Indianapolis City-County Council Must Demand Transparency For Criminal Justice Center Project

$490 Million Long Beach California Courthouse Built By Long Beach Judicial Partners

As the Ballard administration prepares to lock the city-county government into the largest single, ongoing item in the budget for decades to come, the fiscal body of Indianapolis' consolidated government is completely in the dark about the deal the administration is negotiating in secret. This coincides with a push by the administration to raise income and property taxes another $30 million a year for the supposed purpose of hiring more police officers and funding a new and dubious pre-K education program. The council and the public are supposed to trust the administration's assurance that it can get a deal done to build a new criminal justice center to house all of the criminal courts, offices for the prosecutor, public defender, clerk's office and other related criminal justice agencies, arrestee processing center, a county jail and sheriff's department without costing taxpayers a single additional dollar above what it costs to rent, operate and maintain current facilities used for those purposes.

As the plan has been described to the public, the administration is planning to obtain a new criminal justice center through what is known as a build, operate and transfer ("BOT") agreement under the state's Public Private Agreements Act (IC 5-23-1 et seq.). A BOT agreement is defined as "any agreement between a governmental body and an operator to construct, operate and maintain a public facility and to transfer the public facility back to the governmental body at an established future date." Under the Act, the city is required by law to undertake a Request for Proposals by giving public notice. The law was enacted while Steve Goldsmith was still mayor and was in response to questions about whether his administration had entered into privatization agreements in a transparent fashion. The Indianapolis Star and the Hoosier State Press Association weighed in quite heavily during the legislative debate before the law was first enacted in 1997. An Indianapolis Star news story and editorial at the time expressed concerns that the proposed law would allow privatization agreements to be entered into secretively.

The RFP process with public notice was one of the requirements written into the law to ensure transparency and to assuage concerns raised by the media and public interest groups. Also, if public funds are used for the project, the law also requires that construction work performed on the project is subject to public bidding laws for public works projects, and that applicable prevailing wages must be paid to workers who work on the project. Taking the administration at its word that no public funds will be used to construct the new criminal justice center, that means the selected developer will not be subject to public bidding requirements for the project, the prevailing wage rate requirements or minority, women and veteran-owned contractor participation requirements. A draft development agreement would help answer some of those questions, but the administration refuses to release any information to the public.

What little we know is that the administration's plan is to rely upon a private developer to build the all-encompassing facility on a large site upon which the former GM Stamping Plant is located with its own funds after entering into a long-term agreement with the city under which the operator will be responsible for maintaining and operating the building that is to be owned by the city in exchange for guaranteed payments that will ensure a return on investment for the private operator. The administration quietly put out a Request for Information from potential offerors last year that was followed up later by an announcement that it had identified three potential bidders led by foreign companies that would compete for the project.

These three bidders have supposedly submitted responses to a Request for Proposal prepared by the administration that has yet to be made public. Despite a state law requirement, the administration refuses to release to the public the RFP to which the three finalists are submitting proposals. The law permits the administration to maintain the confidentiality of proposals until a winner is chosen, but it cannot refuse to release the RFP document to which the offerors are responding. The administration utilized a meeting last December of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee ("GIPC"), a nonprofit group that has offices in the City-County Building and has in the past received funding from the city, to roll out in very general terms its plans for a new criminal justice center. It should be pointed out that management employees of the various media outlets in the city also serve on GIPC's board, which almost acts like a shadow government developing policy initiatives that later become law. This might explain why the local media has been so reluctant to raise too many concerns about the lack of public process being followed with this particular project.

Within the past couple of weeks, we learned from media reports that the administration had secretly entered into seven, no-bid professional services contracts with various firms to perform various services for the city in connection with the project that totaled $12.6 million, about $2 million of which has already been paid out. The 2014 budget contained no specific appropriation for the criminal justice center project. The city controller, Jason Dudich, negotiated a deferment in rent payments due and payable to the Marion Co. Building Authority this year that freed up about $2.1 million in this year's budget to pay for the contracts. The Rules & Finance Committee this week recommended the adoption of a resolution by the council to cancel the contracts, and County Auditor Billie Breaux announced that her office would issue no further payments until her office receives clarification regarding the legality of the contracts. The administration assures the public that all of the professional services fees will be recouped once a final deal is executed, but that's quite misleading since the winning developer will most certainly roll those expenses into the lease and operating fees it charges to the city during the life of the agreement.

