Democrats React to Audit of IEDC and Desire More Info
Democrats React to Audit of Indiana Economic Development Corporation
STATEWIDE–Democrats are reacting to a recent audit of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. One of them, Representative Ed Delaney, believes there’s even more information that needs to be uncovered that was not in the audit.
“The State of Indiana has managed to spend $800,000 to have an outside organization come up with identifying conflicts of interests that we should have identified years ago. That’s all this report really does,” said Delaney.
Auditors flagged more than 30 instances where IEDC officials or board members had potential financial conflicts with outside organizations that received taxpayer funding. Yet, only one of those cases was formally reported to the State Ethics Commission.
“It does not tell us how much they made as a result of those conflicts. It does not tell us what agency failed to make them do their job. We don’t identify any culprits. We don’t know who made an excessive profit,” said Delaney.
Delaney says he was struck by the amount of hidden land deals and missing financial records that were in the audit.
“There were endless opportunities for overpayments or excessive travel and so forth. We don’t know who took advantage of those opportunities,” said Delaney.
Delaney is calling for there to be hearings about the audit.
“We need to bring people in from these agencies and ask them tough questions like ‘Did you overpay?’, ‘Where did the money go?’, and ‘Did we put too much money in the LEAP project?’, those kinds of things. But I predict we won’t have hearings. We’d rather redistrict Congressional seats,” said Delaney.
State Rep. Gregory W. Porter (D-Indianapolis) also read the audit. He says Republicans should not claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility.
“They turned a blind eye to the IEDC, and the recent travel report shows they’ll use taxpayers’ money for anything. Hoosiers paid $4,200 for a single helicopter trip and paid $56 for the governor’s two ice cream trips. The audit is a good start, but it raises more questions. We need more details, and we need to know who was involved. Hoosiers had millions of their hard-earned dollars misappropriated when many families are taking on debt to stay afloat. This audit proves a disservice to the people of Indiana that deserves a deeper investigation,” said Porter on Friday.
