Tea Party Activists Taking Aim At Lugar

The Star's Mary Beth Schneider takes a look today at the growing discomfort of grassroots activists with 6-term Indiana Senator Richard Lugar. It's still a ways off before the 2012 election, but Lugar is making it clear he intends to seek an unprecedented term come hell or high water.

Four years ago, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar was considered so unbeatable that Democrats didn't bother to field a candidate against him.


Now, he's facing the likelihood of a challenge from within his own party.

Tea party activists and other social conservatives are actively searching for a candidate around whom they can unite to beat Lugar in the 2012 primary election.

How remarkable is that? Lugar hasn't had a primary opponent since "Happy Days" ruled the TV ratings and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" topped the charts. That was 1976 -- the year Lugar first went to the Senate.

But dissatisfaction -- and even downright anger -- has been building among some conservatives. They watched in dismay earlier this year when Lugar voted to confirm liberal Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. This month, they were at odds with Lugar when he defended congressional earmarks; backed a bill to help some illegal immigrants who came here as children earn a path to citizenship; and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to push for a new nuclear treaty with Russia.

"He's bombarded us" in the past couple of weeks with reasons to oust him, said Diane Hubbard, an Indianapolis Tea Party organizer who was among 65 people who protested Lugar's co-sponsorship of the immigration bill -- called the DREAM Act -- outside his Indianapolis office Saturday.

The same day, a smaller group of tea party activists and conservatives from across the state calling themselves Hoosiers for Conservative Senate, met in Fishers to begin organizing a challenge. They plan to meet again Jan. 22 in a much larger public forum to discuss how to coalesce around one alternative to Lugar.

Monica Boyer, the 35-year-old organizer of the Kosciusko Silent No More tea party group, was among those at Saturday's meeting. She wasn't even born when Lugar first went to the Senate. And he already was a veteran there when she began casting her ballots for him.

No more, she said.

"I'm a die-hard Republican," Boyer said, "and I will never pull the lever for Richard Lugar again."

Schneider goes on to mention two potential primary challengers to Lugar, including State Senator Mike Delph and Richard Mourdock, although neither has committed themselves to running just yet. Lugar will turn 80 in 2012 when he seeks another six years after serving thirty-six years already. Whether you like Lugar or not, hasn't he reached the age when one should be considering retirement? You've been rejected by your fellow Republican colleagues for a leadership position on several occasions. Your presidential campaign went nowhere. And it probably doesn't help your case when the New York Times takes to defending you in its news pages against attacks from within your own party. You're now coming across as a bit of an embittered guy who is more interested in being a thorn in the side of people within your own party than actually getting anything accomplished for the common good.

Lugar's situation reminds me of that of former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who was once the darling of the Right. In later years, the public's perception of him waned, particularly after a damning investigative series by the Pulliam-owned Arizona Republic raised questions about his ties to organized crime figures. When Ronald Reagan and the Republicans were sweeping to power in 1980, Goldwater struggled to win re-election in the closest race he ever faced against a little-known Democratic opponent in a Republican state. He spent his last six years in the Senate poking fingers in the eyes of President Reagan and the religious right before riding off into the sunset. Perhaps Lugar has reached a point where he should retire from the Senate gracefully rather than set off a fight within his own party. Indiana has elected plenty of Democrats to the Senate in the past. And it's doubtful Democrats will give him another pass as they've done in past elections.

Akron Beacon-Journal Series Puts Pieces To Durham Puzzle Together

The Akron Beacon-Journal has a great investigative journalism series it launched today looking into the demise of Fair Finance Company, the now-bankrupt company Indianapolis businessman Tim Durham plundered to bail out his losing business enterprises and to finance the lavish lifestyle he unabashedly flaunted over the past decade after acquiring the Ohio-based company. A lengthy introductory piece by Jim Mackinnon and Cheryl Powell, "Borrowed time finally runs out," retraces Durham's acquisition of the Akron-based company in great detail:

Fair Finance investors were stunned on Nov. 24 a year ago when the FBI raided the company's East Market Street headquarters and its corporate parent's offices in Indianapolis. The agents hauled away computers and boxes of files and Fair Finance, in business since the days of the Great Depression, never reopened.


