Comments on Advance Indiana™: Westfield Violates Open Door Law By Conducting Committee Meetings In Private

Sikich appropriately looked into the issue of the ...

2014-11-10T16:59:15.077-05:00

Sikich appropriately looked into the issue of the public meeting notice requirement and confirmed the City had broken that law, Flogger; it was the RFP notice requirement which I pointed out the City also ignored just like the City of Indianapolis concerning its criminal justice center project.

I'll tell you how Westfield "notifies&quo...

2014-11-10T16:30:09.223-05:00

I'll tell you how Westfield "notifies" you of the public meetings - it's in this junk mail flyer we get every month and in the fold of 2nd or 3rd page are the scheduled full City Council meetings. Granted the council here is only 6 people. I haven't figured out which bar they go to for the "pre-meeting discussions" yet.

“It happens all the time,” Britt said. “They don’t...

2014-11-10T15:02:53.435-05:00

“It happens all the time,” Britt said. “They don’t understand the law.”

I would say rubbish to this. The City would have an Attorney that as a job expectation should know the Law or research it.

As far Mr. Skitch's comments, the JOB of a Journalist is to perform the research, either himself or tap into one of The Star's or Gannet's Attorneys to do the leg work.

Meetings that the Public is not aware of are basically a closed meeting. No one shows up per the article - No one ever has, though, possibly because no notice is provided anywhere. The city’s website doesn’t include any information about council committees — even to note they exist. The dates, times and locations aren’t posted publicly.

The old philosophical, question is - If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it - does it make a sound??

So if you have Public Meeting and the Public is not informed - Is it a Legal Meeting??

Chris, Firstly, the statute to which I referred yo...

2014-11-10T12:42:35.259-05:00

Chris, Firstly, the statute to which I referred you expressly requires an RFP. Secondly, I've written exhaustively on this topic. You could have read my prior entries on this topic (like here http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2014/09/ballard-administration-claims-it-cant.html:, or you could have picked up the phone and called me. It's not like this topic has not been in the news a lot given the IBJ's legal wrangling with the Ballard administration to cough up the criminal justice center RFP.

I wrote about the ethics of the RFP process. I gav...

2014-11-10T12:20:47.391-05:00

I wrote about the ethics of the RFP process. I gave you an opportunity to make a specific argument that the RFP process had been legally violated and you pointed to the state statute generically. I asked you a second time and you made another generic statement. Make your legal argument. I'm interested.
Chris Sikich