The Indianapolis Times posted a fairly lengthy piece today devoted to some troubling questions raised by the award of city contracts to Ballard’s largest contributors. For example, this paragraph:
“Ballard Raised More Than $1.3 Million From Contributors Who Have Received $300 Million In Contracts: Ballard has received $1,368,693 in contributions to his reelection campaign from businesses and/or the employees of those businesses contracted with the city while in office. The total sum of the contracts those businesses have had with the city is $309,476,510. (Marion County Election Board, Ballard Campaign Finance Reports, Indianapolis Contract Database)”
Now, the Times is a Democratic blog, and it can be expected to spin reports to make Republicans look bad, just as Republican leaning blogs can be expected to spin in contrary direction. But if these numbers–and others reported in the same post-are accurate, this behavior raises still more ethical issues for an administration that is facing several other allegations of impropriety. There’s the garage deal in Broad Ripple, the lease of space in Eastgate, and the shenanigans that allowed the parking meter deal to squeak through by one vote (cast by a member of the contractor’s law firm…).
Can we spell “appearance of impropriety”?