Charlie White's Residency Issue Disconcerting

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please," Mark Twain once quipped. That thought came to mind when I read about GOP Secretary of State candidate Charlie White's residency issue in the Star this morning. Carrie Ritchie writes:

Republican Secretary of State nominee Charlie White resigned Tuesday as a member of the Fishers Town Council, saying he inadvertently had moved out of his council district.


White's resignation came the day before a Fishers Democrat had scheduled a news conference to call attention to White's residency.

White, who also is the Hamilton County Republican chairman, said Tuesday in a news release issued by the town that he simply didn't realize his new condo in Fall Creek Township was well outside the borders of his district, which is primarily in Delaware Township.

Indiana law requires council members to forfeit their seats if they move out of their district.

"Because of my statewide campaign for secretary of state and recent marriage, I failed to realize that my new residence was outside my Council district," White said. "Once notified of the situation, I took immediate action to correct the issue."

White didn't return a call Tuesday.

First of all, White is an attorney. Secondly, White is a Republican county chairman, which means it is part of his job to know where political boundaries start and end. Of course, that didn't stop Marion Co. GOP Chairman Tom John, who is also an attorney and purported elections law expert, from filing as a candidate for precinct committeeperson in the 2008 primary election in a precinct in which he didn't live, losing the race and then blaming someone else who filed his paperwork for him. Thirdly, as a candidate for Secretary of State, part of his job if elected is to serve as the state's top elections administrator.

The problem for White comes after he divorced his first wife in 2007. He carefully chose an apartment that was still located in his council district in which to move after he divorced. Everything is still kosher. Things start to get a little shaky, however, after White decides to purchase a condo in Fall Creek Township outside his council district in February of this year.

But on Feb. 23, just days before the deed to the Fall Creek Township condo was finalized, he changed the address on his voter registration back to the Broad Leaf Lane home, which his ex-wife still owns, according to Hamilton County records.


He listed the condo as his home address in June when he formally accepted the Republican Party's nomination for secretary of state but listed his ex-wife's home as his mailing address.

Town Council President Scott Faultless said he wasn't aware White had moved until Tuesday, but he said he believed White's explanation.

"Charlie's got a lot on his plate. It's part of life," Faultless said. "He wanted to do the right thing."

White apparently expects us to believe he purchased a new condo where he intended to live with his new wife but moved back in with his ex-wife as indicated by the address he listed when he accepted the nomination for Secretary of State. There seems to be a pattern of deception emerging here of an officer of the court who seeks the job of being the state's top elections administrator. I may be a Republican, but I'm not a fool. When White announced he was running for Secretary of State, I started hearing things about him that were strikingly similar to our own Marion County GOP chairman, which isn't a good thing. It was very disappointing when nobody emerged to challenge White at the state convention, which is one of the reasons I chose not to even bother trying to become a state convention delegate this year. Now we're stuck with the guy since it's too late to replace him on the ballot. How disappointing.

While we're on the subject of deception, how about that other White, our Marion County Clerk Beth White. After months of political grandstanding over how Republicans were trying to deprive voters of their constitutional right to vote by not approving more than one voting site for early voting (her office), White pulled a rabbit out of a hat and announced she was opening two satellite voting locations at the location of two Marion Co. traffic courts where the clerk's office provides staffing to run the courts. According to the clerk's office, the voting sites at the traffic courts will cost the county much less than the estimated $150,000 her office had budgeted for separate satellite voting facilities. "It's only been a week since this board would not agree to satellite voting," White said, "and upon reflection, I believe it is my responsibility to provide as many options as we possibly can for the people of this community."

Who does White thinks she is fooling? She had this planned all along if she didn't get her way on separate satellite voting facilities. I will never forget how she cheated the voters of my council district out of a representative from our district on the council. She knew Patrice Abduallah did not live in his council district but allowed him to continue serving on the council and even file for re-election. She claimed it wasn't her duty as an officer of the court and the county's chief elections administrator to act on Abduallah's deceit in holding office as a councilor in my district for nearly four years while he lived outside the district. Republicans had no candidate on the ballot and, in violation of state law, Democrats were allowed to replace Abduallah on the ballot with Andre Carson after Abduallah resigned his seat--after the deadlines had long since past for replacing candidates on the ballot. In both Whites' cases, deceit was the name of the game.

UPDATE: Charlie White took another stab at getting his story straight in a follow up online story in the Star today. He's not helping his case much to be sure:

Though White, who represented District 2 in Fishers until his resignation Tuesday, admitted he used his ex-wife’s address to vote in the May primary, he called the allegations of wrongdoing against him unwarranted.


