The City of Indianapolis' lobby registration law is extremely weak and exempts the registration requirement in many instances as evidenced by the fact there are only 26 individuals currently registered to lobby the city. Just recently, one of those lobbyists updated his registration to include one for WMB Heartland Justice Partners, the entity controlled by Paris-based Meridiam Infrastructure, which Mayor Greg Ballard announced yesterday had been awarded the public-private partnership agreement to construct and operate the proposed criminal justice center.
Ice Miller's Tom John, the former Marion Co. GOP Chairman, is the sole lobbyist currently registered to lobby the mayor's office, the Department of Public Safety and the Marion Co. Sheriff. The online registration information does not state the date he filed his registration, although it had to have been made just recently. Lobbyists are permitted to update their registrations online with little transparency concerning the timing of those changes. Greg Hahn and other lobbyists for Bose Public Affairs Group began lobbying City-County Council members for the past year to support the proposal under a $750,000 contract awarded to it by the Ballard administration, which the administration says will eventually be reimbursed, along with over $12 million in professional service fees incurred by the City for this undertaking, by the winning bidder if the council approves the deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment