Star Reports Meaninglessly On Professional Fees For Utilities Deal

Big campaign contributors and political insiders profiteer big time off of deals like the City is currently undertaking to transfer the sewer and water utilities to Citizens Energy. Democratic mayoral candidate Brian Williams and blogs like this one have tried to focus scrutiny on those professional fees. After the transaction is pretty much already a done deal, the Star decides to do a story that is so patently biased in favor of defending the nearly $10 million taxpayers will have to pay to make this deal happen that it is not even worthy of passing as credible news reporting. I won't even waste your time discussing the useless dribble Francesca Jarosz wrote about in this biased story, but I will share with you the dollars being paid to each of the firms. In fairness to her, perhaps she tried to do a tougher story and Ryerson nixed it. Because Citizens Energy will pass its costs on to ratepayers in the form of higher rates, you will pay the costs of both sides in the transaction.

City

» Financial advisers: $5.6 million to Citigroup; $970,000 to Capital Source (which employs former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith).

» Lawyers: $2 million to Baker & Daniels.

» Analysis/due diligence: $250,000 to Crowe Horwath.

» Engineering: $206,500 to R.W. Beck.

» Public relations/communications: $322,500 to Hirons & Co.

» Total: $9.3 million

Citizens

» Financial advisers: $366,809 to Morgan Stanley & Co.

» Lawyers: $1.2 million to Ice Miller; $47,000 to Hackman Hulett & Cracraft; $14,475 to Krieg DeVault Alexander and Capehart.

» Analysis/due diligence: $604,000 to Booz & Co.; $221,547 to Deloitte & Touche; $61,476 to The Revere Group.

» Engineering: $457,180 to Malcolm Pirnie.

» Public relations/communications: $90,093 to Bose Public Affairs Group.

          » Total: $3.1 million

The story doesn't mention the nearly $1 million haul Capital Source, the firm with which former Mayor Steve Goldsmith is associated, is getting to provide financial advice on the deal; you have to pick up that little snippet from the side bar accompanying the main story. So what other deals was he getting paid for work during all that time he spent on the 25th floor since Ballard became mayor? He now works as a deputy mayor for New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Somebody should be taking a close look at the ethics disclosure form he would have been required to complete as part of  taking that job.

Mayor Ballard's son got a job with Hirons & Co, to which the City is paying $322,500 for public relations advice as this blog noted several weeks ago. The Mayor already has a bunch of people on his payroll supposedly being paid to perform communications work. Is he saying Robert Vane and is staff aren't up to the job? Hirons had anticipated a hard-hitting piece by the Star on the family connection to Ballard so it even prepared talking points it circulated among its staff to defend the relationship as pointed out on the Indianapolis Times blog, but as it turns out, neither the firm nor Ballard needed to fear any fallout. Hey, this isn't the Chicago Sun-Times or the Chicago Tribune after all where such a relationship would have made front page headlines.  A memo said of Greg, Jr. working for the firm:

Right now, we anticipate the story to focus on fees paid to all outside consultants who made this deal happen. It’s apparent we won’t be the largest recipient of dollars.


There are many law firms, and others, in the mix. One question that has surfaced (resulting from Blogger traffic) centers on having Greg Ballard Jr. on our payroll.

If you are approached by a client or colleague, keep these talking points in mind.

We have a diverse client base including federal, state and local government as well as other public and private sector accounts.

We have multiple contracts with the City of Indianapolis and this utility sale is one of several agreements in which we have considerable involvement.

Our efforts have focused on providing public involvement and outreach to a multiplicity of stakeholders, politicians and media sources.

Our fees have totaled around $320,000 to date, as we head into final city/county council action on the measure, for literally dozens of public forums and meetings

Greg Ballard has been a Hirons intern/employee for two years.

He performs exceptional work and we’re proud to have him on our team.

The Star had decided this deal must go through and it will cover up any information that might harm public approval of the deal just like it did with the CIB bailout and the latest handout demand by the billionaire Simons for its Pacers team.

CIB President Ann Lathrop's firm, Crowe Horwath, is getting paid a quarter of a million dollars for useless analysis work, while we're still giving $5.6 million to Citigroup, one of the worst run financial institutions in America. Citigroup got billions in bailout money from the federal government while it paid out bonuses of more than $25 billion to its top executives in 2009. Any advice that firm provides to this City should be viewed quite skeptically. It's also worth observing that Citizens is spending less than a third of what the City is spending on its professional fees. The story continues to ignore the linkage between campaign contributions to Ballard and the awarding of city contracts. What do they teach these people in jounalism school these days who become reporters? God help us.