By:  Diane Benjamin

I really hope the Bloomington City Council realizes how foolish they were tolerating David Hales management of the City for over 8 years.  Keep in mind they heaped praise on him and lavish raises while Council meetings dragged on and on with little being accomplished.

Last night’s Council meeting was 45 minutes (that story next).  Under Hales, TWO meetings would have been held totaling close to 4 hours.  Hales would have droned on and on unable to make any decisions.  Tim Gleason only speaks when he has something short and sweet to add to the conversation.  He frequently passes discussions to the staff who actually do the work.

So where are the lies?

At the December 17, 2018 meeting, included in the packet, were two lists of Executive Session (secret meeting) minutes.  One the Council voted to release, the other was a list they were going to retain – in other words, you don’t have a right to know what they said.

The list the council chose not to release is on PDF page 40:   http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=20549

Here’s where they lied and hoped nobody would notice:

The oldest minutes listed are from March 23, 2009.

Doesn’t that imply all minutes prior to that date have been released?  Did they disappear?  Get stolen?  Just get deleted in the garbage bin of history?

I filed a FOIA request just for “personnel” minutes from 2005 to March 23, 2009.  I filed it on 1/14/2019 which made it due last week.  They extended the request another 5 days in order to prepare this:

It took the City 10 days to mark Denied in Full and check a couple of boxes farther down the page.

They claim the law does not require them to release the minutes.  It doesn’t, but it also doesn’t give the City permission to pretend the minutes don’t exist by leaving them off a list they created.

Is there a reason to keep 10-year-old and older personnel discussions a secret – especially evaluations of former City Managers?

Not unless there is something to hide. 

Obviously they do have something to hide.  Taxpayers don’t a right to know why previous City Managers received huge bucks for doing stupid things like building a never used fire station and a water tower too short.  Taxpayers don’t deserve to know why Hales was given huge raises when he couldn’t make a decision without a consultant.

Bloomington doesn’t have government For and By the People.  

I like this description one reader has used frequently to describe Bloomington’s government:

Deceive  to  Achieve