By:  Diane Benjamin

Mayor Mike James of Downs has a lot in common with Bloomington’s Mayor, Tari Renner.

Both had a chance to not have situations explodes, but both chose to pretend nothing happened.

Mary Goveia set up a meeting with James to discuss Adkissons liquor problems, he never showed.  He must have thought Mary would go away.  She takes her job of representing the citizens seriously, she’s not going away.

Now James is digging a deeper hole.  Last Sunday I filed a Freedom of Information request with the Village of Downs:

FOIA law requires a response within 5 days – that was Friday.  I’ve received NOTHING.  The law requires a request to extend the 5 days to 10, also within 5 days.  I didn’t receive that either.

What’s the Mayor hiding?  Mike – I’m not going away either!

Tari dug an even deeper hole.  Judy Stearns walked out of an Executive Session in 2013 calling the meeting illegal.  Since the Attorney General finally got around to ruling it was, she was totally correct.  Other than Kevin Lower, nobody else at that meeting ever talked to Judy about it.  She even stated she would be filing with the Attorney General.  Tari never tried to smooth things over.  David Hales didn’t try either.  Ditto for the rest of the Council.  Judy didn’t file with the AG for at least 2 weeks.

That situation could have been diffused if Tari had cared enough to talk to her.  Instead he launched into vicious attacks on her for the rest of her term.  He also issued fake minutes to the meeting trying to make people believe he was being transparent.

Here’s what was released as minutes in June of 2014:  Fake minutes

Here’s the real minutes I received by accident:  Real REDACTED minutes

Tari keeps uttering nonsense about everything was released.  All the blacked out areas on the REAL minutes haven’t been released.  The audio of the meeting hasn’t been released either.

What are you hiding Tari?  I’m not going away.  Besides, Judy has a LOT of notes from that meeting.  She can release her version anytime.

Both Mike and Tari must have the same personality disorder that forces them to cover up problems instead of solving them.  Neither seem capable of admitting they screwed up and then fixing the situation.

Great leadership guys!

The cover up makes both look much worse than the crime.