The administration has cited a memorandum of understanding it signed with various stakeholders last December, including Council President Maggie Lewis, which it says authorized the administration to incur costs of up to 2% of the estimated project cost for professional services fees. Advance Indiana has learned, however, that persons familiar with the agreement indicate that it contemplated the administration would seek additional appropriation authority before obligating the city to these costs. We also learned that Marion Co. Prosecutor Terry Curry, a key stakeholder, refused to sign that memorandum of understanding. The administration rolled out its 2015 budget this week, which proposed a cut in the prosecutor's budget of about $700,000 at a time its felony caseload has been climbing due to a spike in the number of crimes being committed. The prosecutor's office has two pending death penalty cases and three separate trials for the Richmond Hill blast defendants which will have to be tried in South Bend at great additional expense to the prosecutor's office. Curry believes the budget cut was made by the administration in retaliation for his lack of public support for the criminal justice center project.

Advance Indiana has also learned that the administration heard presentations from the three finalists on Thursday, which like everything else regarding this proposal, was conducted in secret. Many judges are reportedly unhappy about what is being proposed. Their complaints vary from the location of the proposed criminal justice center, the size of courtrooms and court staff offices to the issue of parking. Not surprisingly, the private operator will want everyone who visits the criminal justice center, along with all personnel, to pay for parking in a large parking garage to be built adjacent to the criminal justice center to allow it to maximize the return on its investment. The site at the GM Stamping Plant was not the preferred site selected by CBRE, the firm to which the administration awarded a no-bid contract to evaluate and recommend potential sites. CBRE recommended a site on the county line next to the Indianapolis International Airport. Sheriff John Layton had preferred a location near the airport to maximize the jail's potential ancillary use as a federal detainment center to offset the expense of operating the jail without regard to the inconvenience of the site to court personnel and visitors. Interestingly, CBRE has been allowed to participate in the bid being submitted by one of the three finalists, the Plenary Group, despite its inside knowledge gained from working with the administration on the site selection.

Fellow blogger Pat Andrews argues quite convincingly that the proposed criminal justice center project should also be subject to public referendum, in addition to the council approval the administration concedes is required before any agreement becomes final. The 2008 property tax reform law subjects certain controlled projects in excess of $12 million to be subject to approval by voters at a referendum. The $700 million Eskenazi Hospital project undertaken by the Health & Hospital Corporation was subject to a county-wide referendum even though the HHC had no plans to levy any new property taxes to pay debt service on the bonds issued to build the hospital. The mere fact that the bonds were backed by HHC's full faith and credit, and that it would be required to levy a property tax in the future if current revenues proved insufficient to pay the debt was enough to subject it to a referendum.

The only way the private developer can obtain a low interest rate on the funds it borrows to build the criminal justice center to keep costs down is if the city is obligated to make minimum payments during the long-term life of the lease agreement and can't simply walk away from the building for convenience. The administration will argue that it's not a controlled project because it doesn't require the city to borrow any money, and the agreement to be entered into with the private developer is not a lease since the city will technically own the building. Nonetheless, taxpayers will be on the hook to repay a multi-billion dollar long-term obligation that will most assuredly require higher taxes if revenues prove insufficient to cover the mammoth-sized, long-term obligations the city is on the hook to repay.

The total cost of this proposed project is anyone's guess at this point. When discussions first began, estimates were as low as $250 million. Those costs quickly grew to more than $400 million. If the amount of the professional service contracts entered into by the administration represent 2% of the project's costs, then total costs would be $625 million. Informed sources say they wouldn't be surprised if the total costs approach $700 million. This project seems to be modeled after a controversial P3 agreement the California courts system entered into for construction of a 31-courtroom courthouse in Long Beach, California built and operated by a private consortium led by Meridiam, one of the three finalists bidding on the criminal justice center project. The administration is relying on some of the same players involved in that project to advise the city on this project, including KPMG and a Los Angeles law firm, Nossaman.

The Long Beach courthouse, now called the George Deukmejian Courthouse, was supposed to cost about $325 million, but the developer wound up financing about $490 million in total for the project. The annual fee paid by California taxpayers to the private developer started at $50 million but will increase in future years based on the Consumer Price Index. Not all of the space in the building is used by the courts; some is leased out to private businesses. A recent legal dispute has arisen over whether property taxes must be paid on the building. The LA assessor's office has taken the developer to court over whether it will be required to pay about $5 million a year in taxes on the building. The proponents of the courthouse project obtained passage of special legislation exempting the building from property taxes, but the LA assessor's office maintains that the law is unconstitutional. If the assessor's office prevails, taxpayers will be on the hook to pay the extra property tax expense, not the private developer.

Citizen Complaint Takes Town Council Member To Task Over Multiple Offices

In the day time, Rob Kendall works as a full-time state employee as executive director of the Indiana Board of Pharmacy earning $45,500 a year. By night, he serves as an elected member of Brownsburg's town council earning $13,703 a year. In addition, he serves in two appointed roles as a member of the Brownsburg Redevelopment Commission and Hendricks County Solid Waste Management Board where he is paid $100 a meeting. Call 6's Kara Kenney says a complaint filed by citizens accusing Kendall of violating state law against holding more than one lucrative office has led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the complaint.

The complaint against Kendall arises from a provision in the Indiana Constitution, Article II, Section 9 which prohibits a person from holding more than one lucrative office at the same time. The remedy for violation of the law is typically resolved by the person being deemed to have resigned the lucrative office that barred them from holding a second lucrative office. Sometimes state law requires someone holding a lucrative office to simultaneously serve as a member of another board of commission, in which case the constitutional prohibition is not violated. It wouldn't seem kosher to me that Kendall could serve both on the Brownsburg town council and as an appointed member of its redevelopment commission, while being paid to hold both positions. A member of the town's council may be required by state law to serve on the county's solid waste management board.

There's also a question of whether Kendall's position as executive director of the Indiana Board of Pharmacy is considered a lucrative office or just a regular state employee. The position is referenced in the statute creating the board as being the official responsible for maintaining the board's records. This is the second job Kendall has had in state government. When Gov. Mike Pence appointed Dwayne Sawyer as the state's new auditor to fill the position vacated by Tim Berry, Sawyer named Kendall as his communications director. Kendall left that position after Gov. Pence forced Sawyer to resign for reasons that have never been publicly disclosed. Kendall was later appointed by Pence to serve as the pharmacy board's executive director.

It's not at all uncommon for people to serve in paid positions as elected part-time public officials and also hold other full-time government jobs. For years, people have been allowed to serve on city councils and work for city government at the same time, which I've always thought violated the separation of powers provision of the state constitution. State lawmakers finally passed a state law that now compels people elected to a local legislative body to resign their job working for that same government entity before taking office. That led to City-County Councilor Vernon Brown, who is a fire department battalion chief, to resign from the council rather than run for re-election; however, he is a candidate this year for Warren Township Trustee and supposedly plans to hold both positions if he's elected. Councilor Steve Talley, a civilian IMPD employee, is running for Lawrence Township Trustee this year as well. Councilor Mary Moriarty-Adams will also have to choose between working for the assessor's office and serving on the City-County Council. When Mayor Ballard appointed Gary Coons as Indianapolis' director of homeland security, he at first kept his other job as Perry Township Trustee. After questions were raised, Coons was forced to give up his job as Perry Township Trustee.

Another Revolving Door Example To Show Why The IURC Can't Be Trusted

Joseph Sutherland worked for the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission for more than 17 years. Before leaving the agency in 2012, he served as its executive director. He left to become a lobbyist at Utilitus, the lobbying arm of the Taft Law firm, whose lobbying clients include regulated utility companies. Last month, Sutherland was hired by Citizens Energy as its Director of Government and External Affairs. The IURC approved the controversial transfer of Indianapolis' water and sewer utilities to Citizens Energy the year before Sutherland left the agency, a move that has contributed to spiraling water and sewer rate increases due to the enormity of the debt the nonprofit utility took on in order to make a substantial payout to the City to fund the Rebuild Indy infrastructure spending program.

