supported that would have added even more subidized and high density rentals to the city -- while giving the developer a 30 year tax holiday valued at $16M. Hing has also exposed how Womack, before Hing's tenure, dictated and rammed through changes to the city's marijuana ordinances (including odor control) because he said the city was "too harsh" on the drug dealing industry.

In fact, Womack said just a couple months after he was hired, on August 7, 2023, that he was “trying to be friendly to the marijuana businesses.” He went on to say, “I think we’ve been unnecessarily harsh toward the marijuana businesses… especially the odor control requirements in this ordinance are kind of ridiculous.”

Jeramy Hing was elected by Lapeer voters who were frustrated about the city’s failure to enforce their own ordinances against marijuana growers who were pushing fumes out into residential neighborhoods, and the city should reward him for doing exactly what he was elected to do.

Further, Hing has helped reveal what we reported on last week, how Womack and the city attorney inked a one sided land swap deal with a marijuana grower in 2025 that favored the grower, not the city. The deal already led to the city getting sued by the grower.

The more we look at the patterns of backdoor deals, self dealing, wasteful spending, and good ol' boys network that the city operated as under Mike Womack's unelected rule of the city, the more we believe the reason for this recall is not what is stated in the petition language.

They are attempting to recall Jeramy Hing not because he did anything wrong: he did not.

According to the filer's own statements, his rationale for the recall is "he just [doesn't] like how [Hing] treats people." Every resident of Lapeer should see his explanation of why he led the recall. This is a video he edited and posted himself. Count the times he contradicts himself:

But if you look at any of the meetings, the angry mob spends two hours berating, slandering, cussing at, and bearing false witness about Mayor Hing during public comment time. This recall filer and activist himself frequently encourages and participates in this behavior. If you look at his frankly unwatchable social media content it is nonstop strawman and ad hominem arguments.

So according to the recall mob's logic, it's perfectly fine to gang up on the Mayor and treat him horribly, but if he attempts to defend himself or asserts the rules to regain order, he is “King Hing,” “evil,” and “a tyrant.”

Ultimately it's up to the voters of the city of Lapeer to decide if they want the transparency and good governance Jeramy Hing is delivering, or if they want a return to the self-dealing and wasteful spending of the Womack/Atwood/Brady regime.

For the full, redacted copy of the Bodman 2 investigative report into the allegations against Mike Womack, click below.

Redacted Legal Memorandum (bodman 07

547KB ∙ PDF file

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Mike Womack, the Bodman memo, and what the city still hasn’t released

How it started

• May 8, 2023 — Mike Womack sworn in as city manager (hired from Cedar Springs).

• Aug. 7, 2023 — Commission meeting, 28:00 Three months in, Womack has placed himself in the center of the dais and tells the commission he has already talked to marijuana retailers, the odor rules are “ridiculous,” and he is “trying to be friendly to the marijuana businesses.” He is sending ordinance changes to planning; no vote.

• Late 2023 — HR’s Ms. Russell tells him to stop commenting on employees’ clothes. She says he “went nuts,” “screamed at” her, said he can compliment women if he wants. He later admitted to Bodman he still compliments the appearance of femail subordinates.

The Genesee / John Conley deal (Fresh Water Gardens lawsuit)

• 2021 — Richard Swaine / Fresh Water Gardens (then Semi Grown) buys 39 & 47 W. Genesee plus a vacant lot; Planning Commission approves SLUP (July 8) and site plan (Oct. 14).

• Sept. 8, 2022 — Site-plan extension.

• Oct. 14, 2023 — Site plan expires. City tells them Oct. 23 they must start over.

• Dec. 14, 2023 — City issues a provisional Class C grow license for Genesee.

• Jan. 11, 2024 — Planning Commission denies the new SLUP.

• March 8, 2024 — Fresh Water Gardens & Swaine v. City of Lapeer, 24-057247-AA.

• Aug. 4, 2025 — Amended consent judgment: grower deeds Genesee to the city; city deeds two acres on John Conley Drive for $10 and vests a Class C grow there. City must use “reasonable best efforts” to sell Genesee and pay up to $50,000 to the grower from the proceeds.