For many, this was their introduction to Timothy S. Durham, a prominent Indianapolis buyout specialist who, along with business partner James F. Cochran, had purchased Fair Finance in 2002 from the Fair family.

Durham was well-known in Indiana as a successful, if highly leveraged, businessman and millionaire playboy. And he had a growing profile in Hollywood as the new chief executive of struggling entertainment company National Lampoon Inc., whose previous top executive — Dan Laikin, a friend and business partner — is now in federal prison after being convicted of manipulating the company's stock price.

Profiles of Durham in Indianapolis newspapers, magazines and public documents show he has been an aggressive businessman all his adult life.

Durham's real ticket to success, a fact not overlooked by these reporters, was marrying Joan SerVaas, daughter of wealthy industrialist and long-time Indianapolis City-County Council President Beurt SerVaas.

While practicing law, he was asked to review papers for Beurt SerVaas, an entrepreneur who made his money buying and selling businesses, most in the manufacturing industry, including rubber. Among his successful acquisitions were U.S. Rubber Reclaiming in Mississippi and an Indianapolis tire innertube plant once owned by Uniroyal.


SerVaas hired Durham in 1990 to run the Carpenter school bus company.

Durham married SerVaas' daughter, Joan, who was eight years older and had three children. Joan SerVaas Durham, a lawyer and businesswoman, runs Curtis Publishing, which owns the copyright to many Norman Rockwell paintings. News articles say Durham raised Joan's three children as his own; the couple also had a son together.

Over the next several years, Durham played a role in some of SerVaas' purchases and sales.

But in 1998, Durham parted ways with SerVaas and his daughter, and launched his own venture capital company with several friends.

Why Durham departed ways with SerVaas and his daughter is very instructive to what later became of Durham. One of the businesses SerVaas acquired while Durham worked with him was the Carpenter Bus Company of Mitchell, Indiana. SerVaas would later put Durham in charge of that business. When SerVaas decided to sell the bus company for a healthy profit to Spartan Motors, according to a source, he would discover that Durham had misappropriated the company's retirement funds for its employees. The source told me the mess Durham made of the retirement funds cost SerVaas many millions before he was able to successfully close on the sale of the business. Obviously feeling no shame, Durham moved on with his life and his way of doing business.

Fair Finance co-owner James Cochran, who worked with Durham in the school bus business, joined the venture. About eight years older than Durham, Cochran received his bachelor's degree in business administration from Southwest University and had a career in sales, credit analysis and leasing.


By setting up Obsidian Enterprises and raising $10 million, they purchased U.S. Rubber Reclaiming from SerVaas, then the small, publicly traded Danzer Co., a Maryland truck-body manufacturer.

Danzer's name was changed to Obsidian in 2001. Obsidian, revamped as a holding company for several of Durham's businesses, was now a publicly traded company that had to report earnings, or, in this case, mounting losses.

Meanwhile, Durham and Cochran were taking an interest in another friend, Dan Laikin, who had set off to take control of the company that owned the rights to National Lampoon, a struggling Los Angeles entertainment company.

They saw National Lampoon as undervalued, but their timing was not good. The prosperous decade that began in the early 1990s was about to end.

Durham and Cochran needed cash, and found it at a respected, family-owned company with what was arguably a license to print money: Fair Finance.


A business broker in Cleveland brought them all together, according to Don Fair, son of the Fair Finance founder and the owner at the time.

Don Fair needed to sell the business, he told the Beacon Journal earlier this year. He was in his 70s with no family member interested in succeeding him. Talks with Durham and Cochran started in 2000, Fair recalled, with an agreement reached in late 2001 and the deal closing in January 2002.

Fair Finance, which did business as Fair Financial, had a solid business model, Fair said. The company managed accounts receivable for other businesses and provided consumer loans. To provide the necessary capital, the company sold high-interest investment certificates to Ohio residents.