An administrative law judge for the IURC, Greg Ellis, sought permission this spring to accept employment with Indiana American Water Co. while the company was seeking approval of a 10% rate increase. Last year, Kari Bennett, a commissioner for the IURC appointed by former Gov. Daniels to replace the disgraced former IURC chairman, David Lott Hardy, left her job to become senior corporate counsel for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator ("MISO"). Indiana's Inspector General, David Thomas, cleared Bennett taking the new position because she would not be lobbying the IURC in her new position. A former attorney for the IURC, Scott Storms, was fined by the state ethics commission and banned from future employment with the state after he took a job with Duke Energy when it was learned that he had handled a rate case for the utility company while he was interviewing for a job.

Anti-Consumer Utility Consumer Counselor's Office Sides Against Consumers Again

A long time ago, someone told me that the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor was in bed with the public utility companies as much as the commissioners and staff. In my many years observing their actions, nothing has disabused me of that notion. So it should come as no surprise that the office which supposedly represents consumers would agree that electric utility customers of IPL should pay to subsidize a foreign-owned company to make electric cars available for rent to out-of-town visitors looking for time to kill since that represents the lion's share of people who would bother to rent one of the cars. From the IBJ:

Indianapolis Power & Light Co. customers would see less of a rate hike for an electric car-sharing program under a settlement agreement negotiated by the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor.

The cost per month for a typical residence would be 28 cents, rather than 44 cents, the OUCC said in a press release about the settlement agreement, filed Thursday with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.

IPL is seeking regulators’ permission to bill ratepayers for $16 million in costs associated with extending lines and installing charging stations for a proposed car-sharing service by BlueIndy, a subsidiary of France-based Bollore Group.

BlueIndy has an exclusive agreement with the city of Indianapolis to provide the car-sharing service, utilizing on-street parking spaces. Indiana Utility Consumer Counselor David Stippler opposed the rate hike, saying it fell outside the scope of costs that state law allows IPL to charge to ratepayers.

“We have taken into account the risks of litigation and the concessions the OUCC was able to obtain for the benefit of IPL ratepayers from the city and IPL following intensive negotiations,” Stippler said Thursday in a prepared statement.

Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Citizens Action Coalition, said his group continues to oppose allowing IPL to bill its customers for a service that will be used by a relative few.

“This settlement does not change the fact that the captive ratepayers of IPL are being forced to subsidize a French multibillion-dollar corporation for a project that has nothing to do with providing electric service,” Olson said.

Some people might say, hey, it's only a little more than a quarter a month, what's the big deal? That's not the point. It is not the responsibility of electricity consumers to pay so a private company can make money renting out electric cars. Mayor Ballard has already put Indianapolis taxpayers on the hook to pay millions of dollars to the private operator over the life of a long-term agreement by reimbursing the private operator of our parking meter assets for the lost revenues it will sustain from metered spaces taken up by the private electric car operator. A private electric car operator in Columbus, Ohio provides the exact same service to that city's residents without requiring a single dollar in public subsidies. Only in Indianapolis. Remember those three words because it repeats itself over and over again.

The drill here was no different than we see in other rate requests before the IURC. The utility always request about twice as much as it really needs to get, knowing that the OUCC will argue for something less, and the two parties will agree to a figure somewhere in between so it looks like both sides got something they wanted when, in fact, the OUCC was in the tank with the utility all along. You should have absolutely no respect for the OUCC. This agency doesn't represent consumer interests by any stretch of the imagination. The people who work for the OUCC should hold their heads in shame at how they sell out utility consumers every day, but they won't because they only got their jobs because someone in the utility sector put them there in the first place to do their bidding for them.

