Bolejack Claims She Was Targeted Because She's Black

Following her firing by the Board of Trustees for the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, where she has served as executive director, Heather Bolejack sat down for an interview with the Indianapolis Star at her attorney's office. To Bolejack, her firing boiled down to just one thing: she was targeted because she was black. "You fight not going there, when you're a person of color,'' Bolejack said late Friday in her attorney's office. "You don't want to throw that card on the table. But how can I turn away from that at this point?"

No, you don't have to throw that card on the table Heather. And by doing so, you are doing a terrible disservice to any person who has truly been discriminated against because of the color of their skin. You have had a career to date that any American whether a member of a minority group or not would feel blessed to have had. Fresh out of law school, you held successive jobs at two of the city's largest and most prestigious law firms. In the case of the your first job, you were hired in large part due to a concerted effort on the part of that law firm to hire more minorities as attorneys. I know Heather. I used to work for that firm. At 30, you were chosen by the Governor of our state to run a state agency. And yes, he chose you, at least in part, in an effort to diversify the ranks of his agency heads.

The Board of Trustees fired you because it believed you improperly handled the expenditures of the agency over which you were entrusted to manage, and because you breached that trust by awarding a very lucrative grant to a childhood friend. As you explained to the Star, "Bolejack said McKenna, a childhood friend of her husband's, approached her last year with an idea for a youth program." As a new-comer to the job, you should have politely found a way to turn your friend down and, if he was a true friend, he would have understood. Instead, you looked for a way to reward a friend.

As an attorney, you should know better than anyone that there are certain legal procedures which must be followed when any public funds are to be spent. The Board concluded that you did not adhere to the rules. To tell reporters that you "did not knowingly or intentionally" circumvent those rules sounds more like a defense to a criminal charge than an explanation for why you didn't adhere to those rules.

As the Star pointed out, this is not the first time someone at the Indiana Criminal Justice Agency has been accused of impropriety. The agency fired Nikki Edgar after she took a trip and accepted gifts from an advertising representative for WFMS-FM and then spent over half of the agency's $1 million promotional budget with the radio station. Another state employee at FSSA, Matthew Raibley, who is white, was not only fired but criminally prosecuted and jailed for his role in using government funds to reward a friend.

For its part, the Board of Trustees for the agency deserves some blame for a repeat of this kind of employee impropriety in such a short period. It should have implemented an oversight in the process to avoid self-dealing by agency employees. As the Star's editorial notes today, "The fact that money was apparently misappropriated again within the same agency, but under a different administration, indicates a lack of structured oversight."

Bolejack conveniently plays the race card for one reason: to avoid personal accountability for her own mistakes. Heather, don't even try to impugn the reputations of the very people who gave you the opportunity of a lifetime to cover up your own indiscretions. Just fold that card right now.

Yesterday, AI was the first to report on Heather's attendance at the grand opening of Sushi On The Rocks with her husband Corey Smith and the friend to whom she awarded the grant, Michael McKenna. Here's Nikki Kelly's take on that in the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette: "Then – in a bizarre twist – a photo of Bolejack, her husband, Corey Smith, and McKenna appeared Friday in the “Party Crasher” section of the Indianapolis Star’s Web site. The picture of the three smiling was taken Thursday night at the opening of a new sushi restaurant."

Perhaps just as odd is the Star missing its own scoop on the picture. Today's article carried the photo with Heather's husband, Corey Smith, cropped out of the photo, which was taken by Chris Adams for INtake. It includes the following caption: "Heather Bolejack (left) and Michael McKenna are shown at a party this week. Investigators say proper procedure was not followed when McKenna was approved to receive a $400,000 grant through the institute. It was only partially paid."