No, I'm not talking about that Indy Eleven, whose Turkish owner graced the Indianapolis City-County Council tonight with his presence to receive accolades from adoring council members over his efforts to pick taxpayers' wallets for a new $87 million soccer stadium for his professional soccer team, while we can't get adequate funding from this city government to fund basic city services, once again proving that our politicians only care about who's stuffing the most money in their pockets. I'm talking about the Regional Operations Center Investigating Committee where the five Republican members appointed to the 10-member committee have been spending all their time the past few months obstructing the investigation of the awarding of a 25-year, $20 million one-sided lease to a big campaign contributor.
Tonight, the council voted 15-13 to add an eleventh member to the committee, which will give the Democrats a 6-5 majority. Republicans initially feigned an interest in conducting a bipartisan investigation before doing all within their power to ensure that the committee never obtained access to public documents relevant to the ROC lease by blocking efforts to issue subpoenas to city legal and Alex Carroll, the ROC's landlord. What little has been learned to date suggests that criminal laws were broken in order to award this one-sided lease to the politically-connected landlord, which appears to be the impetus behind Republican efforts to obstruct the investigation. Councilor Christine Scales (R) voted with Democrats to add the eleventh committee member, while Councilor Brian Mahern (D) voted with Republicans to oppose the proposal out of spite because he was stripped of his committee appointments after he unsuccessfully attempted to team up with the Republicans on the council to oust Maggie Lewis as the council's president.
6 comments:
The bottom line is that for justice to be done, the City-County Council should just make a formal request to have this investigated by the:
Department of Justice
Public Integrity Section
Criminal Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
After all, one of the targets of this investigation used to call on DOJ to make investigations of other city officials, so it is totally appropriate to bring in the experts from Washington to investigate the ROC, unusual financing, under-the-table payments, unusual agreement, and all who had anything to do with approving it.
The DOJ can bring far more Justice to this investigation than the CCC.
Hopefully, this will be an honest investigation. An article I once read was cynical of Government "Blue Ribbon Reports." The article stated the primary purpose of the reports was to produce a large volume of paper, that dwells on the minor and trivial. The unstated purpose of the Reports is to circle the wagons, but not let the public know that.
Thank you Christine Scales for your bravery. I had hoped better from Mahern, pouting does not play well, if that was what his No Vote was all about.
Looks like Mascari is #11
anonymous says if you want to get to the bottom of this fraud misapproiation of funds,then bring frank straub back to face the music let him ask for plea bargain and invoke the fifth amendment.turn this over to the grand jury for inditments ,where is the state boards of accounts fraud dept,indiana state police white collar division,fbi and the dept of justice.......where are they ,,they will get answers fast,this will only be terminated if the investigating is not done right and leg work involved.get answers not excuses...
roc investigation stinks ,fraud corruption certainly looks like it walks like a duck talks like a duck must be a duck,i wish i could get 368,000 for 3 months rent,,what a deal just who is this mr, carroll did he have a relative in politics in the past like iupui track name........a few years ago killed in a plane crash
christine scales you should run for mayor,you seem to be one of the most honest councill people and you know what speak your mind and this will get you in trouble,the hech with all the losers,who would not know what to do if it popped up and hiy them in the nose..keep up the good work lets get answers on roc no matter who goes to jail
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