An Even More Shocking Police Action Shooting By St. Louis Police Caught On Video

A police action shooting that occurred in St. Louis only miles from where an 18-year old black man was shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri this past Tuesday is perhaps more shocking and questionable than the Ferguson shooting, and it was all captured on amateur video. A 911 call summoned police after a report that a 25-year old mentally disturbed man, Kajieme Powell, had stolen two soft drinks and a donut from a convenience store. When two police officers arrived, Powell approached the two officers with their guns drawn in a menacing fashion while holding a steak knife. Powell can be heard taunting the police officers to shoot him. Both officers fired multiple gunshots at Powell until he fell to the ground. Incredibly, the police officers then handcuffed the man as he laid dying as onlookers gathered and watched in total disbelief. The two police officers fired a total of 12 shots. The onlookers wondered why the police didn't use a less lethal means of apprehending Powell, such as the use of their Tasers. St. Louis authorities should consider themselves lucky that this more outrageous shooting didn't erupt in riots in their city as have been occurring in neighboring Ferguson following the Michael Brown shooting.

Sexually-Charged Comments Land Allen County Superior Court Judge In Hot Water

Allen County Superior Court Judge Stanley Levine now probably wishes he had never attended that special going away party for the court's long-time executive, Jerry Noble, and two members of the court's staff last Friday evening. According to the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Judge Levine spoke in front of a packed courtroom gathered for the occasion and suggested one of the women retiring from the court could have "a lucrative second career as a phone-sex operator." He went on to say that her husband probably wouldn't object once he saw how much money she could make before belching out an a capella rendition of "I'll Be Seeing You."

The Journal-Gazette's Rebecca Greene reports that "[o]ther than a few head shakes and dropped jaws, no one said anything or noticeably reacted to Levine's comments." That had all changed, however, by Monday morning when the court's chief judge, Judge Wendy Davis, began fielding complaints from people throughout the courthouse building. Judge Levine must have picked up on the bad vibes because he quickly released an apology for his "extremely tasteless" comments:

First of all, I wanted to state that I have made a sincere and heartfelt apology to the woman about whom I made inappropriate remarks by talking to her personally, and she has accepted my apology,” he said Wednesday. “I have also apologized to the judges that I have talked with, and I apologize … anyone else who heard what I said; and also to the public.

I have always conducted my private and public life without demeaning or mistreating any women with whom I worked or employed or interacted in any manner. Therefore, with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to believe what came out of my mouth, but it did,” he said.

What I quite mistakenly meant to be humorous was in truth extremely tasteless. I am, to say the least, deeply troubled by what I said, and I deeply regret having said it. No one in this world is perfect, least of all me. Since that is abundantly clear, I am truly sorry.

The Allen Co. Board of judges sent out an e-mail to all court staff on Wednesday agreeing that Levine's comments were inappropriate and reminded court staff of their policies against sexual harassment and procedures for reporting and investigating such complaints. The report says it is unclear whether Judge Levine will face disciplinary action by the Supreme Court. Complaints and allegations made to the Judicial Qualifications Commission are not made public. Unless public disciplinary action is taken against Judge Levine in the future, the public would never know if the Supreme Court had considered the matter.

Council Committee Nixes Part Of Ballard Tax Increase Proposal

Mayor Greg "No More New Taxes" Ballard's plan to eliminate the homestead property tax credit to raise another $7 million, most of which would be spent on a brand new pre-K education spending plan mislabeled as crime prevention, got a thumbs down from the Public Safety Committee last night. The council, however, appears to be willing to go along with raising local income tax rate by about 10% to generate an additional $30 million a year that will supposedly be spent on IMPD staffing.

There are a couple of points that need to be made after watching the budget presentation of City Controller Jason Dudich, who we now know has no qualms about deliberately engaging in deception when testifying at public meetings on the city's budget. Accepting his presentation as factual, which I realize is a leap of faith, it shows that both income and property tax revenues, the two major sources that fund city-county government, are growing at a pretty good clip this year, a trend that is expected to continue next year. Dudich makes some assumptions in the budget that clearly are designed to paint a picture that is much less rosy than it truly is to make it appear that if the council does not raise taxes next year, then fund balances will be drawn down, putting the city's credit rate at risk. Again, he's paid to lie and deceive so keep that in mind.