“There’s no conspiracy here,” White said during a phone interview today. “I didn’t sit around and think about this.”

White blamed his busy schedule for his failure to notice that his new condo is outside his council district and to change his voter registration to reflect his new address . . .

White said he moved into the condo, located on Overview Drive, in March, but before that, he briefly lived with his ex-wife.


White said he began living with his ex-wife in June 2009 and began splitting time between her home and his new condo in November 2009. He said closing took longer than he expected and he decided to change his voter registration back to his ex-wife’s address because he was still registered at his old apartment address.

When asked why he didn’t change his address again after he moved to his new home, White said, “I simply was so busy I just didn’t think about it.”

White said he will return money to the town if necessary.

Please, how many men move in with their ex-wife at the same time they are planning to marry their next wife?

Greg Purvis, a former Democratic candidate for the Fishers Town Council is asking White to return the salary he earned as a Town Council member during the time he was not living in his district, and he wants a special prosecutor appointed to determine whether White broke any criminal laws. It's too bad the Democrats weren't as interested in investigating the case of Patrice Abduallah and Marion County Clerk Beth White's complicity in his illegal service on the Indianapolis City-County Council for nearly four years.

Like Father, Like Son

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. is saying he will not resign from Congress after the latest damaging disclosures from the Chicago Sun-Times. Rep. Jackson said he is "deeply sorry" for disappointing "some supporters" by having an inappopriate relationship with a "female acquaintance." The news of Jackson's infidelity comes as the Sun-Times confirms businessman Raghuveer Nayak told federal investigators Jackson gave the green light to Nayak and a group of Indian-American supporters to help raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in consideration for his appointment to the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama after he won the presidential election.

Jackson recently said on a WLS radio talk show host that federal prosecutors should "bring it on" if they think they have evidence he attempted to buy the Senate seat with campaign contributions. The Sun-Times claims Nayak told federal investigators he had been instructed by Jackson to raise $6 million in contributions for Blajojevich. Nayak also told federal investigators Jackson had him to fly a Washington, D.C. restaurant hostess named Giovana Huidobro to Chicago to visit him. Ethics experts say the purchase of the flights for Jackson's mistress may have violated House rules barring gifts in excess of $50.

Jackson's statement that his relationship with his "female acquaintance" is disappointing to only "some supporters" is interesting. Does he mean to imply most of his supporters have no problem with extra-marital affairs? “The reference to a social acquaintance is a private and personal matter between me and my wife that was handled some time ago,” Jackson said in his statement to the Sun-Times report. “I ask that you respect our privacy." Both Jackson and his wife, Sandi, a Chicago alderman, have expressed an interest in running for Chicago mayor after Richard Daley announced he will not seek re-election.

Jackson's father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, counseled President Bill Clinton during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was later revealed Rev. Jackson had a mistress with whom he had an illegitimate child. Jackson used funds from his not-for-profit to pay thousands of dollars to the mother of his illegitimate child to help her relocate to Los Angeles.

DCCC Pulling Support For Baron Hill

Things aren't looking good for U.S. Rep. Baron Hill in Indiana's 9th District. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pulled a planned independent expenditure ad buy for Hill during the month of October in the weeks leading to the November election. A Hotline report from Reid Wilson on the DCCC's shift in funding of vulnerable incumbent members gives the run down on this development:

The DCCC's separate political wings are engaged in their first argument over one of their vulnerable candidates as the independent expenditure division begins pulling back funding while the coordinated division is pouring more money into the race.


Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN) is the source of the dispute. The committee's independent expenditure wing has cancelled their advertising buys in the state's 9th District for 2 weeks in mid-October. But the coordinated side, which is not allowed to discuss strategy with their independent expenditure counterpart, believes Hill is still deserving of spending.

The IE's decision is a significant blow to Hill's chances. While the independent expenditure side can spend unlimited amounts, the coordinated side of the DCCC can spend about $87K, according to FEC rules.

The DCCC is making other alterations in key districts, in some cases acknowledging an incumbent's weakness, and therefore saving money, while in other cases operating from a position of strength.

This is a sure sign of just how bad things look for Democratic congressional incumbents this year. It's clear supporting Hill is not part of the party's firewall to maintain a small but controlling majority in the House of Representatives. According to Hotline, a Columbus, Ohio race where Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy is in a tough re-election match-up is the beneficiary of the decision to pull independent expenditure support for Hill. First-time candidate Todd Young is Hill's Republican opponent. Hill had earlier been favored to win re-election after Young upset former U.S. Rep. Mike Sodrel in the Republican primary.