After the sale, Fair said he largely stayed away from the business, although he held a note for almost $4 million that would be paid about five years later.

At first, Fair said, it looked like Fair Finance was operating as it always had. But as the years passed and he looked again at the investment certificate circulars, he grew concerned.

The documents included disclosures about Fair Finance's loans, and suggested the company had changed from a consumer lender to a commercial lender. And where he had limited families to buying no more than $50,000 in certificates, the maximum had grown to $200,000.

This tale in many ways starts just 24 hours after Durham and Cochran finished their purchase of Fair Finance on Jan. 7, 2002. That's the date when their newly formed Ohio corporation, Fair Holdings, officially acquired Fair Finance.

Fair Holdings, in turn, was owned by Indiana-based DC Investments, another Durham and Cochran business.

The pending sale had been noted in Fair Finance's investment circular filed with the state in October 2001. A Dec. 21, 2001, circular noted the ownership changes, with Don Fair listed as ''chairman emeritus,'' Cochran as chairman and Durham as chief executive.

The circular also said ''new management contemplates there will be no significant change to the company's business plan or business procedures, however, there can be no guarantee that prior business procedures will continue to be followed by new management.''

The story goes on to detail how Fair Finance became a cash cow to bail out all of Obsdian's losing businesses and to serve as a source of funding for Durham's lavish lifestyle. In a separate story, an Ohio lawyer representing Durham assures us there was no fraud involved.

Dennis Concilla of the firm Carlile Patchen & Murphy in Columbus blamed the demise of Fair Finance on the economy and the federal government's intrusion into Fair's daily business.


''I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe there was fraud,'' Concilla said.

The bankruptcy trustee has not been able to prove wrongdoing, Concilla said.

''Yes, there were some personal loans that went to Durham, Cochran and others,'' Concilla said. ''The bulk of the money went to finance companies that made up the bulk of Obsidian Enterprises.''

When the federal government forced Fair Finance to close, the various Durham companies lost value and couldn't pay their obligations, Concilla said.

Durham has tried to cooperate with investigators since the Fair closing, as evidenced by his voluntary delivery of his motor vehicle and art collections for auction, Concilla said.

The civil litigation probably will take years to resolve, he said.

If Durham and his business partners committed no fraud, they sure have hired a bevy of very expensive lawyers to defend them against charges Durham seemed to confidently predict would not be brought against him in a recent interview with WTHR's Ann Marie Tiernon. Durham recently hired high profile Florida criminal defense attorney Roy Black to represent him according to the IBJ's Greg Andrews. Black first earned fame when he successfully defended William Kennedy Smith against charges he raped a woman after a night on the town drinking with his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, and his cousin, Patrick Kennedy. Black later married one of the jurors who acquitted his client. Previously, Andrews reports Barnes & Thornburg's Larry Mackey had been providing legal assistance to Durham. Mackey is the former federal prosecutor who successfully prosecuted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in the government's whitewashed account of how that terrorist bombing went down.

Andrews wondered in his story where Durham is getting the money to hire someone like Black since he claims he is broke. Andrews learns Durham is getting help from friends, including his former father-in-law, Beurt SerVaas. Andrew's writes, "One of the people apparently helping is retired Indianapolis businessman and former City-County Council President Beurt SerVaas, the 91-year-old father of Durham’s ex-wife, Joan SerVaas." “I think he asked Dad for a loan. Dad might have lent him money,” Joan SerVaas told IBJ. She added: “If he gets through all this, he might be able to pay it back.”

Yep, it looks like SerVaas is still acting as Durham's enabler. SerVaas is one interesting character. He worked as an OSS officer during World War II as a close associate of Reagan CIA Director William Casey and has boasted of his continued CIA ties long after his spy dies supposedly ended. He served on the executive board of the veterans of the OSS (predecessor to the CIA), which some claim ran the agency for many years behind the scenes. SerVaas once owned Indianapolis-based International Investigators, a private investigator firm that was staffed with former CIA and FBI agents. In Dick Cady's Deadline: Indianapolis, he details how the spy firm received bugging equipment from the Indianapolis Police Department that it used to illegally wiretap foes of former Marion Co. GOP Chairman Keith Bulen, including former Indiana Sen. Vance Hartke.