A second point that is quite striking to me is how the supposed lack of funding for public safety and, in particular, IMPD staffing, is driven largely by the fact that its funding is being crowded out by other sources. I know it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse, but it bears repeating. Your local income taxes were raised 65% in 2007 to support more spending for public safety, which at the time promised to raise an additional $90 million a year in revenues. Today, we have fewer rather than more police officers as promised. The same administration that last year wanted to eliminate the homestead property tax credit and, instead, put that money to hiring more police officers, now wants to use that money for pre-K education. The funding of education has never been an obligation of city government. Why we would want to create a brand new spending program that presumably would compete with public safety funding going forward is beyond me. The meme about how this spending is going to reduce crime ten to fifteen years down the road is total bunk. Head Start and other programs like it have been around since the mid-1960s. The problem of kids dropping out of school and turning to crime exploded after we began all of the new spending ushered in by Great Society styled-programs to eliminate poverty. The definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. It's not going to happen.

The Ballard administration's budget for running the mayor-sponsored charter school program has ballooned since Ballard became mayor. Despite a state law that clearly allows the City to recover the costs of administering the costs related to charter schools from the schools, Mayor Ballard refuses to recover those administrative costs. That decision is costing the City millions of dollars a year in unnecessary expenses. Back before the City-County Council foolishly bought into Ballard's plan to privatize the parking meter assets based on the argument that it was impossible for the City on its own to install electronic meters and use that opportunity to increase revenues through higher fees and/or hours of operations like cities all over America have done, the City chose to forego millions of dollars a year in new revenues that now go to the private operator of parking meters. While the administration gloats that it still generates more money than it did under the old meters operated by the City, none of that money is going to support IMPD. Yes, before parking meter privatization, revenues generated from the parking meters went to support IMPD. Now that money can only be used for infrastructure improvements in downtown and Broad Ripple where the meters are located. Again, that has resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in revenues that could have and should have been used to fund public safety because the Mayor would rather have the money to dole out to his campaign contributors for pet projects.

The City-County Council tried unsuccessfully to raise millions of dollars a year annually for public safety by levying a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes on the CIB to help offset the public safety costs associated with all of the special event costs related to the sports palaces and the convention center. That law had been on the book for decades but never utilized. Ballard not only vetoed that measure, but he also went to the state legislature and got the law changed so that the City never again can exercise that option of funding in the future. Around the same time, the administration was pushing through yet another tax increase to support the cash-rich CIB that had only years earlier pleaded insolvency if the state and council didn't enact a serious of tax increases and state subsidies to bail it out. When the last of those tax increases was approved, the CIB agreed to share 50% of the new revenues with the City. Now that additional funding is being wound down so the CIB has all of the money it wants to give away to IUPUI to support its Natatorium or for more subsidies for the billionaire sports team owners, shortchanging IMPD funding by about $5 million.

Again, the problem is one of priorities. I haven't even touched on the impact of all of the tax revenues diverted to the TIF districts and handed out in the form of tax abatements, which leaves the City tens of millions of dollars a year short in revenues. Every time someone complains about funding for public safety we are told that higher taxes are the only answer. Yet funding for public safety always appears to get crowded out by other spending priorities. Any councilor who supports raising taxes now to hire more police officers is only kidding themselves or trying again to pull the wool over the eyes of the taxpaying public, particularly when we already know their intent on using a substantial amount of the new revenues for an entirely new spending program that has absolutely nothing to do with public safety.

Did The Ballard Administration Violate Contracting Laws By Signing More Than $12.6 Million In No-Bid Contracts For Criminal Justice Center Project?

IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF "IS" IS
The Administration & Finance Committee kicked off the start of the 2015 City-County Council budget by discussing the controversial discovery this past week that the Ballard administration had entered into seven no-bid professional services contracts this past year for work on a proposed but not approved plan to build a new criminal justice center under a public-private partnership arrangement (P3). Everyone is in agreement that there was no specific appropriation for this project in the current budget, or for any of these individual contracts for that matter. The question is whether the manner in which the Ballard administration entered into these contracts was consistent with Indiana law and local ordinances.

