Kernan Warns South Bend Council Members To Stop The Antics Or Else

Former Indiana Governor and former South Bend Mayor Joe Kernan has joined other South Bend community leaders in blasting the "dysfunctional" antics of the city's common council members who are becoming an "embarrassment to the city." Kernan pledged to work to defeat those council members responsible for the situation if they didn't knock it off according to the South Bend Tribune. "Watching this council work — if I can use that term — has been very difficult," Kernan said. "The way the council operates, the leadership of the council and the approach it has taken with the administration is so very different from what I’m used to." "We have a circumstance that, one way or another, has to be fixed," he added.

Kernan has largely maintained a low profile following his loss in the 2004 gubernatorial race to Mitch Daniels. He's speaking out now after one Democratic council member, Henry Davis, Jr., got in hot water for posting an obscene photo of a man and his dog on his Facebook page. Although Davis avoided discipline for that action, controversy erupted again when he shared an offensive Twitter post about Republicans, the developmentally disabled and abortion. Kernan described the tweet as "just horrible to me in the language that it used." Kernan is concerned about the general lack of decorum and professionalism on display at council meetings where members routinely speak out of order and criticize each other and the administration.