The (Munster) Times. August 28, 2019

Gary land deal smacks of insider trading

It smacks of insider trading, and the whole Region should be demanding better.

Veteran Times reporter Lauren Cross laid out the facts in her Sunday article, showing connected attorney and political insider Rinzer Williams III was buying up numerous tracts of Gary land at the county’s tax sale.

Some of that land is near the proposed site for a new land-based Gary casino, which promises a more profitable gaming operation in the Steel City, complete with new jobs and public revenue.

The casino project is an exciting and needed economic prospect for a long-struggling city.

But there are circumstances regarding Williams’ land acquisition that should be raising ethical eyebrows with county tax sale officials.

In recent county tax sales, Broadway Logistics Complex LLC, a corporation created in February for which Williams is a manager, has been buying up hundreds of tax-delinquent properties for cheap rates, Lake County tax sale records show.

Williams also works as the Gary City Council attorney, and he’s a privately retained consultant for the company planning the construction of a new Gary casino, which is to be located immediately south of the Borman Expressway near the Grant Street exit.

Gary Councilwomen LaVetta Sparks-Wade and Rebecca Wyatt were right last week to question the ethics of a politically connected attorney snatching up these parcels - real estate investments in which an insider stands to financially gain from land deals so closely associated with the city he’s already paid to serve.

Public records obtained by The Times show hundreds of the tax certificates purchased by Williams’ group were initially sought by an arm of city government, only to be snatched up instead by the connected attorney’s corporation.

For his part, Williams told The Times he sees no conflict with him standing to make money on the land deals.

Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson doesn’t see a problem with it either.

But agents of government owe a high-hurdle of ethical standards to the taxpayers they serve.

In June, Williams signed a requisite conflict-of-interest form with the city of Gary, stating he works for both the city council and as a consultant for Spectacle Entertainment, the company set to build a new Hard Rock Casino in Gary.

But that disclosure form says nothing of the corporation through which he is investing in large tracts of Gary real estate, much of which is near the casino property.

This falls well below the bar taxpayers deserve - and all Region residents and public officials should expect.

For generations, political corruption, ethical lapses and violations of public trust have taken their toll on our Region’s reputation at home and abroad.

As politically connected allies, friends and contractors of government continue to find new ways for their insider status to pay off, that reputation will only slip further into the abyss of public distrust.

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The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette. August 27, 2019

System Failure

Mark another failing grade for Indiana’s education policymakers. Their unending quest to attach a pass-or-fail label to public schools once again has them scrambling to avoid the fallout. Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders issued statements Monday calling for schools to be “held harmless” from sanctions under the state’s school accountability requirements.

The first set of scores from the new ILEARN test, administered in the spring to students in grades 3 through 8, will be released to the public on Sept. 4, but school districts have already received the results. One superintendent told us test scores across the state will likely fall by 25% to 30% from ISTEP+ scores last year. It is rumored that passing rates will drop from more than 50% to near 40%. School letter grades and teacher evaluations are tied to the scores.

This is not the first time education policymakers have created a mess. In an opinion column published in The Journal Gazette on Friday, Tippecanoe County school superintendents blamed “disconcerting implementation practices that will negatively affect students, their teachers and their respective school districts.”

“Those practices include: 1) testing students on materials they have had little exposure to; 2) providing a rescore request time frame before parents or school administrators could access any student’s ILEARN score; and 3) setting much higher pass/failure cutoff scores after the testing was concluded,” wrote superintendents Scott Hanback, Les Huddle and Rocky Killion.

Let’s review the state’s recent history on standardized testing:

. In 2010, Indiana became one of the first adopters of the Common Core academic standards, with a goal of statewide adoption by 2014 and alignment with state tests in 2015.

. In 2013, the state opted to leave the testing consortium set to provide the Common Core-aligned assessment and develop its own test.

. In 2014, the General Assemblyvoided the Common Core standards and adopted new standards, requiring a pilot test for the 2014-15 school year.

. The U.S. Department of Education informed Indiana in June 2014 it had to administer a “college and career ready” test by 2015 to comply with No Child Left Behind law provisions. The state had just two months to develop new academic standards and a test. The General Assembly designated ISTEP as the state test for 2014-15, even though it was in direct conflict of its federal waiver.

. With a pilot test added to meet federal requirements, policymakers learned in February 2015 that the new ISTEP would require up to 12 hours of testing. An executive order cut testing time to three hours.

. Online testing glitches were reported around the state in April 2015. In August, the testing vendor informed the state a scoring glitch would delay ISTEP results until December.

. The legislature repealed the problem-plagued ISTEP in March 2016, although students would continue to take the test until the spring of 2017. The new test was named ILEARN: Indiana’s Learning Evaluation Assessment Readiness Network.

House Education Committee Chairman Robert Behning, ILEARN’s architect, might have thought a new name would obscure the state’s failed record on testing. It does not. The lawmakers driving Indiana’s testing program and the State Board of Education, whose members are appointed by the governor and the legislative majority leaders, are responsible for the dysfunction. Another call to “pause” the accountability system simply adds to their sorry performance.

“Bringing consistency and continuity to how we measure student progress and preparing students for post-secondary success is a shared and important goal,” Holcomb said in his statement Monday.

There is no consistency and continuity in Indiana’s student assessment program, only chaos and unending costs. The state’s broken testing program should be a top issue in next year’s legislative and gubernatorial races.

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Kokomo Tribune. August 30, 2019

Registered to vote yet?

Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson’s office mailed postcards in 2014 to every Hoosier on the state’s active voter list. About 727,000 of those correspondence were returned as undeliverable.

Lawson’s office then sent a second round of voter registration postcards later that year, as part of state officials’ ongoing push to remove potentially inaccurate voter registrations from the rolls. All told, the Secretary of State’s office found 730,000 voter records to be out of date or invalid, The Associated Press reported.

The process of cleaning out voter registration rolls of Hoosiers who haven’t voted since 2014 continues in county clerk offices across the state, the League of Women Voters of Indiana, the Indiana NAACP and Common Cause Indiana say. And a federal court this week again sided with critics of a 2017 state law allowing election officials to remove voters from election rolls without voter notification.

Now is a good time to ensure your voter registration is up to date. The last day to register for the November general election is Monday, Oct. 7.

So, we have to ask: Are you registered to vote? Can you attest you’re a voter? Verify your voting status, particularly if you’ve moved or changed your name.

All you have to do is call your county voter registration office. In Howard County, that number is 456-2219; in Carroll, 564-6795; in Cass, 753-7870; in Miami, 472-3901, Ext. 226, and in Tipton, 675-2795.

If you’re not registered, all you need to do is fill out a simple form that asks for your name, address, birth date and a voter identification number (that’s your Indiana driver’s license number).

If you don’t have a driver’s license, then you must provide the last four digits of your Social Security number. And if you don’t have that, you’ll be assigned an ID number by your county of residence.

You can register at your county voter registration office, circuit court office, public assistance office or online at www.indianavoters.com. You won’t need to present personal identification documents.

But don’t forget. On Election Day Nov. 5, you’ll need to bring with you a picture ID, issued by the state or federal government. Your driver’s license will be sufficient.

However, if you don’t have a valid license, you’ll need to get a state ID card at a license branch.

If you’re religiously opposed to being photographed, you’ll still be allowed to vote. And if you forget your ID Election Day, you’ll be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.

You have a stake in your community, state and nation. We encourage you to get registered and vote.

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