• July 8 & 23, 2026 — Grower’s counsel demands proof the city marketed the lots. City cites informal Lapeer Development Corp. shopping; no listing papers produced.

• Aug. 28, 2026 — Motion to enforce: declare breach; pay $50k or FMV minus $50k, whichever greater, plus ~$7,500 fees.

• Sept. 28, 2026 — Hearing, 40th Circuit, Hon. Michael J. Nolan, moved to McCarthy, agreed to reassign case to Judge Hodges.

The Hodge complaint and Bodman memo

• April 27, 2026 — Ms. Hodge reports to HR (Ms. Bowman): favoritism toward a female employee (“Ms. Doe”), camera-watching, pranks, fear for her retirement.

• Late April 2026 — Womack tells Alexandria McLean to take everything Hodge says “with a grain of salt.” McLean tells Hodge.

• May 7, 2026 — Womack, still acting HR, orders Hodge into a meeting. Multiple witnesses: harsh, threatening. Waves a $21,000 retirement pay memo. Accuses her of creating a toxic workplace. Says he will not tolerate being accused of illegal/unethical/inappropriate conduct. Bodman: he should have recused. He later admitted about Hodge feeling threatened: “I can see how Ms. Hodge would see it that way.”

• May 14, 2026 — McLean gets a verbal warning on her employment record for repeating the “grain of salt” line.

• May 21, 2026 — Building official Hart fired three months before retirement vests; Womack ordered him escorted from building by police. File shows Womack tracked his arrivals/departures on city cameras (July 29–Sept. 9, 2025) and checked his whereabouts with Ms. Doe.

• July 15, 2026 — Bodman PLC memo to the city. Findings on hostile environment mixed; retaliation and “additional retaliatory animus” are the heavy pages. Commissioners Atwood and Brady block closed session at three consecutive meetings.

• Severance — About $200,000+ in value (pay, car, phone) after ~three years employment. Non-disparagement clause binds city from disclosing the report.

• Closed session — Charter needs four of five. Brady and Atwood vote no three meetings in a row. Employment counsel sits through public meetings the commission never hears in private. Commission forced to decide on severance package without hearing the advice of labor counsel.

• September 2026: Redacted report obtained by Lapeer First News via FOIA request. Conclusions are completely redacted.

• WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE THE PUBLIC TO ASK THE COMMISSION TO WAIVE PRIVILEGE and release the entire, unredacted Bodman 1 and 2 reports to the public.

• Womack, Brady, Atwood have an open invitation to come on our show. Email us at scott@lapeerfirst.com.

In this episode:

• (01:02) The missing FOIA records. Hing explains how he spotted gaps at the dais in John DeAngelis’s FOIA response on the Brady CDBG matter, and why he posts records in the Public Records section of his website.

• (04:48) Where the recall started. Hing says Commissioner Brady’s first call to him, less than a week into his term, was over a proposed dais seating change, and that Brady called it a charter violation and threatened a recall on the spot.

• (10:58) Why the seating change. Hing wanted the public to be able to tell the elected commission apart from advisory staff, after years in which the city manager appeared to be running meetings.

• (15:15) The Womack contract. Hing corrects the record: the former manager’s severance rose from 6 to 7 to 9 to 12 months. He also questions how city attorney billing fell from about 40 hours a month to under 20, and notes that Commissioner McCarthy’s request for an attorney RFP got a fee comparison instead.

• (25:44) The September 14 joint meeting. Five boards met at the Lapeer Recreation Center to hear Sharon Woods of Land Use USA present a draft target market analysis and resident survey for the master plan update.

• (28:40) Survey vs. study. About 68% of respondents favored single-family ownership, including smaller homes and fixing existing stock. The draft study leans toward rentals because it forecasts demand from households on the move. The city already has 2,245 renter households and 1,930 owner households.

• (36:07) Who’s shaping the plan. Hing reviews Woods’s roles with the Congress for the New Urbanism and related groups. He also says he never saw the study authorized or capped at either commission, while comparable communities like DeWitt Township capped theirs at $30,000.

