Five Minutes And Five Million Dollars

It only took five minutes of the 26-minute long monthly meeting of the Capital Improvement Board to approve a resolution for a $5 million grant to provide ongoing maintenance expenses for IUPUI's Natatorium over a 10-year period. Hey, what's $5 million when you have tens of millions of dollars stashed in reserves? Board members had no questions at all about why it was that city tax dollars are being used to maintain a university-owned sports facility. There wasn't even a question about why the CIB wouldn't handle requests for maintenance expenses directly instead of turning the money over to the nonprofit Indiana Sports Corporation board to administer. Money laundering is the only way the downtown mafia would have it. One board member, Carolene Mays, had a prepared advocacy statement to make in support of the resolution. It turns out that Mays, who is also an appointed member of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, sits on the board of the Indiana Sports Corporation. No, she didn't abstain from the vote. How could a $5 million extraordinary expenditure be posed to board members without discussion you might ask? Because the CIB has a tradition of making all of its decisions in private in clear violation of the Open Door Law before the board meets for a public meeting. That should be apparent to anyone who watches their meetings--unless you want to assume their membership is made up of these least inquisitive minds on the planet.