Bart's parting shot - massive document shredding

IndyStar January 6, 2008

Behind closed doors

Mayoral transition anything but smooth

Both parties apparently ran into some transition friction in the final days before Bart Peterson surrendered the mayor's office to Greg Ballard.

Ballard this past week said Peterson wouldn't let his people enter the 25th-floor offices. But the level of animosity between the two camps went beyond that, though not quite reaching the legendary removal of W's from the keyboards in the White House at the end of President Bill Clinton's administration. John Cochran, Ballard's transition director, said the Peterson team became less cooperative toward the end. As one example, he led a visiting reporter on a tour of a disheveled office supply room on the 25th floor that looked as if a sour grape had exploded inside it.

Several employees in the City-County Building said the shredding machine was going nonstop in the final week of Peterson's tenure, with the remains hauled directly to waiting city trash trucks. Justin Ohlemiller, Peterson's former deputy chief of staff, declined to comment on the question of whether the staff destroyed documents willy-nilly. He said the outgoing administration acted "professionally." He offered this statement: "File cabinet after file cabinet there is full of public records. Everything they need to run city government is there."

Greg Wilson, the city's new director of minority business affairs, was unhappy about the situation. "The sad thing is that they were acting like those were their documents," Wilson said. "Those records are the citizens' documents. Tax money paid to produce them."

Man that's beautiful

A new year arrives

Well, it's 2008. We start a new homicide count today. The number for 2007 was 122. We've already got #1 for the new year. The 2007 total ends up at 18 less than 2006's 140 killings, but we all know that year was an exception, a big spike. The count was a mere 96 during Bart's first term, and never reached 110 - except for last year.

Let's hope 2008 sees that number drop way down under the watchful eyes of Scott Newman and Greg Ballard. Keeping this list updated is really not any fun.

Another hat in the ring?

We hear rumblings that Melyssa Donaghy is considering running for the 7th District congressional seat as a Libertarian. Melyssa recently won the Sam Adams Alliance's "Sammie" award for her tireless efforts protest the ever-increasing property tax burden in Indiana. She also worked many long hours as part of the grassroots effort that successfully replaced the evil Bart Peterson with Greg Ballard. Perhaps it's time we sent a fighter to Congress, instead of a ♥'er