By:  Diane Benjamin

The City of Bloomington now believes “Citizens don’t have a right to know”.  The local media is told what to report and they dutifully comply.

Here’s the latest example:

I’ve written before about deficiencies in Internal Controls at the City.  In English – the Auditors found the City isn’t doing enough to protect taxpayer money.   Some of the items listed on previous auditor reports are repeats year after year after year.  See this story:   http://blnnews.com/2015/01/03/hales-and-now-renner-dont-care/

I filed a Freedom of Information request for this years report from the auditor.

There are a couple of new twists!  The auditors wrote TWO letters to the Council.  Here are links to both:  Auditor #1 and  Auditor #2

The Cover letter of #2 describes “significant deficiencies” meaning :

“Important enough to merit attention by those

charged with governance”

Unlike previous years when I received the report, this year both letters had the findings completely redacted!  See the wonderful job they did blacking out all the findings:  Auditor #1 starts on page 14, Auditor #2  on page 3.

Will the Council care?  They never have before.  What warranted TWO letters from the auditor?

You don’t have the right to know.  So much for transparency.

David Hales is due for his annual big raise.  Showing his incompetence makes that more difficult.  Expect heavy praise for the job Hales is doing while the cover-up becomes even more intense.