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Gov. Mike Braun deserves huge kudos for requiring the Indiana Economic Development Corporation to come clean about how it pays for the travel expenses associated with its international trade missions.
But there’s still much more work to be done to assure transparency throughout the rest of state and local government.
For years, the IEDC’s foundation hid behind its status as a nonprofit subsidiary of the quasi-public economic development agency and a federal exemption that allowed it to get away without filing the 990 federal tax forms that most nonprofits are required to submit.
Over the last decade, it also granted anonymity to most of its private donors, making it impossible for the public to know exactly what organizations were funding IEDC’s travel or how much they were donating.
Braun put a stop that to the IEDC’s travel-funding secrecy by issuing an executive order earlier this month that requires all nonprofits supporting state agencies to produce all missed state and IRS disclosure forms by the end of the year.
“If organizations like the Indiana Economic Development Foundation were created to assist state agencies with public business,” Braun said in a news release, “then Hoosiers need full transparency into how these non-profits operate, who funds them, and what they do with the money.”
Braun’s office said the IEDF has not filed a required annual report with the State Budget Committee since 2019. It received a Form 990 exemption in 2012.
The last time a media report offered a full accounting of the foundation’s activities was in 2015. After much nudging by The Indianapolis Star, the foundation actually released a list showing that more than 50 companies, trade groups and governmental entities contributed $2.19 million to the foundation from January 2014 to June 2015.
The Star reported that most of that money — about $1.7 million — came from utility companies. Duke Energy and its foundation gave the most at more than $456,000.
Requiring the foundation to resume providing that level of information is imperative for the IEDC to rebuild some of the public trust it has lost over its secrecy in assembling the massive LEAP Research and Innovation District in Boone County.
But the public trust needs to be carefully maintained across all sectors of state and local government, especially when it comes to the release of public records and providing aid to citizens and media trying to make sure all agencies adhere to public access requirements.
The Indiana Legislature struck a blow to that trust last year when it weakened the office of the public access counselor, a position that for more than 25 years has helped the public, the media and government agencies resolve their public access disputes without a costly court battle.
The Legislature severely limited the office’s ability to interpret the state’s Access to Public Records Act by requiring it to only consider the exact text of existing laws or applicable court cases. There appears to be no room for it to consider the spirit of the law.
Braun could go a long way toward remedying this situation by persuading his fellow Republicans in the GOP-dominated Legislature to remove the restrictions and give Jennifer Ruby, his newly-appointed public access counselor, the leeway needed to follow the law’s demand for expansive interpretation.
“This chapter shall be liberally construed to implement this policy,” the law’s preamble clearly states, “and place the burden of proof for the nondisclosure of a public record on the public agency that would deny access to the record and not on the person seeking to inspect and copy the record.”
Make it so.•
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Greg Weaver is editor of The Indiana Lawyer. Reach him at [email protected].
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