It was stunning!
The now famous FBI-Indiana truck that was parked on the Circle when the Feds went after Tim Durham was sitting at the Market Street entrance of Indianapolis’ City-County Building. For the first time in UniGov’s history, FBI agents armed with search warrants were inside looking for evidence in the first federal scandal to touch Indianapolis/Marion County government in the UniGov era.
Shockwaves engulfed city-county employees and the political class when it was learned that two city employees, Reggie Walton and John Hawkins, were busted by the feds. Charged with bribery and wire fraud in a scheme where officials of the non-profit Indiana Minority AIDS Coalition, another non profit and a real estate agent are charged with providing kickbacks and bribes to Walton and Hawkins for obtaining properties registered with the city’s Land Bank.
The Land Bank scandal is Mayor Greg Ballard’s first. And while I’ll leave it to U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett to prove these charges, the scandal showcases severe weaknesses in how the Ballard administration governs.
Remember 13 months ago, when the police department messed up the Bisard blood evidence? Then, an angry Mayor Ballard faced the media, firing the police chief, naming a new one and answered media questions and projected strong leadership during a major crisis for his administration.
This time, our mayor was invisible, at the Speedway, sources tell me. His office issued a bland 91 word statement.
The next day, at an unrelated news conference (one of the mayor’s few this year) Ballard was jumped by a scrum of media demanding answers. Ballard claimed that he learned of the probe “several days” before. But that revelation and Ballard’s rambling, sometimes incoherent answers about what he knew and when he knew it, raised more questions.
There were warning signs regarding potential problems at the city’s Land Bank.
Last November, in a massive article, the Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) reported on the Land Bank, suggesting serious problems in the management of the agency by Reggie Walton, an assistant administrator in the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development (DMD).
IBJ isn’t a blog or a partisan publication. It’s a sober, mainstream newspaper that first reported on the Tim Durham scandal and other irregularities in local and state government.
A major flaw in Mayor Ballard’s administration, according to several who’ve worked with his administration, is Ballard’s hands-off management style. Delegating–perhaps too much–to department heads and aides.
IBJ’s Land Bank story should’ve set off alarm bells in the mayor’s office. If our out-of-touch mayor didn’t see problems, then surely Chief of Staff Ryan Vaughn, DMD Director Adam Thies and Deputy Mayor for Neighborhoods Olgen Williams should’ve raised red flags.
The Indianapolis Land Bank was created by state statute during Bart Peterson’s last year (2007). But the Ballard administration has been the one responsible for implementing its mission; which is to get abandoned property, which the city has acquired from the tax delinquent rolls, sold and back to becoming taxpaying properties.
In 2010, Walton was placed in charge of overseeing the Land Bank. Walton is a protégé of Deputy Mayor Williams who told the Indianapolis Star last week that “he (Williams) had known Walton ‘since he was a little kid’ growing up in Haughville.”
The city didn’t release information about Walton’s education or previous employment experience before starting work with the Land Bank in 2010, when the now 29-year-old Walton would’ve been 25 or 26. My suspicion is Walton wasn’t really qualified for the Land Bank gig.
Mid-20s is an awfully young age for someone to be an assistant administrator in a major department of America’s 11th largest city; supervising a major mayoral effort to reduce the blight of abandoned buildings.
Deputy Mayor Williams should’ve been up to speed on what the Land Bank run by his protégé was up to.
The other city employee caught up in the mess, John Hawkins, started working for the city as a personal aide to Mayor Ballard during the 2011 campaign. Sources tell me Hawkins was known to Williams and some of Williams’ family.
Some have told me that there wasn’t enough DMD staff properly supervising Walton. That’s a failing of the mayor for not setting sufficient priorities. Spending tax money for cricket fields, overseas trips and other waste while not having enough employees and managers to take care of basic city business is poor management.
I didn’t realize all the defendants in this scandal were African-American until one of the mayor’s ministerial defenders brought it to my attention.
More disconcerting, Ten Point Coalition’s Rev. Charles Harrison tweeted me saying “There have been a lot of brothers indicted and some given jail time over the last week by the feds. We are counting and watching very closely what U.S. attorney does in the future.”
Forgive me reverends; the Land Bank scandal isn’t a Black scandal. It’s a failure of command and control within the Ballard administration. A failure of oversight by the deputy mayor in charge of neighborhoods. A failure of this administration to be serious about improving Indy’s neighborhoods.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: The fault dear Ballard is “not in the stars, it’s in you.”
What I’m hearing
in the streets
Last week the Census released 2012 population estimates for cities and towns. The local news media parroted a wire service story and one from USA Today saying Indianapolis had fallen to 13th largest in the country.
I take strong exception to that uninformed view! Since everyone in Indianapolis and Marion County votes for Indy’s mayor, then our full city-county’s estimated population of 918,977 IS our city’s population total. Which keeps us 11th biggest.
The Census also counts the city’s population as the full city-county less Speedway, Lawrence, Beech Grove and Southport. That total of 844,220 also keeps Indy in 11th place; but just barely ahead of surging Austin, Texas (842,692).
If our clueless city leaders and spineless Indy Chamber don’t quickly develop a consensus on what our UniGov population is, by 2020 our city’s ranking will fall behind San Francisco, Jacksonville and possibly Columbus, Ohio. Reducing our city’s competitive luster as a “major” city.
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
