Merrillville administrators kicked off their first meeting of the year like they ended last year — rife with rancor — with the Clerk-Treasurer alleging the Town Council and Town Manager committed fraud over a signature.
More Top Picks Best Outdoor Misting Fans For Patios
The Council recently received closing documents from the brokerage handling the Boys & Girls Club and the Georgia Street service road bond issues for the town, which Council President Rick Bella, D-5, and Town Manager Michael Griffin signed, Clerk-Treasurer Eric January said during the January 14 meeting. He found out about it, he said, when the bonding company presented a $100,000 payment request for the projects.
State law, January pointed out, says that a town’s legislative body “may not authorize the manager to issue execute bonds, notes or warrants of the town.”
Bella said that Griffin signed the documents not as an approval, but as an attestation to his signature, which January said was correct. But because it was a bond, January should’ve been the one to sign it, he said.
“Every document I’ve seen over the past year where the Clerk-Treasurer has signed always, never been an exception. To me, this is tantamount to fraud,” he said. “I’m actually pursuing this because this is the type of stuff we can’t tolerate.
“I should not have to take this to the (Indiana) Attorney General, the Lake County Prosecutor’s office and all of this stuff just to enforce the law.”
Calling the moment “awkward,” Griffin told January he once again explained just enough of the situation to make an audience believe he’s the aggrieved party when January — who’s vehemently opposed the Boys & Girls Club and service-road bonds from their outset — put conditions on whether he would sign the documents in the first place.
“It’s not an option; you have an obligation, and every time, you said, ‘I will do it if …’ and then you wanted conditions to be met. You can’t do that when it’s an obligation,” Griffin said. “We had a timetable to meet that closing, which you would’ve been aware of because we sent notices out to everyone.”
Griffin added that he’s aware the statute says town managers can’t issue bonds, notes or warrants, but he wasn’t the one who went out for them in the first place: The Council did.
“Now, I’m encouraged to hear you’re now aware of the law and will do your duty each time it’s presented to you, because then I’ll have more time to do the other things I’m tasked with,” Griffin said. “But when you characterize it in such a way that it’s fraud, that’s patently false, and it’s not legally valid. I hope you use that statute to try and assert I somehow violated the law. It’ll be a profound lesson to you that I did not.”
Griffin went on to say that he sent January a “fairly long email explaining what happened,” to which January told him he didn’t mean to offend, but then he turned around at the meeting to accuse Griffin of impropriety.
“If you felt hurt, you could’ve spoken to me directly,” Griffin said. “And then tonight, you decide to raise (the issue) because you want to suggest that I’m not serving (the town) well or that I don’t know the law or that somehow you’ve been disrespected.”
January insisted that Bella and Griffin intentionally didn’t tell him about the signing.
“I understand what you’re saying, but I do not believe half of what you said, because the facts speak for themselves,” January said. “I’m not trying to try this in court, but (his not being told about the signing) is just an absolute fact.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.