• (51:59) What residents actually said. The top survey themes were wariness of apartments and subsidized rentals, a desire for a path to ownership, and concerns about downtown homelessness, code enforcement, and small business support.

• (56:36) The Brookwood project. Hing lays out the 10+ ordinance compliance problems and the 30-year tax abatement (upwards of $16 million) that Commissioners Brady and Atwood voted to approve. He points to the Opera House redevelopment as an example of subsidized development he did support because it fit.

• (1:05:15) Accountability. Scott discusses the city attorney’s duty to the full commission. He also reports that he invited Brady and Atwood to talk: Atwood left the group text, and Brady declined to comment for the prior story.

• (1:20:52) Closing. Hing talks about his faith, why he stays in the fight, and his conversations with some of the people behind the recall.

Check out Mayor Hing’s transparency website here: JeramyHing.com/public-records

Emails, minutes, and a memorandum obtained under FOIA show the rest.

The records show Brady voted in March 2025 to authorize the city’s application for the grant, asked the city manager three weeks later whether recusing himself would make him eligible, was warned by the manager not to pursue it before he abstained from a second vote in April, then a few days later submitted a written request to the city manager that the city attorney prepare a statement supporting an exception to federal conflict-of-interest rules. The city manager forwarded the request to the attorney the following day without a vote of the commission.

A week later, a three-page legal opinion, dated June 10, 2025, written by the city attorney at taxpayer expense, was included in the agenda package for the next meeting.

Brady did not ultimately apply for the grant.

On July 20, 2026, after two members of the public, including John DeAngelis, mentioned his prior efforts to get a legal opinion granting him an exception, Brady requested during public comment time if he could step to the podium and deliver his own public comment, “I refute the claims brought by this gentleman… the city incurred no billable expense from me, you can check if you want… That’s slander. It’s a lie. It’s a blatant — they know, they FOIA’d the information.”

Brady continued from the public podium, “Those two gentlemen just stood up here and lied purposely on me. Am I gonna litigate and chase them down? No, it’s called grace. It’s fine.”

Brady’s claim that the city incurred no billable expense is contradicted by the city’s actual record. Mayor Jeramy Hing told Lapeer First News (LFN) that city records show the city was billed by the city attorney for that written legal opinion, an expense never approved by the commission.

When Hadley resident John DeAngelis issued a FOIA request for these documents, the city failed to provide a handful of key emails that fell under the request. Mayor Jeramy Hing published these documents on his website as part of the fulfillment of his campaign promises for accountability and transparency.

The grant

On March 17, 2025, the commission voted 5-0 to adopt Resolution 2025-01 authorizing the city’s Housing Improvement Department to apply for $200,000 through the Michigan State Housing Development Authority’s MI-Neighborhood Community Development Block Grant program.

According to the resolution, the money was to improve five or more owner-occupied homes in the city occupied by low- to moderate-income households. The purpose of the grants is to help low- and moderate-income homeowners make emergency repairs to their homes that they cannot afford, especially when there is an immediate threat to health or welfare. Eligible participants are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

The minutes record Brady voting in favor.

“Please advise”

On April 16, 2025, Brady emailed City Manager Mike Womack under the subject line “Mi-Neighborhood.”

“I am wondering if I were to recuse myself from this if I would then become potentially eligible for the grants (under the understanding that last year I was excluded from consideration due to having voted favorably on this grant),” Brady wrote. “Sorry, its late notice, but I didn’t know it was coming on this agenda until now.”

Womack replied April 21, copying city attorney T. Allen Francis of Fletcher Fealko Shoudy & Francis in Port Huron. Womack wrote that he was not aware of anything specifically prohibiting Brady from eligibility, though the grant rules might exclude him, and that he could not think of any circumstances that would create good optics for an elected official obtaining a grant facilitated by city staff.

“My recommendation would be to not apply for this grant, or any grant that City staff work on obtaining, regardless of whether you might be legally eligible for it or not,” Womack wrote. If Brady was determined to apply anyway, Womack recommended he recuse himself from any vote on the grant, state his intention to apply, and include a written request with his application that he be awarded funds only as a last resort after all other eligible applicants.

