South Bend transit system broke open records law, Indiana official says

Acting on the advice of its attorney several weeks ago, Jamie Woods, Transpo’s board of directors denied The Tribune’s public records request to learn the factual basis for Cangany’s Dec. 27 firing. Woods cited a clause in Cangany’s contract that allowed the board to fire him “without cause” at any time as long as it paid him half of his $98,000 annual salary in severance.

But Indiana law requires public entities to disclose the “factual basis” for an employee’s firing, and an agency can’t enter into a contract to “absolve itself” from that requirement, wrote Luke Britt, the Indiana Public Access Counselor. 

“Otherwise nothing prevents an agency from contracting with all public employees and avoiding the provisions of (the open records law) altogether,” Britt wrote.

“It does not have to be a detailed narrative or include names of victims or specific summaries,” he added, “but it should give the reader a reasonable idea of why someone was fired, suspended or demoted.”