The council's attorney, Fred Biesecker, outlined to the committee the controlling laws. Indiana law essentially makes any contract void for which there were not available appropriated funds at the time the contract was executed to cover the costs of the contract. The City-County Council, upon written determination that funds were not appropriated or available to fund a contract entered into, can cancel a contract. Any contractual obligation that exceeds appropriation authority is void. It is unlawful for the city controller or the county auditor to authorize payments on a contract unless there is available appropriated funds to be used for that purpose. There are civil penalties for violating the law, including fines, injunctive relief and removal from office.

What the council's CFO, Bart Brown, determined was that the total amount of the contracts entered into exceeded $12.6 million. There was no schedule delineated in the contracts for when those funds could be encumbered. To date, the city controller has sent to the auditor's office about $2 million in invoices that have already been paid, half of which went to a Los Angeles law firm, Nossaman LLP, which has been involved in P3 projects in the past, including the Long Beach, California courthouse project. It is permissible to enter into a multi-year contract that exceeds the current appropriation authority within the current budget; however, the contract needs to provide a schedule of payments that is limited to current appropriation authority. None of these no-bid contracts signed by the Ballard administration contained a schedule of payments by fiscal year. Theoretically, they authorized the payout of up to $12.6 million this year.

It is undisputed that there was no discussion or inclusion of any money in this year's budget for professional services related to the criminal justice center P3 project. Even though the Ballard administration was in the process of negotiating these contracts at the time the 2014 budget was being considered by the City-County Council, it did not disclose their existence or how much they would cost during the 2014 budget year. These contracts were signed on various dates as far back as last October but entered into the contract database as sequentially-number documents. City Controller Jason Dudich negotiated to delay a rent payment due this year on buildings occupied and leased to city-county agencies by the Marion County Building Authority. That single budget maneuver freed up about $2.1 million to shift from rent obligations within the character 3 line item in the current budget to pay out for these various professional services contracts. The city still has a little over $200,000 left from this budget trick to spend on the professional service contracts this year.

During testimony to council members, Dudich very arrogantly defended the budget maneuver as perfectly legal and indicated that he could make further payouts this fiscal year to pay these contractual obligations if he is able to free up other money from within character 3 in a similar fashion to authorize those payments. He asserts that under the contemplated P3 agreement, which is still at least subject to council approval, if not Marion County voters by referendum, will allow the city to recover these professional fees. Of course, that's not entirely true because you can bet that those expenses will be built into the annual obligations city-county government will have under any final, negotiated agreement with a P3 provider.

What is clear is that every single one of these contractors have a vested interest in seeing this deal through to fruition regardless of how bad of a deal it might be for taxpayers. As an example, KPMG is supposedly providing financial consulting services to the city-county government on this project; however, it receives what amounts to a large bonus or contingency fee that is only payable if the deal is approved. As I previously pointed out, KPMG provided similar consulting services on the much-criticized Long Beach, California courthouse project that will cost taxpayers there close to $2.5 billion over the life of the agreement for a building that cost about $325 million to construct. As far as the Ballard administration is concerned, it is a foregone conclusion that this deal will be approved--a deal that could easily cost taxpayers $4 to $5 billion over the life of the agreement. So we accomplish the largest, single obligation of the city-county government in its history by a slight-of-hand budget maneuver accomplished by deferring our current rent obligations. Only in Indianapolis.

The Democratic members of the Administration & Finance Committee were not amused by the lack of transparency in how the contracts were entered into regardless of their legality. Republican Councilor Ben Hunter, naturally, defended the fraud that has been perpetrated on the council and the public, proving once again that he could care less about transparency in the budget process. He similarly scoffed at questions about the administration's execution of the one-sided ROC lease. At a minimum, the Ballard administration deceived the council and the public by omission during last year's budget negotiations. It knew it was going to enter into these contracts and start spending large sums of money for this purpose but chose not to disclose this fact. County Auditor Billie Breaux told the Committee she would not authorize payment of any further sums this year for this purpose until it is clear to her that legal authority exists for their payment. The Committee also recommended over the objections of the Republican committee members that the council move forward with the drafting of a resolution that would call for the cancellation of the contracts, for which it finds funds have either not been appropriated or are not available for this purpose.