More Damning E-Mails Show Cozy Relationship Between Duke And IURC

The Star's John Russell shares more damning e-mail exchanges between a high-ranking Duke official and former IURC Chairman David Hardy. In this case, the e-mails are between the second-highest past Duke official, James Turner, and Hardy.

James L. Turner, the second-highest-paid executive at Duke Energy Corp., liked keeping in touch with Indiana regulators, even on a long holiday weekend when he was riding in a boat.


On July 2, Turner sent an e-mail to David Lott Hardy, then chairman of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, telling him he was heading out on a channel to Lake Michigan.

"Would the ethics police have a cow if you and the woman came up some weekend?" he wrote.

Hardy wrote back: "Probably -- we might 'be in the area' some afternoon, but I won't be doing this forever."

A few minutes later, he added that driving to the lake would be a fun outing in a high-performance BMW M5. "It would be a nice run in the M5 and a cheaper [Michigan] journey as usually we only go to [Michigan] so the woman can go to Nieman Marcus."

In dozens of e-mails, obtained by The Indianapolis Star under an open records request, the two men schmoozed and joked over all sorts of personal topics, sometimes trading messages eight or 10 times a day. At one point, Hardy offered advice on what kind of BMW Turner should buy. Another time, they talked about Butler University's basketball championship games. Several times, they had frank discussions on private personnel matters involving Duke officials and job candidates.

Taken together, the e-mails paint a picture of a cozy relationship that extended far beyond a professional association between a utility executive and a powerful state regulator.

They also show that the friendly relationship between Duke and Indiana regulators, which resulted in the firing of Duke's Indiana president, Mike Reed, in an ethics scandal earlier this month, extended all the way to Duke's headquarters in North Carolina.

Turner is one of Duke Energy's top executives, responsible for the company's regulated business segment, which is Duke's largest, and for legislative and regulatory strategy and rates. He oversees a vast portfolio, with responsibility for power delivery, gas distribution, customer service and several other functions.

Last year, Turner earned a salary of $650,000, plus stock awards, cash incentives and other compensation worth a total of $4.35 million. That made him second in total compensation only to Chairman and CEO James Rogers, whose package was valued at $6.93 million, according to the company's proxy filing.


That made him far better paid than Hardy, the man he spent hours cajoling by e-mail. Hardy made $109,000 as chairman of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. He was fired in October by Gov. Mitch Daniels in what has become a major ethics scandal for the state, after the IURC's general counsel, Scott Storms, accepted a job to work for Duke as a regulatory lawyer . . .

The FBI is investigating, according to the IURC, and Daniels has ordered an investigation into all Duke cases that might have been tainted by Storms' activities . . .


Turner, once Indiana's utility consumer counselor, did not return a call made to his cell phone Friday to discuss his e-mails or his close relationship with Hardy.

As Russell's story mentions, Turner once worked as the utility consumer counselor for the IURC back during the Bayh years, which is why I think this investigation will go nowhere as long as U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett has any say. Hogsett is close to top officials at Duke and to Kip Tew, a former Duke official and lobbyist for the utility. Tew still lobbies for Duke as an attorney at Krieg DeVault. Tew headed up Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Indiana and played a key role in Hogsett's appointment as U.S. Attorney. Practically everyone associated with Evan Bayh, including Bayh himself, have always been in bed with top Duke officials, dating back to the days when the company was known as Public Service of Indiana (PSI).

Make no mistake about it. The people at the IURC who should to be representing the public's interest were/are bought and paid for by the regulated. This has always been the case. The only people who ever get appointed to any position of significance with the IURC are tight with officials of one of the utilities. That is the way it has been under Republican and Democratic governors alike. Former Lt. Gov. John Mutz served as president of PSI Indiana after leaving public office. Last week, Russell had a story discussing applicants for the open position created by the firing of IURC Chairman David Hardy. Russell's story noted how three of the four current commissioners have ties to utilities:

James D. Atterholt, a commissioner since 2009 who succeeded Hardy as chairman in September, formerly worked as a lobbyist for AT&T Indiana, which is regulated by the IURC. He has a long political resume, having served as Indiana state insurance commissioner; a special assistant for U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.; and an Indiana state representative seated on the committee overseeing utility legislation.


