Conflict of Interest

On Monday June 16, 2008 at a meeting of he Fallcreek Township Board of Trustees, the big discussion was an agreement between the Township and the Town of Fishers, Indiana.

I am not going to bore all of you with details on this agreement. Rather, I want to talk about how elected officials act in the State of Indiana and how we need to clean house and get some laws changed.

One member of the Township Board is a financial consultant; in a previous meeting he stated that he had a possible conflict of interest with the Town. What he didn’t state was that he received compensation in excess of $16,500 in the year 2007 and was going to get more this year. Also that he has been consulting to the town for years and years and being paid all those years.

I formally requested he step aside and even leave the meeting all together. According to the Township attorney he didn’t have to leave, just not vote on the issue. This came from an attorney who has clients that will directly be affected by the actions of the document they were discussing.

Now if I had not said a thing, I am willing to bet he would have voted.

To me this is a clear-cut conflict of interest and both he and the attorney should have left the meeting. For him to continue to chair the meeting and the attorney to provide legal opinions on the document they were going to approve is not exactly above board.

We need a law in Indiana that enforces and better defines what is a conflict of interest and another law that forbids any elected official to have a contract with any government agency.

You can’t have two masters – it’s either the people or the government. If you are elected you are given the public trust and if you are being paid by another agency, how can you have the publics trust.

My name is Joe Weingarten and I am running for the 29th House District in the State of Indiana and I approve this message.