City of Evansville/GAGE/Barnett Salary Deal Violates State Code
During the fall of 2009 in our “IS IT TRUE†column, the City County Observer was the first publication to begin to expose the citizens of Evansville to the fact that a back door salary arrangement had been made to sweeten the compensation plan for Department of Metropolitan Development Director Tom Barnett. At the time we had reason to suspect that the size of the deal was around $20,000 per year. When the story was finally made public and picked up by the other media in town nearly half a year later, it was revealed that an outside contract in the amount of $42,000 per year had been arranged for Mr. Barnett through GAGE, the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville.
This arrangement was both brokered and signed by then Chairman of the GAGE Board of Directors, Jonathon Weinzapfel, Mayor of Evansville. No other officer, director, or board member of GAGE’s name appeared on any contract between GAGE and Mr. Barnett. During that period the City County Observer contacted Joe Wallace, former president and CEO of GAGE to inquire about what the duties and obligations of the Director of DMD had to GAGE under the terms of the contract. Mr. Wallace’s response was that Mr. Barnett was an ex-officio member of the GAGE Board, but had no day to day duties to GAGE and received no direction or review from him or anyone else affiliated with GAGE except of course Mr. Barnett’s boss Mayor Weinzapfel in carrying out his duties as Mayor of Evansville.
“Additional Compensation (City)†which is included in full as follows:
The Executive Director of the Department of Metropolitan Development received a salary of $73,997.78 from the City for the year 2009. He also, by contractual agreement, received an additional amount in excess of $40,000 from a non-profit agency. That non-profit agency has a contractual arrangement to provide services to the City. The City Council did not approve the additional compensation.
The City of Evansville Employee Handbook states that, “An employee may not receive any payment, fees, services, vacations, or other unusual favors from any person or business organization that does or seeks to do business with the City.” It also states that “A conflict of interest occurs when an employee’s private interest interferes or even appears to interfere in any way with the interest of the City.”
Each governmental unit is responsible for complying with the ordinances, resolutions, and policies it adopts. (Accounting and Uniform Compliance Guidelines Manual for Cities and Towns, Chapter 7)
IC 36-4-7-3(b) states in part: “Subject to the approval of the city legislative body, the city executive shall fix the compensation of each appointive officer, deputy, and other employee of the city. . . .”
IC 36-7-14-23 states: “Each officer of the unit who has duties in respect to the funds and accounts of the unit shall perform the same duties with respect to the funds and accounts of the department of redevelopment, except as otherwise provided in this chapter. An officer performing these duties is not entitled to any compensation in addition to that paid him by the unit.”
The State Board of Accounts does not offer any recommendations for action and neither Mr. Barnett nor City of Evansville Controller Jenny Collins, addresses this issue in their respective Corrective Action Plans. There is a 3 page letter (85 – 87) from the Law Department of the City of Evansville under the signature of David L. Jones, Corporate Counsel to Controller Collins that essentially states that the State Board of Accounts has taken the Indiana State Codes out of context. He furthermore states that Mr. Barnett’s duties to GAGE are similar to Evansville Police Officers who have off duty part time jobs as security guards.
Whether a contract that was brokered by the Mayor of Evansville between a City of Evansville supported entity like GAGE that he was the Chairman of, and whose by-laws state that the Mayor of Evansville shall serve on the Executive Committee equates to a police officer mowing yards or pulling security duty for a private business that receives no support from the City and no direction from the Mayor is irrational and will be up to public scrutiny.
Clearly a police officer who mows yards off duty is not compromising his duties as a policeman to mow the yard. It is also clear that if Mr. Barnett were to avoid compromising his duties as the Director of DMD that his duties to GAGE would have to be done after hours. As the former president of GAGE stated, Mr. Barnett had no duties and thus could not have compromised his day job by carrying out those non duties to GAGE. The GAGE contract it seems was just a way for the Mayor to arrange for a fatter paycheck for Mr. Barnett through an arrangement that required GAGE to assume the role of alter-ego of the City of Evansville through the actions of Mayor Weinzapfel.
