By Eric Stock
BLOOMINGTON – A former Bloomington alderman said she sounded the alarm for years about misconduct in the management of the city-owned arena, but city officials didn’t want to listen.
Judy Stearns, who served on the council from 2011 to 2015, told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin, the city council operates like a ‘private club’ and surrendered its role as a check on the city’s fiscal management.
PODCAST: Listen to Scott’s interview with Stearns on WJBC.
“With the culture of ‘Oh my goodness, we can’t look, we can’t ask, everything is always great… with that culture, it can and will happen again,” Stearns said.
Stearns said the city could have revisited the contract with CIAM in 2014 when the hockey team changed affiliations and the contract came up for renegotiation.
“I said here’s an opportunity when we went from pro to amateur hockey to get into the contract because in essence they are breaking the contract,” Stearns said. “So we can renegotiate, we can look into the contract and make sure we see the numbers that we need to see.”
Stearns said she voted for the new agreement then because she was assured the city would do a ‘deep dive’ into the arena’s finances, which she said never happened.
Mayor Tari Renner has said CIAM refused to turn over its books as a private company, while City Manager David Hales has said the city’s external auditors didn’t find the fraud.
Bloomington hired VenuWorks in April 2016 after the city’s 10-year contract with CIAM expired.
Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].
