The Chronicle-Tribune is staying on the story of how unelected and unaccountable agencies are spending public money by the hundreds of thousands of dollars in Grant County and by the millions across the state.
Monday, the Indiana Public Access Counselor reported there was not enough evidence to find that the Grant County Economic Growth Council falls under the Indiana Open Door Act and the Access the Indiana Public Records Law. The finding is based on two issues that were actually beyond the scope of the counselor’s office to make a judgment.
The biggest issue deals with the State Board of Accounts. The agency did not conduct an audit of the Growth Council and has not since 2007. That there is no audit is part of the problem, because no outside group provides an audit of the growth Council, which automatically receives a portion of local income taxes each year.
Indiana law provides that if the board of accounts determines not to audit an organization then the organization is not a public agency subject to the laws of transparency for Indiana government. Given that, we understand there wasn’t much else the counselor could determine other than the laws did not apply.
But the Chronicle-Tribune maintains there is a serious problem with the information submitted to the State Board of Accounts.
For the last three years, the Growth Council has filed an entity annual report, or E-1 form, with the State Board of Accounts. In 2011, it reported that it received $506,000 in government funds. The Growth Council told the State Board of Accounts that only 38 percent of its total expenses came from government sources and the state granted a waiver for a public audit because the amount of public money it claimed to have spent was less than 50 percent of total expenditures. The decision to audit is not based on public money collected but on how much of it is spent.
But the public money the council receives is mingled with private money — so much so that Growth Council Executive Director Tim Eckerle says all the money goes into one pot.
So our question remains, without separate accounts, how does he tell the State Board of Accounts what is public money or private money?
“To the extent you take issue with the (State Board of Accounts’) determination,” Joe Hoage, public access counselor wrote in his opinion, “the proper redress would be with the SBOA and not the Public Access Counselor’s Office.”
Fair enough. That is where we will go next.
The other issue deals with contracts called fee-for-service agreements. It is basically a contract that says that an organization receiving money from the government will do certain things in return. Such an agreement would tend to show that the Growth Council is a private contractor rather than a public agency. The Growth Council says it has such a contract approved five years ago by the Grant County Council that remains in force. The Growth Council, however, has not provided the Chronicle-Tribune with a copy of such an agreement. The Growth Council, while asserting its existence, did not provide a copy to the public access counselor.
The Chronicle-Tribune has spent hours searching the records of the County Council, the County Recorder and the County Commissioners and we have not found a record of the contract.
We will make a formal request to county officials that a copy of the contract be made available to the public under state law.
Finally, the ruling, while it was not what we had hoped, makes the path clear in the work for better and more responsible local government. Loopholes in the laws must be changed so that private agencies are accountable for public dollars. We need to know how the Growth Council spends the money it takes from local taxes. No group of people, however well intentioned, is entitled to do with your money whatever it chooses and keep it a secret.
Regardless of the legal technicalities, we expect our elected leaders at the local and state level to take action and clear up a fairly simple matter of right and wrong.