Star Editors Have Another Good Idea

This is a new record. The Star's editors have two good ideas in a row. The latest involves a discussion of the indictment of former City-County Councilor and high ranking IMPD officer Lincoln Plowman on bribery and extortion charges and the need to end the practice of allowing local government employees from serving on councils. The Star editorial reads:

Members of the City-County Council are justifiably concerned that the federal indictment of their former colleague, Lincoln Plowman, might reflect on all of them in the public eye.


They need to remember that issues of trust have arisen over council behavior that is perfectly legal and in fact follows accepted policy.

If the allegations of extortion and bribery against him are substantiated, Plowman has to be seen as a textbook example of abuse of power on the part of a public official.

Even before the investigation that led to his resignation from the council, however, Plowman had an accountability problem, one that he shared with several of his peers.

He was an officer, indeed a commander, in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. He was one of four municipal employees serving on the council and thus helping to decide their own pay, benefits and other job provisions.

Here and elsewhere in the state, such double-dipping has led to a number of unseemly situations. Perhaps the highlight, at least until now, was the 2007 controversy involving then-City County Council President Monroe Gray, who voted against a council ethics investigation into a business he owned and an $83,000-a-year fire department job whose duties never were specified.

State legislation was proposed in 2009 to prohibit police, firefighters and other municipal employees from sitting on local boards and councils that vote on their pay. It failed to advance, though it enjoyed the backing of Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Kernan-Shepard commission on government efficiency. Perhaps the latest scandal will revive it.

Defenders of the current system contend that municipal employees are as entitled to be citizen-legislators as are members of the Indiana General Assembly, many of whom have their livelihoods affected by bills relating to teachers, lawyers, university employees and such. Not that state legislators don't have their own ethical issues to address; but in terms of compensation in their "day jobs," they do not have a direct vote. The distinction is sufficient to validate the state's taking action against self-service at the local level.

It also has been argued by public employees that they enrich local boards and councils with their expertise when they add elective office to their repertoire. Too often, we have seen vested interest and conflict of interest outweigh any such benefit. It should not take an extreme case to sound the alarm to that subtle danger.

The legislature should indeed take this issue up again. Many government employees in this state used to be barred from simultaneously holding a public office. Namely, because the Indiana Constitution contained a prohibition on the practice. In its infinite wisdom, the state legislature passed laws allowing government employees to run for and hold public office with a few exceptions. Increasingly, city and county councils are becoming filled with government employees, who obviously have inherent conflicts of interest and the ability to engage in self-serving conduct.
 
I would, however, take strong exception to a column Star editor Dennis Ryerson wrote in Sunday's edition discussing the 50-year parking meter lease agreement the Ballard administration has inked with the politically-connected ACS. In a less than subtle swipe at this blog and other local blogs he describes as "noise" that have been critical of the deal, Ryerson wrote:
 

For starters, there are no dishonorable entities here. The administration of Mayor Greg Ballard is hardly a cesspool of political patronage. Michael Huber, who makes the city's case on this page today, is a talented administrator.

Perhaps Ryerson doesn't find something fishy about a one-sided, 50-year lease agreement being signed with a firm that just happens to be represented by the law firm that employs our Indianapolis City-County Council President and provides legal advice to the Mayor's office at the same time it is lobbying for its client to be awarded the lease, but I have to believe it would raise suspicions in the minds of any good reporter anywhere else in this country. And even if he thinks the agreement is above board, why wouldn't his newspaper question Ryan Vaughn's participation in a deal that so clearly benefits a client of his law firm, a deal the IBJ suggests could generate as much as $1.2 billion in revenues for ACS? How can he talk out of one side of his mouth about local government employees having a conflict of interest and the past transgressions of former CCC President Monroe Gray but turn a blind eye to Vaughn's glaring conflict of interest?

Further, it is laughable Ryerson would defend Ballard against charges of running a cesspool of political patronage in the same column he discusses Lincoln Plowman. After all, it was Mayor Ballard who promoted Plowman to one of the highest ranking positions within IMPD during an earlier reorganization despite there being far more qualified applicants in the pool from whom to pick. Does he expect us to believe Plowman was put in charge of the Investigations Division because he was imminently qualified? Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was the Republican Caucus Leader of the Republican-led City-County Council. A good reporter would at least question the move.

UPDATE: Some people have questioned whether Mike Huber once worked for ACS. My research reveals Huber once worked for Competitive Government Strategies, LLC in Washington from 2001-02. That company was founded and run by Skip Stitt, a top aide to former Mayor Steve Goldsmith. Like Goldsmith, Roob and CIB President Ann Lathrop, Stitt wound up working for ACS, where he is Chief Administrative Officer in its Washington office. I have found nothing that indicates he once worked for ACS. He has omitted it from his biographical information if he has done work in the past for the company. It is unclear who his clients were when he was working as an independent consultant in between leaving Competitive Government Strategies and working in the Daniels administration.