The City County Observer’s position on this is that circular transactions like this just do not pass the smell test, it stinks. The right way to pay Mr. Barnett a competitive salary of over $110,000 per year is do it in a way that does not cause the State Board of Accounts to write the City of Evansville up for code violations. If Mayor Weinzapfel would have done this according to accepted protocol, David Jones, Corporate Counsel for the City of Evansville would have never been put into a position of having to write a letter parsing the law to protect the City of Evansville from any remedy that may come due to code violations. It is a well written letter that should have never been needed. Circumvention of the intent or the will of law really needs to cease as a way of doing business in the City of Evansville.
We advocate strongly for remedying this situation in a way that removes all suspicion of conflicts of interest on the part of Mr. Barnett and clears the history of deceptive practices retroactively and going forward for the City of Evansville. The State Board of Accounts has cited the City of Evansville for doing this in 2009. It is common knowledge in Evansville that this also happened in 2008, is ongoing in 2010, and is part of the budget recommended for adoption for 2011. There are three wrongs to be righted. The best way to right these wrongs is first for Mr. Barnett to return all monies that were paid to him by GAGE to GAGE, and for GAGE to repay those monies to the Evansville Bond Bank from which they came. The second action is for the Mayor of Evansville to go before the City Council to seek approval for Mr. Barnett to have his salary adjusted retroactively back to his date of hiring to reflect all payments that he received through the back door deal through GAGE. That action would make Mr. Barnett whole in this circle of deception that he was drawn into. Finally, Mayor Weinzapfel needs to go before the City Council to adjust Mr. Barnett’s salary to the level that he currently receives from the checks that he gets from the City of Evansville and GAGE. These three actions not only clean the mess that has been made, it keeps messes like this from becoming standard operating procedure when standard City of Evansville salary structures are just not competitive.
Here is a link to the State Board of Accounts Report. The Audit Results and Comments start on page 63 and run through page 65, it includes 12 areas where the City of Evansville has shortcomings. David Jones’ letter is on pages 85 – 87. A local accounting firm is conducting the required annual audit of GAGE for maintaining federal non-profit status as is due to be completed any day.
Apologize to the Council? Oh my, sometimes irony is simply way too thick!
If we had responsible members on the council, we wouldn’t have a problem [i.e. GAGE] to begin with!
This Report only Confirms what we have all realized about the Weinzapfel era, You cannot get Blood out of a Turnip, and you cannot expect Honesty and Integerity from Weinzapfel..
This current SBOA audit of the City of Evansville Annual Financial Report makes repeated references to violations of State statute and handbook guidelines that were pointed out in “several previous reports”.
I suppose that if there is no one around to ENFORCE state statute and guidelines, this Mayor will continue to do damn well what he wishes.
Is this another situation where some private sector individual must devote his own time and treasure in pursuit of a legal action in order to force a political subdivision to abide by the law?
And let us not forget about the city’s contract with Tom Barnett’s business associate. I do not believe that one was addressed in this current audit, however, that one sure did not pass the smell test either.
Thank you so much for your reporting on this. I did not see anything on the broadcast stations or the Courier. What does this finding do to the City’s ability to continue receiving federal and state grants?
Weinzapfel is a crook and needs to be Impeached at the very least. He has run this city into a debt that will have to be paid for by our children and thier children. Just to build the John and line his pockets for further political gains. What a shame this is to be the legacy of he will leave for Evansville to chew on for many years to come.
Please take a few minutes and at least read pages 63 to 65 of the SBOA Report that is linked at the end of this article.
You will see that the city executive has been cited for many of the same statute violations going back to 2006. Not to mention the statute violations concerning Mayor Weinzapfel, GAGE, and Tom Barnett’s extra contract.
Figuratively speaking: where is the sheriff? Or does this continue until the republicans take the mayor’s office, at which time, it will then be enforced?
Sheeeezzz people, wake up!
great job on this one guys for investigating and informing the people
Best regards from the my faterland, great germany.
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