By: Diane Benjamin
Readers should be well aware by now that what government talks about in Executive Session remains a secret – in Bloomington’s case for a decade or more. It’s only a secret because they want it to be a secret – I’m talking about things like City Manager evaluations.
The Open Meetings Act requires minutes of Executive Session be reviewed every 6 months and votes taken on whether to release the minutes or keep them secret.
Connect Transit is attempting to comply with that law. Mostly the minutes they release say we reviews the minutes and we aren’t releasing them. But then I found this from April 23, 2013: http://www.connect-transit.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=22769
A Board meeting was held on the same day, this Executive Session is the last item on the agenda. Obviously approval of the settlement could not have taken place at this meeting.
Fast forward to the May meeting: http://www.connect-transit.com/documents/Meetings/Packets/May%2028,%202013%20Board%20Packet2.pdf
Nothing is on the May Agenda pertaining to the settling of a Federal Lawsuit. Two disbursements however are listed for approval:
I haven’t found any checks written to Trish Tilton.
I did find a Pantagraph article about the settlement: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/connect-transit-workers-settle-in-sexual-harassment-case/article_dc6d7100-bcdf-11e2-a316-001a4bcf887a.html
The Pantagraph article is dated May 14th. The Board meeting where the settlement should have been approved didn’t happen until May 28th. The Executive Session minutes above hadn’t been released. Who gave the information to the Pantagraph? Don’t know.
The settlement was never voted on by the Board. I hope they don’t believe approving May disbursements means they approved the settlement.
This article has MANY more details: http://jezebel.com/5879295/transit-workers-sue-boss-for-sleazy-sperm-comments
Two women lost their jobs for speaking out. Taxpayers were forced to pay for the abuse, the title of the article above doesn’t begin to accurately describe it.
Considering the multi-million dollar losses Connect Transit racks up every year, the settlement is just petty cash though.
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