Star Editors Have A Good Idea

It's not very often that I read an editorial by the Star's editors and say, "Hey, that's a good idea." Today is one of those rare occasions. A good thought from the editors came in discussing plans by the City to pave over that gravel lot next to the City-County Building that formerly was home to Market Square Arena before the Simons ordered the City to build Conseco Fieldhouse and tear down the building where Elvis Presley performed his last concert or else they would move their Pacers somewhere else. The Star's editors think the City might make a wiser choice in converting the parking lot into a park akin to Chicago's Millennium Park:

What if, for instance, the Market Square site became an Indianapolis-sized version of Chicago's Millennium Park? What if it were to include gardens, fountains, public art and an amphitheater where the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and other premiere musical acts could perform in warm weather months?


Too ambitious? Perhaps. But the real estate and retail markets may well be saturated in the area around the site for years to come. And it's too prime of a location to allow it to languish as a parking lot for another decade.

In thinking through the future of the Market Square space, city planners should add another underused and neglected public space -- Pan Am Plaza -- to the discussion. Given that site's proximity to the Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium, there may well be a market for a high-end development there.

I'm a big believer in having green spaces mixed in with high density development in a city's center of activities. I thought it was reprehensible when the City destroyed the green space across the street from the State House so the Simons could build an average-looking skyscraper that shadowed the State House to house their corporate offices as a show of their political clout in this city and state. Green spaces are ideal as a buffer zone for important government buildings, particularly in the age of terrorism. This is an idea to which the City should give serious consideration. Somehow or another it's an idea I doubt will be met with much fanfare by the downtown elites because it entirely involves the public good, a foreign concept to those people.

Glenn Beck Rally In Angola Draws A Small Crowd

This photo ran with a story in today's Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette about an event at Trine University in Angola, Indiana yesterday featuring Fox News TV show host Glenn Beck showing many empty seats in the gymnasium where the event was held. Jeff Wiehe writes:

With the gymnasium a little more than half-full of supporters, many of them donning buttons calling him a “True American” or some other phrase expressing their admiration, Glenn Beck began preaching Saturday.


He promised miracles. He talked of a God who would judge, and he put George Washington next to Jesus Christ as one of the greatest men to ever live. He assured the crowd that they see the light, while the media and many of the politicians – the “establishment” – are lost in darkness.

He warned that tough times are ahead, that there are consequences for the things done under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. “At some point,” the television and radio talk show host said, “you have to pay for those sins.”

Beck fervently mixed religion and politics the entire afternoon, regaling a crowd of a few thousand at Trine University with romantic images of the nation’s first president and calling for them to remain faithful to God.

Beck was the featured speaker of a rally organized by We the People Michiana 9/12 Project of Elkhart. He spoke for about an hour and 15 minutes, declaring that a new chapter of American history is being written now.

In sharp contrast, another Beck rally held in Hoffman Estates yesterday in Barack Obama's home state drew 5,000. Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady joined Beck at the rally but U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, the GOP Senate candidate, stayed away from the Right Nation 2010 event. He faces a close contest with State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a close friend of Obama. Recent polls have shown Brady leading Gov. Pat Quinn,  who succeeded to the office after the impeachment and Senate trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich resulted in his removal from office. Local activist Paul Wheeler is featured in a photo which ran in today's Chicago Sun-Times dressed in his familiar American Revolutionary War-era costume he often wore at Tea Party events in Indianapolis during the 2007 municipal election.

Pence A Favorite Of Social Conservatives

While the news media in Indiana is yucking it up about a possible run for president by Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana's U.S. Rep. Mike Pence is demonstrating unusual strength for someone who is supposedly not running for president. Pence topped a straw poll of Republican presidential contenders in 2012 at the Family Research Council's Voters Summit in Washington today. Pence placed first with 24% of the vote, followed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who placed second with 22%. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney came in third with 13%, while Newt Gingrich picked up the support of 10% to take fourth place. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin surprisingly drew just 7% of the vote. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour captured only 1% of the vote. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Daniels did not participate in the straw vote. Pence reportedly drew the most favorable reaction from the crowd when he spoke Friday night among other candidates, including Huckabee, Gingrich and Romney.

McQuillen Uses His Sgt. Schultz Defense On Property Tax Revenue Diversion To CIB.