That evening, the commission took up a revised authorizing resolution, Resolution 2025-07, for the same $200,000 application. The minutes record four ayes and one abstention: Brady.

Brady explained his abstention by saying, “I would seek to preclude myself from voting on this, um, with the intention of applying for it, you know, saying, put my name at the very end of the list. I understand there is a conflict of interest that could be there, um, I don’t even know if I’m going to or not, but I couldn’t vote on it now and then if I investigate it later and then decide to, um, so…”

The request

On April 26, five days after he abstained, Brady emailed Womack a memorandum titled “Clarification of City Commissioner Status and Request for HUD Conflict of Interest Exception – MI Neighborhood CDBG Rehab Grant Application.”

The email asked Womack to direct the city attorney to prepare a written statement that Brady was an elected officer rather than a city employee, that identified the conflict, that confirmed he had recused himself “from voting on all matters involving the CDBG grant application or award process,” and that gave a legal opinion that his participation, if HUD approved an exception, would not violate state or local law. He also asked the city to submit a conflict-of-interest exception request to HUD.

“I am seeking no preferential treatment but merely requesting the ability to apply for housing rehabilitation assistance on the same basis as any other qualifying low- to moderate-income household,” Brady wrote. He stated his 2024 household income as filed with the IRS, claiming it fell within the program’s limit.

Womack forwarded the email to housing staff on the morning of April 28. Grant administrator Shelley Lincoln replied that once the city attorney responded, she would outline next steps on the grant agreement.

Denise Soldenski, writing 33 minutes later, said Brady “should be able to apply,” but she questioned whether the city should seek a legal opinion before his eligibility was verified through the grant process.

“He may be over-income as we calculate gross income for grant eligibility, and current wages, etc. may be more by the time we are ready to send out applications,” Soldenski wrote. She noted the city still needed a grant agreement and an environmental review before funds could be released, and she asked that Brady be added to a waitlist Lincoln was already keeping “so that he gets an application along with other residents who have requested, in advance.” She then asked Womack whether to wait for a completed application or “get the legal opinion started per Commissioner Brady’s request.”

The commission did not take up that request in April. At the June 2 meeting, during commissioner comments, Brady said he had been researching the grant and “I’ve sent something to the mayor asking for an attorney letter. I would hope to see that come before the commission at some point.”

The referral

Womack did not wait for a completed application or board approval. On June 3, the morning after Brady raised the letter on the dais, he forwarded Brady’s April 26 memorandum to Francis, copying Soldenski.

“As you heard Mr. Brady mention during last nights meeting, he wants your opinion about whether he is eligible for the CDBG grant for rehabbing his home,” Womack wrote. He said MSHDA appeared to take the position that city employees were not eligible, that Brady was “trying to differentiate himself from being an employee so that he is eligible,” and that MSHDA would leave the determination to the local city attorney.

“This question obviously puts myself and staff into a tough position with an elected official so I would like your input about whether he is eligible for this Rehab grant or not prior to staff taking any action,” Womack wrote.

There is no record of a commission vote to approve the legal expense.

The opinion

Francis responded in a memorandum to Womack dated June 10, 2025, later included in a commission agenda packet as Item H-1.

Citing MSHDA’s program guide and federal regulations, Francis wrote that the conflict-of-interest prohibition covers any elected official of a local government receiving CDBG funds and “applies regardless of whether or not a ‘Persons Covered’ actually participates in the decision making or gains inside information.” The rule applies to anyone in a position to do so, he wrote.

“I have no reason to believe Mr. Brady has inside information or would participate in the process, but I believe he is in a ‘position to’ do those things,” Francis wrote. “Therefore, unless an exception to the rule applies, he is not eligible for a CDBG Grant.”

Turning to Section 5.12 of the city charter, which bars elected and appointed officials from taking official action on any contract or matter in which they are financially interested, Francis wrote that a CDBG award would create a contract between the city and the recipient, but that Brady would not violate the charter if he abstained from all action on the program.

The legal opinion did not mention Brady’s March 17 vote.

Francis concluded that the city could submit an exception request to MSHDA if the commission approved doing so, but offered his own assessment of how one required factor, the public interest, would weigh.

