WCHA Barred Baker From Future Meetings. After PAC Contact, It Lifted the Ban.
A written exclusion from future board meetings was reversed after the Public Access Bureau became involved.
Read or download the PAC letter (PDF)
The Wayne County Housing Authority told Ronald Baker he would not be permitted to attend future board meetings. After he took that exclusion to the Public Access Bureau, the authority lifted the ban. The bureau’s February 5, 2026, letter documents that reversal and closes the issue as resolved. PAC closure letter, page 1
This outcome matters on its own terms. It is evidence that the exclusion existed and was lifted after PAC contact. It is not a binding opinion or a merits ruling that every aspect of the dispute violated the law.
The letter residents should read
WCHA’s August 15, 2025, notice announced Baker’s removal as commissioner, said the decision was final and stated that he was barred from future board meetings because of disruptive behavior. The notice combined a claim about his office with an exclusion from meetings. Those are different questions: access to an open meeting is not reserved to commissioners. Read WCHA’s August 15 notice
Baker submitted his request for review on January 8, 2026. According to Bureau Chief Joshua Jones’s closure letter, the authority lifted the ban after the bureau communicated with it and confirmed the change in a letter addressed to Baker on February 4. The review file closed the next day.
The closure letter’s heading calls the matter a FOIA request for review, but its body expressly identifies the allegation as an Open Meetings Act complaint about exclusion from open meetings. This article follows the substance of the letter rather than treating that heading as the legal issue.
A reversal is not an explanation
The outcome does not decide who lawfully held the commissioner’s seat, whether the earlier removal process was valid, whether damages were available, or whether a specific disruption justified removal from a particular meeting. None of those findings appears in this closure letter.
What it does show is a board issuing a sweeping future-meeting exclusion and later withdrawing it after state intervention. In Monster News’s judgment, that sequence deserves an account from the commissioners who allowed the exclusion to stand: what rule authorized it, what review occurred, and why was the decision reversed?
Calling a resident disruptive does not relieve a public board of the obligation to use lawful, proportionate procedures. The documented reversal restored access. It also leaves a basic governance question for WCHA: why did a resident have to take this to Springfield’s public-access machinery to get the ban lifted?
Read the source documents
These are public reading copies of records held by Monster News. Private contact details are redacted; originals are retained. Extracts are identified in the document labels. Submitted transcripts and annotations are identified as such and are not certified official transcripts. This report distinguishes the PAC outcome from complaints and editorial judgment.
Cover: AI-generated editorial illustration. The room, objects and documents are symbolic.
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