As the blogs first reported, Mayor Greg Ballard's administration rammed a secretive plan through the Metropolitan Development Commission, which was drafted by attorneys at Barnes & Thornburg, without any public discussion to begin funding the CIB with $8 million annually in property tax revenues derived from a downtown tax increment financing (TIF) district. City Controller David Reynolds tells WRTV's Kara Kenney half of the that amount of money, or $4 million, has already been transferred to the CIB, which the CIB's Ann Lathrop claims is being used as a dedicated revenue stream for the ICVA. There's only one problem with that story. The ICVA has been funded since its inception with revenunes the CIB  derived from from other local taxes, such as the innkeepers' tax, food and beverage tax and car rental tax. It had a dedicated revenue stream; no revenue stream existed for funding the $33.5 million Pacers subsidy. When Kenney contacted City-County Councilor Mike McQuillen to discuss the transfer, he put on his best Sgt. Schultz "I know nothing" defense. "City-County Councilor Mike McQuillen, who serves on the CIB, said he did not know much about the transfer when contacted Friday afternoon, but said he would look into the situation," she reported

Ordinarily, the City-County Council President sits on the CIB as the council's representative, but because Ryan Vaughn's law firm represents the Simons, he appointed McQuillen to serve as his stooge on the CIB. McQuillen is totally beholden to Vaughn and his law firm, which handles all of his campaign finance reporting for him. McQuillen, who makes a living trading in political campaign buttons, meets regularly with Vaughn to receive his marching orders on CIB matters and council-related issues. McQuillen chairs the Municipal Corporations Committee. It stretches credulity for McQuillen to think he can profess ignorance of the plan to shift these property tax revenues to the CIB. The property tax revenues were shifted to the CIB so it could afford the $33.5 million it agreed to give to the Simon-owned Pacers as an additional public subsidy. When the council approved new taxes and borrowing last year to fund a bailout of the CIB, Councilor Robert Lutz, who chairs the Rules & Public Policy Committee, insisted none of the new revenues would be used to pay for additional subsidies to the Pacers. As it turns out, he was correct. The Ballard administration with the full knowledge of Vaughn and McQuillen concocted the property tax revenue transfer scheme to pay for the Pacer subsidy despite Mayor Ballard's insistence no property tax revenues were being used.

This latest backroom deal authored by Barnes & Thornburg's Bob Grand and Joe Loftus to aid another one of the firm's clients with the assistance of Vaughn and McQuillen has presented a golden issue for Democratic mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy. "How is it that we can prioritize using property tax dollars at an unprecedented level to fund the CIB and not step up and do something about libraries closing on certain days?" Kennedy asked Kenney. She "wants the city to open its books and further explain why it is using the funds for tourism promotion instead of parks, buses and other basic services." This is an issue that will resonate with the voters. It is obvious Mayor Ballard is allowing valuable city resources to be used solely to benefit Barnes & Thornburg and their clients. What is particularly disgusting about this transaction is how Vaughn's law firm was actually paid with our taxpayer dollars to draft an interlocal agreement that so obviously is intended to help one of its own clients. This is a new low in self-dealing, not that there hasn't already been plenty of other cases heretofore during this administration.

Bank Forecloses On Durham's Geist Mansion

The IBJ's Greg Andrews reports on a foreclosure action brought against alleged Ponzi scheme operator Tim Durham on his palatial Geist estate.

JPMorgan Chase has slapped embattled financier Tim Durham with a mortgage-foreclosure suit, and is asking a court to order his Geist mansion sold through a sheriff’s sale.


The New York-based banking company said Durham stopped making payments this spring on a $3.5 million mortgage he took out in 2007. Because the mortgage runs 30 years, Durham had barely made a dent in the principal, despite required monthly payments of $18,329.

The suit, filed in Hamilton County last month, represents another setback for the Ohio bankruptcy trustee trying to scrape together assets for investors in Akron-based Fair Finance Co., the Durham-owned company that collapsed last year, in large part because of massive loans to Durham and other insiders.

Andrews reports Shelby County Bank also had a $1.9 million lien on the property as collateral for a line of credit it extended to Durham. Essentially, Durham has no equity in the home because the outstanding mortgages total as much as the listing price for the home, $5.5 million. According to bankruptcy trustee for Fair Finance Company, the Ohio company Durham plundered, investors only hope for recovery comes from a collection of expensive cars and artwork owned by Durham that have been turned over to the bankruptcy trustee for auction. Ohio investors lost about $200 million in the now-bankrupt company that loaned out most of the money they invested with the company to Durham and companies he controlled. Although federal investigators accused Durham late last year of operating a Ponzi scheme, there have been no criminal charges brought against him to date as the one-year anniversary of the FBI raid on his offices nears.