“In my opinion, allowing elected officials to apply for / receive CDBG Grants would have a negative effect on public interest,” Francis wrote. “Although Mr. Brady would not participate in the process, there would be the appearance of favoritism if he were awarded the grant.” He added: “Absent MSHDA or HUD granting an exception, Mr. Brady is not eligible.”

Brady declined to comment for this story.

Womack is no longer city manager. He was placed on leave in July 2026 during a city investigation of complaints that included sexual harassment and threats of retaliation against city employees, and he resigned while that investigation was pending. Finance Director Kelly Hanna was paid an acting-manager stipend covering the leave. LFN will report separately on that investigation.

Timeline

Mayor Hing provided this timeline on his website:

• March 17, 2025 — After a public hearing, the Commission adopted Resolution #2025-01 (Motion 45) authorizing the City’s $200,000 MI-Neighborhood CDBG homeowner-rehabilitation grant application. Brady voted in favor. The commission action can be viewed on the meeting video, where Brady participated in the vote.

• April 16, 2025 — Brady asked the City Manager whether recusing himself would make him eligible to apply, noting he had been excluded a prior year after voting favorably on the grant.

• April 21, 2025 — The City Manager recommended Brady not apply, citing the optics of an elected official obtaining a grant facilitated by City staff.

• April 21, 2025 (regular meeting) — The Commission re-adopted the application as Resolution #2025-07 (Motion 72); Brady abstained.

• April 26, 2025 — Brady emailed a request for a City Attorney opinion and a HUD conflict-of-interest exception under 24 CFR § 570.611(d), disclosing his household income.

• April 28, 2025 — Community Development staff noted he might be over-income, recommended waiting for a completed application before seeking a legal opinion, and added him to the grant waitlist.

• June 2, 2025 (regular meeting) — In commissioner comments, Brady said he had been researching the grant and would need a letter from the attorney to proceed.

• June 3, 2025 — The City Manager forwarded the request to the City Attorney for an opinion, noting it put staff in “a tough position with an elected official.”

• June 10, 2025 — The City Attorney concluded that Brady, as an elected official, is a “person covered” under the federal CDBG conflict-of-interest rules and is ineligible to receive the grant absent an exception that only HUD or MSHDA, not the City, can grant.

• June 16, 2025 — The opinion was included in the public meeting packet under the City Manager’s Report (agenda item H-1).

Disclosure: Scott McMahan is a Lapeer County commissioner. The county administers CDBG funds, and he has voted on those applications. Mayor Jeramy Hing identified emails omitted from a city FOIA production; those emails are cited in this article.

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In 2023, with control of the House, the Senate, and the governor’s office, Democrats passed the package Rep. Greene and I discussed on this week’s episode: Public Acts 233 and 235, the state’s own Green New Deal. It mandates 100% “clean” electricity by 2040, and it handed the Michigan Public Service Commission, an appointed board, the final say over where utility-scale wind, solar, and battery projects go, stripping that decision from every township, village, city, and county in the state.

That alone is a problem. What comes next turns it into a danger.

Supply: fragile by design

Michigan’s grid has run for decades on coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Those plants produce continuous power on demand, in any weather. The 2040 mandate replaces most of that with wind and solar, which produce power only when the wind blows and the sun shines. In Michigan, winter is exactly when the sun does the least.

The state’s own estimate says meeting the mandate could require more than 200,000 additional acres of land for wind and solar. My own math, based on realistic demand forecasts and actual capacity factors for Michigan solar and the generation the mandate requires, puts the figure closer to 2 million acres. That is roughly 27% of the state’s 7.5 million acres of cropland. Developers prefer cropland because it is already cleared and does not trigger federal environmental review. In my own commission district, DTE wants 2,700 acres in Marathon Township, including up to eight acres of batteries that volunteer firefighters have no training or means to extinguish.

Demand: growing by mandate

While supply gets less reliable, Democrats are working to push more of daily life onto the grid.

Electric vehicles are the obvious piece. Every EV that replaces a gasoline car moves that energy demand onto the wires. Data centers, which Rep. Greene raised on the show, add loads measured in the hundreds of megawatts each.