The Conscience Of The Indianapolis City-County Council: Christine Scales

The only real Republican on the Indianapolis City-County Council, Councilor Christine Scales, explains why it is foolish and irresponsible for city government to get into the business of funding early childhood education when our state laws vest the responsibility for educating our children in the state's Department of Education under the elected Superintendent of Education and local school districts run by elected boards of education. As Scales explains, it was Mayor Ballard who promised last year to dedicate the more than $7 million the City would save by eliminating the homestead property tax credit on hiring of more police officers. Now he wants to use that money for a brand new city program for pre-K learning and hike the local income tax another 10% to hire more police officers, a move which ironically takes millions of dollars in funding away from local school districts that they will have to look elsewhere to replace, most likely higher property taxes.

Every single council member jumped on the bandwagon to promote education and ignore their responsibility to fund basic city services by supporting the mayor's latest initiative to shift attention away from the fact that he has broken his promise to make public safety job one for his past 7 years in office, except for Scales and Ginny Cain (R). The other City-County Council members effectively violated the oath of office they all took when they were sworn into office by blowing your taxpayer dollars on something that is not the responsibility of City-County government, which can't even adequately take care of its statutory obligations.

Incidentally, the Republican council leader, Mike McQuillen, who can't get enough of shooting spitballs at Scales during council meetings, used introductions at the beginning of the council meeting last night to introduce a guy by the name of Tim Craft. Keep an eye on this guy. The Republicans met behind closed doors and drafted Craft, an associate of CB Richard Ellis, to run against Scales in next year's Republican primary as punishment because she votes like, well, like a real Republican would vote. Of course, Craft's Democratic business associate at CB Richard Ellis, Gordon Hendry, who served in the Peterson administration, and his wife, Jennifer Wagner, did all they could to stop Ballard's election in 2007. They couldn't say enough bad things about candidate Ballard in 2007.

Hendry's and Wagner's sentiments toward Ballard took a sudden 180-degree turn. Not too long into Ballard's first term, Wagner deleted all evidence of her "Accidental Mayor" blog from the Internet, which had excoriated Ballard's leadership on a daily basis. As the worm turned, no-bid city contracts started dropping into Hendry's lap. According to the IBJ, CB Richard Ellis' contract to advise the City on the poorly thought out boondoggle of a project on Mass Avenue to relocate IFD's headquarters, Station 7 and the Firefighters Credit Union could net his firm at least $1 million to perform work that could have and should have been done by more qualified employees at DMD. Ballard also gave a no-bid contract to Hendry to select the most suitable site for a new criminal justice center. In a thoroughly discredited study taxpayers paid dearly to get, Hendry inexplicably gave top billing to a site on the county line adjacent to the Indianapolis International Airport. Public outrage over the choice forced the Ballard administration to settle for a site closer to downtown at the site of the former GM Stamping Plant. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Republicans would team up with an associate of one of their Democratic allies to defeat one of Ballard's biggest and well-deserved critics on the council, Christine Scales.

As you can see, these folks are devoid of any political principles. The Rs and Ds behind their names are nothing more than a mirage to fool the uninformed voter into thinking they are offered choices between the two parties. Their only interest in politics is financial self-enrichment, and running government is their tool of choice to reach that ends. Christine Scales is a pariah in the local Republican Party because she stands on the core principles she was taught to believe the Republican Party represents. As many of us have discovered, true believers are persona non grata in the local Republican Party. Unless you are someone who is financially beholden to the downtown mafia and who can be as flexible as Gumby depending on the flavor of tea being served on any given day, your services are not wanted. These corrupt people who run both local political parties in Marion County will do whatever it takes to demoralize you and personally destroy you so that you leave politics for good.

People who believe in good government regardless of your political party should stand behind Christine Scales. She's one of the few voices left in City-County government that can be counted on to make informed choices based on the best information available that will serve the general public the best. These people are so threatened by what Scales represents that they banished her from the caucus and refused to let her sit on the same side of the aisle with them, behaving no better than petulant elementary school kids taunting a classmate with cries of "she has cooties." For that, we should all claim Scales as a friend and wear it like a badge of honor.