IS IT TRUE that last night after the regularly scheduled meeting of the Evansville City Council, Tim Eckels, the publisher of the City County Observer approached Debbie Dewey, the president of GAGE to inquire when she was planning to answer the questions that he had asked her via letter regarding the due diligence process that she was in charge of in the Earthcare Energy vetting period?…that much to his surprise, Mr. Eckels was verbally assaulted by Ms. Dewey and was informed that she did not have any obligation to answer questions from a blog that is not a legitimate news organization?…that she also let Mr. Eckels know in no uncertain terms that she is not obligated to answer questions from anyone but members of the Evansville City Council?…that for a person whose very job depends upon the sponsorship dollars that come from local government in an amount of over $350,000 per year she is subject to open door laws, sunshine laws, and is as much of a public servant as any other local government official?…that as a reminder the questions posed to Ms. Dewey by the CCO are as follows?

1. Did you or anyone else at GAGE conduct a credit check and a background check on Ervin Washington, Ken Haney, or Stephen Geldmacher?

2. When did you become aware that a member of the management team of Earthcare Energy specifically Erwin V. Washington, plead guilty to the charges of reporting to pilot a commercial airliner with an alcohol level that was almost 3 times the acceptable limit?

3. Did you provide Mayor Winnecke and/or the Gage Executive Committee, or entire Board of Directors with this information before recommending Earthcare Energy for a $4.8 million loan to the Evansville City Council?

4. Did you include this information in the Evansville City Council packets or make sure that all of the Evansville City Council members were aware of this fact before they voted to approve the loan on Monday March 26, 2012?

5. In your testimony before the Evansville City Council you referred to 6 or 7 loan applications made by Earthcare Energy that were declined. Did you make these rejected applications available to Mayor Winnecke, the Gage Board of Directors, and the Evansville City Council prior to the vote?

6. Do you think that information such as credit, background, and loan application history are material in making a decision with respect to a $4.8 Million loan?

IS IT TRUE that those 6 questions are very simple to answer, have relevance to the VETTING process and do not have the potential to compromise any competitive positions for the Earthcare business model?…that Ms. Dewey is free to redact any words in any documents that would compromise any deals but would be free to answer simple questions like these as she wished?…that question #1 is a simple YES or NO answer, “did you do a credit check and background check of the officers of Earthcare”?…to banks, angel networks, and venture capitalists this information is important and no one will get a loan approved without these things being answered?…that Mr. Eckels did not even ask for the credit checks or the results of any background investigations, he simply asked if they had been done?

IS IT TRUE that Ms. Dewey’s hostility and refusal to answer simple questions just feeds the suspicions that the answer to the Vetting questions are all NO?…that if Mr. Eckels had wanted to craft 60 minutes style “gotcha” questions he could have?…that the CCO continues to call for caution and for the City Council and its surrogates like GAGE to conduct their business like a bank as opposed to writing a $4.8 Million check on insufficient vetting?…that the CCO has never attacked Ms. Dewey but that we have asked legitimate questions of her that other Evansville media seems unconcerned with?…that our purpose in these questions is to help the Winnecke Administration make informed decisions as opposed to delusional decisions that lead to things like the Executive Inn dilemma, the McCurdy debacle, and the Homestead Tax Credit secret meeting all three of which were exposed for the calamities that they became by the City County Observer?

IS IT TRUE that Ms. Dewey, the GAGE Executive Committee, and by their silence the entire GAGE board of directors can maintain their position of obstructionism with pertinent facts regarding the use of public money but that obstructive position is about to be tested by virtue of FOIA requests?…that the CCO is recognized and treated as a legitimate news source by the Winnecke Administration and all City of Evansville Departments?…that the CCO has traffic of over 1 Million page views per year from over 50,000 unique readers?…that snubbing an entity that has a history of doing whatever it takes to expose poor public policy is a first punch that Ms. Dewey threw last night?…that we still just want to know the facts about GAGE’s vetting of this deal and will leave no stone unturned to find them?

IS IT TRUE April 9, 2012 Part 2

IS IT TRUE that we are amazed to hear that 2nd Ward City Council women, Missy Mosby and her Maingate Sports Bar drinking Buddies who filed formal complaints against 6th Ward City Councilmen and Evansville Firemen, Al Lindsey for drinking after a City Council meeting before returning back to work aren’t being called to testify against Mr. Lindsey at his Fire Merit Commission hearing this coming Wednesday? …we were hoping to hear Mr. Lindsey attorney question Ms. Mosby and her drinking buddies on how many drinks they consumed during that evening at Maingate Sport Bar during that famous evening? …we always heard that one should be allowed to face his accusers and wonder why Mr. Lindsey accusers aren’t repeating the statements they made against Mr. Lindsey face to face?

IS IT TRUE we wonder why neither the City of Evansville nor Vanderburgh County has announced what they are going to do with the$6.6 million dollar financial tax wind fall from the County Option Income Tax fund in the very near future?

IS IT TRUE that we are profoundly disappointed to be forced to believe that even the most basic of Vetting procedures was not done on the officers of Earthcare Energy before the president of GAGE made an affirmative recommendation to the City Council for providing a $4.8 Million loan to a company with no revenue, no assets, and no history?…that by basic Vetting that we are not talking about a secret clearance that can take months?…that what we are talking about is first a personal credit check, second a personal background check, third to do verifications on past employment and authentication of academic degrees, and finally to do the same on companies that these guys claim to own or have been officers of?

IS IT TRUE that tonight’s City Council meeting may be the last chance for either a member of the City Council to revisit this hasty decision made under duress and add some due diligence to the process?…that we already know that multiple licenses have already been granted by Langson Energy, that the patent that was clearly stated as in the hand of Earthcare Energy is not even issued, and we furthermore know that a last minute threat was made to go elsewhere if the loan was not approved “as is” 2 weeks ago today?…that exposing your belly to people who make threats like that is really not the way to run a city?…that mistakes like the McCurdy, the nothing Hotel, the Homestead Tax Grab, unclean conditions allowed to proliferate, and misguided judgments on programs like Front Door Pride and $240,000 single apartments are the mistakes of dreamers and the inept?…that blinking to a threat is a much weaker and more desperate situation?

IS IT TRUE that we wonder if at tonight’s City Council meeting if there is not one among the residents of Evansville or its City Council that will raise these questions?…that if no one rises to demand some answers to the very basic question posed by Councilman John Friend and the City County Observer that it will tell us something about the makeup of the community that we never wanted to believe?…that the person or people who come forward will have more clout if they are actually residents of the City of Evansville?