Larry S. Landis, a commissioner since 2002, once worked at the former marketing firm of Handley & Miller, whose clients included AT&T Indiana. He also had worked as a campaign aide in Richard Lugar's first Indianapolis mayoral race, and later as a vice president for advertising at American Fletcher Corp., now part of JP Morgan Chase.

Carolene R. Mays, a commissioner since February, comes from a family with utility ties. Her father, the late Theodore Clarence Mays Jr., served on the board of directors at Vectren, an Evansville gas and electric utility. Her uncle is a principal in BMHH Energy Services, which was awarded a recent bid by the Indianapolis International Airport board to build and run an airport electric plant. BMHH includes Citizens Energy Services, a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based Citizens Gas & Coke, a utility regulated by the IURC. Mays was previously the publisher and president of the Indianapolis Recorder newspaper and the Indiana Minority Business magazine.

David E. Ziegner, a commissioner since 1990, has made the IURC a career. He previously served as a staff attorney for the Legislative Services Agency and was general counsel for the IURC.

Russell's story notes Hardy, a Fort Wayne attorney, worked for Duke while it was known as PSI before he was appointed by Gov. Daniels to serve as the IURC's chairman. Several of the 12 applicants for the open position created by Hardy's departure have ties to the utilities as well. Even Gov. Daniels once served on the board of Indianapolis Power & Light, a position that made him millions when the company sold out to an out-of state utility, AES. Whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge, it simply does not matter. Only the people who advocate for utilities have a voice at the IURC.

IMPD Brass Cleared In Scuffle With State Trooper

An investigation into the confrontation between a state trooper and IMPD Deputy Chief William Benjamin in Benjamin's office at IMPD headquarters has cleared Benjamin and Maj. Chris Boomershine of any wrongdoing. State Police, however, have suspended Master Trooper Wayne Billings for two days as a result of his action last August according to WRTV's Jack Rinehart. Billings went to Benjamin's office and accused him of leaving messages with him about a woman with whom he was personally involved. Benjamin had no idea who Billings was when he entered his office and confronted him with the allegations. Dressed in plain clothes, Billings told Benjamin he was a state trooper but did not produce his badge. When Boomsershine attempted to detain him for further questioning, he revealed he was armed. Billings was handcuffed and detained until state police investigators arrived. After he was detained, IMPD officers found his badge, as well as a tape recorder he had on his person recording the confrontation.

Fox 59 News' Russ McQuaid played the recording of the confrontation recorded by Billings during this evening's news broadcast, which confirmed the substance of earlier accounts that suggested Billings and not Benjamin or other IMPD officers had acted inappropriately. IMPD officers are upset State Police sat on the findings of their investigation for weeks and waited until the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to report on its findings in hopes the story would be lost among other holiday news coverage. Sources say a woman with whom Billings was having an affair used an I-Phone application to disguise her voice when she left messages with Billings instructing him to go see Benjamin. IMPD officers are extremely upset that Public Safety Director Frank Straub, who has been highly critical of the behavior of some on the police force, refuses to clear IMPD officers of wrongdoing in the matter despite the State Police findings.

FBI Asking Questions About IURC Ethics Flap

It looks like somebody at the FBI is asking questions of folks with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the controversial hiring of the IURC's general counsel, Scott Storms, by Duke Energy, which resulted in quite an ethics blow up for the Daniels administration and led to the firing of IURC Chairman David Hardy by Gov. Daniels. Ed Feigenbaum reports in his latest edition of Indiana Legislative Insight:

[T]he FBI began interviewing a wide number of folks, principally at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, to gain some perspective on the recent ethics maelstrom that resulted in the termination of David Lott Hardy as IURC chair, and of former IURC administrator (and Indiana Department of Transportation Commissioner) Michael Reed as president of Duke Energy's Indiana subsidiary – along with former IURC general counsel Scott Storms from a Duke Indiana legal job. And this is not the first time this year, we hear that utility-related folks have been queried on matters related to politics and government.

