The corrupt Ballard administration has stonewalled a council investigating committee for the past year in providing documents and answers requested about a one-sided 25-year lease it entered into with a politically-connected campaign contributor for the Regional Operations Center. Even after the council went to court and obtained an order from Marion Co. Circuit Court Judge Louis Rosenberg in July compelling it to turn over all relevant documents, the administration has furnished only part of the documents in drips and drabs. Still missing from the production are invoices documenting all expenditures made to date to support the troubled facility.
The latest documents turned over to the council confirm at least part of what the administration has been hiding for the past year. Former Public Safety Director Frank Straub, former Controller Jeff Spalding and other key city officials expressed grave doubts about the suitability and cost of locating the ROC at the former Eastgate Mall site. Former EMS Director Jim White likened the condition of the property to buildings he encountered during his tour of duty in war-torn Iraq. Despite valid concerns raised about the site, Mayor Greg Ballard exerted so much pressure on Straub, he relented and reversed his decision to choose another location. Documents also establish that City-County Council members were provided misleading information about the project's costs and sustainability in order to obtain their approval. An oft-repeated claim by the administration that the City's agreement to host the 2012 Super Bowl required the ROC be built turned out to be a patent lie.
Several council Democrats who serve on the ROC Investigating Committee now say they will seek to delay any action on the Ballard administration's proposal to award a public-private partnership agreement to a foreign-led consortium to build a new criminal justice center complex at the site of the former GM Stamping Plant, which could cost upwards of $1.75 billion over 35 years, until the Mayor forces his staff to turn over all court-ordered documents and provide answers to lingering questions about the problem-plagued ROC that Public Safety Director Troy Riggs at one point ordered vacated for months because of the unsafe conditions of the building. City employees moved back into the ROC more than six months later after numerous repairs were made but only after the Mayor's Office signed a settlement agreement holding the City liable for the costs of most of those repairs and reaffirming the "hell or high water," one-sided terms of the long-term lease favoring the landlord, which essentially leaves no out for the City.
We will not allow the City to be fooled again," the Indianapolis Star quoted Councilor Joe Simpson as saying at a press conference called by him and his fellow councilors, Vop Osili and Monroe Gray." "It would behoove all of us to learn how we got into this, to learn the processes that ensure we don't repeat these actions, and then to move forward with a clean set of guidelines and understanding of how we consider long-term contracts," Osili added.
Incredibly, Republican council members still don't get it. "I don't know where they think they got bamboozled," said Councilor Jack Sandlin, a Republican member of the ROC Investigating Committee. It's particularly troublesome to hear those words from Sandlin, a retired Indianapolis police officer who makes his living as a private investigator. Whether you believe the council got bamboozled, Republicans and Democrats alike who voted for the ROC lease, the fact is the public got bamboozled. Nonetheless, the Republican members can only chastise the Democratic members for trying to get to the bottom of the matter, as if the blatant misappropriation of public dollars is perfectly okay as long as it's benefiting a large Republican campaign contributor.
UPDATE: Radio talk show host Amos Brown has uploaded a segment of his show today in which he interviewed Councilors Simpson and Gray, as well as the council's financial adviser, Bart Brown, which you can hear by clicking here. They have an interesting discussion of the ongoing ROC debate and the criminal justice center project, which includes a discussion of some of the topics I've raised on this blog.
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