The less obvious piece is your furnace.

In March 2026, EGLE released “Clean, Safe, and Affordable: A Policy Roadmap for Efficient and All-Electric Homes in Michigan.” Its stated goal is to eliminate emissions from the residential sector by 2050, and its first policy recommendation is updated building codes. In plain language, that means new homes built without natural gas: electric heat, electric water heaters, electric stoves.

This is not hypothetical. Ann Arbor’s city council passed a resolution in 2023 calling for an ordinance banning natural gas connections in new construction, and in July 2026 it amended its development code to require that buildings seeking certain height exceptions be powered solely by electricity. New York went further. Its All-Electric Buildings Act took effect January 1, 2026, prohibiting gas and propane heating, water heating, and cooking in new buildings up to seven stories, with all remaining new buildings covered in 2029. A federal appeals court upheld it in June.

Michigan Democrats have the roadmap. New York has the law. Ann Arbor has the first ordinance. The direction is not in doubt.

Why this is a matter of life and death

Today, Michigan’s electricity demand peaks in the summer. If the grid fails on a hot afternoon, people are uncomfortable. Some vulnerable people are at risk, but most of us sweat it out.

Move home heating onto the grid and the peak moves to winter. If the grid fails on a January night at ten below, people with no gas furnace, no gas water heater, and no gas stove have no heat at all. Massive property destruction and even widespread loss of life is a likely outcome. That is what a winter blackout means in a state of all-electric homes.

Grid operators already know this. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation has repeatedly flagged the Midwest for elevated winter risk as dispatchable plants retire faster than replacements arrive. Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022 forced emergency measures across the eastern grid and rolling blackouts in several states. That was with gas furnaces carrying most of the heating load. Democrats’ plan is to remove that cushion while removing the plants that provide the power.

The pattern

Take each policy on its own and it can be explained away. A clean energy target. A siting reform. A building code update. A voluntary roadmap.

Put them in sequence and the pattern is plain. First, mandate an intermittent supply. Second, override the local officials who would object to where it goes. Third, move heating, transportation, and cooking onto that supply. Each step makes the next one harder to reverse, and none of them was accompanied by a serious plan for the nights when the wind stops.

Nuclear could fix much of this. It is carbon-free, it runs in all weather, and it does not consume farmland by the square mile. It was barely part of the 2023 conversation.

What to do

Every House and Senate seat in Michigan is on the ballot this November. Republicans hold the House. The Senate is 20 to 18 Democrat. Two seats and a governor’s office stand between Michigan and a second trifecta that Democrats have clearly signaled will advance their destructive agenda.

Rep. Greene said it on the show: this is government hurting people. We need a Republican House, Senate, and Governor John James to be able to reverse this harmful legislation.

Vote REPUBLICAN for a return to common sense and rational leadership.

Matthew Chapin, 48, of Otisville, faces 18 charges: three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, 13 counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and three counts of assault and battery, according to the Genesee County Prosecutor’s Office. The case will be heard before Judge Elizabeth A. Kelly.

Chapin has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Matthew Norwood, said in a statement that Chapin “plans to defend these and all allegations in court.”

The charges

Prosecutors first charged Chapin in June with five counts of criminal sexual conduct after a former student came forward alleging she was assaulted in 2016, when she was a sixth-grader at LakeVille Middle School. Court records say the alleged victim was under 13 at the time.

During a preliminary examination, the woman testified that she had been struggling in Chapin’s science class when he offered private tutoring, and that the alleged abuse began during those sessions and escalated. She said she did not report it for years because she felt ashamed, and eventually went to police after confiding in her aunt and a counselor.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said each of the original counts relates to a separate incident, and that the alleged conduct took place inside the classroom.

After news of the charges aired, five more women contacted the prosecutor’s office. Leyton asked Michigan State Police to reopen the investigation and in late July authorized 13 additional charges. He said the newest allegations involve conduct between 2012 and 2016 at the middle school.

Chapin was jailed on $100,000 bond per count after his initial arraignment, then released on a reduced bond with a GPS tether in late July. He was taken back into custody following the new charges, according to people familiar with the case. Norwood has said state police investigated the allegations against Chapin in 2021 and that no charges were filed until the day of his release on bond.