Our understanding is that the Feds are clearly taking a good, close look at the matter . . . asking different questions of the various people contacted, and, from what we've been able to piece together, apparently heavily focused on finding evidence of any quid pro quo.

Feigenbaum also reports there is a previously unreported ethics flap involving Hardy that would have resulted in the immediate firing of almost any other state employee. "Tales are also emerging of some other interesting issues and incidents from the Hardy days, including a reprimand in his file over a compound unrelated ethics issue involving family, state resources, and Commission clout that some suggest would have meant the immediate ouster of most other state officials," he writes. Unless this investigation is being handled by the Public Integrity Section in Washington, expect it to go nowhere just like multiple honest services fraud cases that have been ignored in the past by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Indianapolis because it is run by political hacks. U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett won't touch Duke Energy. You can bet on it.

Marion County Traffic Court Judge Suspended For 30 Days Without Pay

In a rare move, the Indiana Supreme Court has entered an order suspending Marion County Superior Court Judge William Young from his position as traffic court judge for a period of thirty days without pay after he reached the agreement in lieu of a full hearing of the disciplinary case against him for his conduct in running the court. You can read the order here. The Indiana Law Blog has more here.

More Bad News For Daniels Administration On IURC Ethics Flap

A new report by the Star's John Russell suggests Daniels' own office knew more about the controversial hiring of former IURC general counsel Scott Storms by Duke Energy a bit sooner than had earlier been claimed. Russell writes:

More than a month before a state ethics panel gave a green light to the top lawyer at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to take a job with a major utility, Gov. Mitch Daniels' chief of staff seemed to be raising doubts that such a move would clear ethical hurdles, according to e-mails obtained by The Indianapolis Star.


By early September, those hurdles disappeared.

In a series of back-and-forth messages in August, two key players involved in the revolving-door case discussed the doubts and how to handle them.

The messages concerned whether Scott Storms, then general counsel and administrative law judge at the regulatory commission, would face ethical issues by seeking a job at Duke Energy Corp., over whose cases he had presided for several years. Storms had played a key role in administering one of Duke's biggest ongoing cases before the commission, construction of the utility's massive $2.9 billion coal-gasification plant in Edwardsport.

Mike Reed, then president of Duke Energy's Indiana division, wrote an e-mail on Aug. 1 to David Lott Hardy, the chairman of the regulatory commission. Reed said he had recently played golf with "EAG," presumed to be Daniels' chief of staff, Earl A. Goode, and the subject of Storms had come up.

"EAG told me during golf he will be surprised if IG [inspector general] OK's SS to join us. Reason: Eport," Reed wrote to Hardy, using shorthand to refer to the Edwardsport plant.

A few minutes later, Hardy shot back his answer: "What a crock."

But Reed had an idea. "Now we know the challenge," he wrote to Hardy. "Let's not give up. Focus may need to be how to convince that we can wall him off."

He told Hardy that the commission's ethics officer, Loraine L. Seyfried, "must clearly spell out how (Storms) would be walled off from Edwardsport, and therefore meet the test."

A few weeks later, on Aug. 25, Seyfried sent a three-page memo to Storms, stating her opinion that his prospective employment with Duke would not violate the state ethics code, as he had not negotiated or administered a contract with Duke while with the IURC. She stated that Storms had screened himself from pending Duke cases after submitting his resume to Duke, and the cases were reassigned to other administrative law judges.

So who told Seyfried what she had to write to make Storm's hiring look kosher? And why is the Governor's chief of staff playing golf with Duke's president and discussing the hiring of IURCs top attorney by the utility? It all sounds a little too cozy to me.

Zoeller No Friend Of The Taxpayers

Fellow blogger and attorney Paul Ogden has filed a False Claims Act on behalf of the taxpayers of Indiana against 78 county prosecutors who are deliberately misapplying Indiana's civil forfeiture statute by retaining 100% of the assets forfeited instead of turning over funds to the Common School Fund after deducting law enforcement costs associated with a civil forfeiture action. Many Indiana prosecutors simply lump the entire cost of law enforcement for police into the cost of pursuing the forfeiture action, thereby assuring no funds are ever turned over to the Common School Fund as contemplated by the state statute. A few honest prosecutors, such as Wayne County's, limit the cost to the actual cost incurred in pursuing the civil forfeiture action as the statute provides and sends the rest to the schools. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller could have intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the taxpayers. Instead, he has chosen to defend the prosecutors in this unseemly practice. The Star's Heather Gillers reports:

The suit, which was filed by an Indianapolis law firm in Marion Superior Court, seeks repayment of two years' worth of money the firm thinks is owed to Indiana's Common School Fund, and to clarify how much of that money prosecutors are allowed to keep.


Zoeller, in a news release issued Tuesday, characterized the issue as a public policy dispute that could distract prosecutors from their public safety duties.

"The proper place to argue that Indiana's civil forfeiture law is too lax or too vague is the Indiana General Assembly," Zoeller said. "I would support legislative efforts to clarify the civil forfeiture law to provide more transparency and certainty, but that debate ought to happen in the legislature, not in civil court."

Paul Ogden, the attorney bringing the case, accused Zoeller of trying to curry favor with prosecutors and said he would move to strike any court appearance by the attorney general. Ogden argues that prosecutors are breaking a fairly clear law -- not misunderstanding a vague one.

How the attorney general would deal with the suit has fed speculation since it was unsealed Friday. The case arguably falls under two separate state statutes: One allows Zoeller to intervene on behalf of the defendant, the other on behalf of the plaintiff.

State statute instructs that when a prosecutor is sued in connection with his or her job, the attorney general must either make arrangements for private defense counsel or represent the prosecutor himself.

But the False Claims Act, which Ogden's suit cites, allows a citizen plaintiff to bring a case he or she thinks could benefit other citizens, in hopes that the attorney general will take it over. Zoeller rejected that option Tuesday.

"The plaintiff's framing the lawsuit in a way to claim to be representing the state will not keep me from my duty to defend prosecutors in court against civil lawsuits," he said. He said "a number" of prosecutors have already asked him to represent them.

Sorry, Mr. Zoeller, but the statute isn't vague. What Zoeller really should have said is that he is more interested in helping his attorney friends like Greg Garrison who are collecting a generous contingency fee from representing county prosecutors in these civil forfeiture actions. Garrison, who spends at least half of his time working on his radio talk show at WIBC-FM, represents several counties, including Marion County, in civil forfeiture actions on a contingency fee basis. As the Star has reported, Garrison has pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars for work on some cases that really required little work at all on his part. The real leg work is done by the law enforcement officials in the course of their duties. Some have criticized prosecutors for using outside counsel rather than using in-house counsel, or at least pay attorneys on an hourly rate for their work as opposed to a contingency fee. Zoeller's actions won't help taxpayers, but it should be good for plenty of free air time on Garrison's radio talk show host to pretend to be an advocate for the taxpayers.

Where Are The Jobs?

WTHR's Bob Segal continues a story he has been tracking for the past year. Where are the jobs? He's talking about the more than 100,000 jobs the Indiana Economic Development Corporation claims have been created through the economic development incentive efforts of the agency. Segal has learned it is like pulling teeth getting Mitch Roob's agency to produce documents to back up the job claims. Waiting as long as six months to get some information, Segal finds information such as the positions created and the pay for those jobs have been redacted from the documents. His year-long story has led him to conclude as many as 40% of the jobs claimed to have been created never materialized. Looks like good campaign fodder for Mitch Daniels' opponents should he decide to run for president in 2012. The failed privatization effort at FSSA also provides good campaign fodder for opponents. Remember who was responsible for that deal? Yep, Mitch Roob.