A prior resignation and a letter of recommendation

Chapin worked for LakeVille from 2011 to 2016. Documents reviewed by Lapeer First News correspondant Heather Smith, who has been researching the case, show that before arriving at LakeVille, Chapin was a principal in the Adrian Public Schools in Lenawee County.

According to Smith, the Adrian Board of Education held a special meeting on March 24, 2010, to address allegations against Chapin, and the district and Chapin reached a separation agreement under which he resigned. Smith said the allegations discussed at that meeting included inappropriate text messages with students and driving a student to a medical appointment without parental consent.

One week later, on March 31, 2010, then-Superintendent Chris Timmis signed a letter of recommendation for Chapin, Smith said. In a statement to the press at the time, Timmis said no negative inference should be drawn from the resignation and that the two sides had simply decided to part ways.

Smith said Chapin was subsequently offered a position by Whitmore-Prescott Area Schools in Iosco County, but that the district’s board rescinded the offer at a special meeting on Aug. 17, 2010, roughly five days after his final interview, based on information it had learned.

On Jan. 13, 2011, Chapin applied to LakeVille and submitted the Adrian letter of recommendation with his application, Smith said. At the time, LakeVille’s superintendent was his mother, who led the district from 2008 to 2016. She later served as a trustee on the LakeVille Board of Education from 2024 until this summer.

The Adrian and Whitmore-Prescott districts have not publicly commented on their handling of Chapin’s employment.

Internal investigation in 2016

Records obtained by Smith show LakeVille conducted an internal investigation that was completed in July 2016. According to those records, students began raising concerns with staff at the start of the 2015-16 school year. The investigation identifies more than 20 people by name and refers to several dozen others.

Students who described concerns ranged from sixth through 12th grade, reflecting Chapin’s assignments in both the middle school and high school. The high school principal at the time led the inquiry after high school students raised concerns about what might be happening to younger students, Smith said.

The records describe students who reported feeling that their concerns were being heard by teachers but not by administrators because of Chapin’s mother’s position. Some students said that after they spoke up, Chapin gave them disciplinary write-ups and removed them from class. Several teachers who went on record resigned afterward, Smith said.

Smith also said she obtained an email from a middle school administrator stating that she had revised a written evaluation of Chapin after the superintendent directed her to remove a paragraph. The removed language stated that Chapin had been instructed on more than one occasion to stay out of a student’s personal space. The email said the superintendent warned the district could face a defamation claim if the paragraph remained.

Chapin’s mother could not be reached for comment. After the charges became public, she stopped attending board meetings and her name was removed from the district’s website.

Community impact

LakeVille Community Schools, based in Otisville, serves a rural area of northeastern Genesee County. Smith said the district’s enrollment has fallen from more than 1,700 students to just over 1,000 in recent years.

The district has a new administration. Superintendent James Yake said in June that Chapin had not worked for the district in more than 10 years and encouraged anyone with information to contact law enforcement.

Smith said she and several witnesses have raised concerns that Michigan law does not require school districts to notify families when an employee resigns or is let go amid misconduct allegations. Under current practice, personnel matters can be handled in closed session at the employee’s discretion.

Under Michigan law, there is no statute of limitations for first-degree criminal sexual conduct. First-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a victim under 13 carries a potential sentence of up to life in prison.

Leyton said his office believes there may be additional victims and urged them to come forward, noting that survivor support and mental health services are available through the YWCA of Greater Flint.

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Today, September 1, 2026 will be our first episode of Lapeer First News, a live weekly local news podcast featuring local and state political issues that affect Lapeer County residents.

Our goal is to strengthen the Lapeer County community through effective and entertaining reporting on local issues that affect you. We aim to tell the stories that others can’t or won’t so that you can be well informed.

Today we will discuss two major stories in Lapeer County — an upcoming criminal trial of a former employee of Lakeville Schools and the recently resigned Lapeer City Manager Mike Womack.

Host Scott McMahan will be joined by Lapeer First News correspondent Heather Scott, Lapeer Mayor Jeramy Hing, and John DeAngelis.