The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 11: Lawyers from afar, expressing gratitude to Jeff Gahan for their billable hours -- and the curious case of Stan Robison.

Previously: The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 10: Oh Cripe! Or, the path from Al "Indy" Oak's company PAC leads to Silver Street Park and Breakwater, and probably others.

Some people do pushups, but during the coming weeks we'll be plucking highlights from eight years of the Committee to Elect Gahan's CFA-4 campaign finance reports. Strap in, folks -- and don't forget those air(head) sickness bags.

With the exception of Stan Robison, who was selected by Jeff Gahan to serve as the secondary, non-bond-fee-harvesting half of our city attorney duo from 2012 through (circa) 2016, surprisingly few local lawyers have donated to Gahan4Life during the period 2011-2018, and most of the ones who did ceased tithing after 2011.

Well, Gahan fooled a lot of us those first few months.

INDIVIDUAL LAWYERS AND LOCAL LAW FIRMS

Lee E Buchanan 100
K. Lee Cotner 500
Faith Ingle Smith 700
Shane Gibson (city attorney/contractor) 895
William Lohmeyer/ Lohmeyer Law Office 300
Lorch Law Office 250
Robison Law Office Corp 5,250
Nicholas F. Stein 200

But as time went by, the outsiders definitely made up for it.

*OUT-OF-TOWN LAW FIRMS & THE LAWYERS WHO WORK FOR THEM

*Applegate Fifer Pulliam LLC 150
Total: $150

*Barnes & Thornburg LLP 2,800
*Jeffery M Mallamad 250
*Thomas A. Pitman 500
Total: $3,550

*Bingham Greenebaum Doll LLP 1,250
*Duane R Donton 100
*Donald J Graham 100
*Dwayne C Issacs 100
*J Richard Kiefer 250
*Hans W Steck 100
Total: $1,900

*Faegre Baker Daniels LLP 5,500
*Anthony Scott Chinn 500
*Frederick Garver 750
*David Gogol 1,000 (Washington DC consultant for Faegre Baker Daniels)
Total: $7,750

*Frost Brown Todd LLC 1,000
*Frost Brown PAC 8,000
*Nelson Dale Alexander 250
*Kevin Charles Murray 150
*Sarah S Riordan 250
*Beau Zoeller 350
Total: $10,000

*Ice Miller
*Thomas K. & Laura H. Downs 300
*Jeffrey Hokanson 250
*Andrew Miroff 500
*Thomas Mixdorf 500
Total: $1,550

*Mallor Grodner LLP
*Amy L Stewart 100
Total: $100

*Jonathon “Wienzapple” Weinzapfel 1,150
Total: $1,150

*Kelly Zullo 1,000
Total: $1,000

The tote board speaks for itself.

Townies: $8,195
Outsiders: $27,150
8-Year Total: $35,345

Returning to the confines of New Albany city limits, Robison contributed more frequently than his local colleagues (5 years) and also more than doubled their total. After Robison resigned as City Hall attorney, he was appointed by Gahan to fill a slot on the post-hostile takeover New Albany Housing Authority board, serving ever since as a pliant foot soldier under David "Captain Queeg" Duggins.

I noticed something else about Robison's donations, as dutifully reported on the mayor's CFA-4 sheet by his eldest daughter, then as now the treasurer.

It's Robison, not Robinson. No wonder Stan stopped giving.

#FireGahan2019

Rebuttals are welcome and will be published unaltered -- so don't forget spellcheck. If you have supplementary information to offer about any of this, please let us know and we'll update the page. The preceding was gleaned entirely from public records, with the addresses of "individuals" removed.

Next: The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 12: Madam I'm Adam, or the way HMB's Dickey brokers power and channels his party's beak wetting.

UPDATE: A Human Rights Commission would come in handy given the public housing putsch, but the same lawyer who wrote the belly-up human rights ordinance now sits on the public housing board. Now that's New Gahania.

Stan Robison's that lawyer, sans
pink slip from Glorious Leader.

It has been almost nine months since New Albany's Human Rights Commission made a feeble blip on the city's radar screen.

---

(January 19, 2017)

Gee, CM Phipps, we're mystified as to why the New Albany Human Rights Commission is moribund.

During the appointments phase of this evening's city council meeting, President Pat McLaughlin (4th District) asked Greg Phipps (3rd District) about the council appointments status of the Human Rights Commission.

According to the ordinance, council and mayor each appoint members to the HRC, and then the four pick the fifth.

Phipps waved him off, briefly indicating that the HRC seems dead, with no meetings for the past 18 months and no apparent interest. McLaughlin was more than happy to move to the next commission, and that's all we know. It isn't much.

I won't go into the lengthy and exceedingly futile history of the HRC's most recent incarnation, though almost exactly five years ago, we thanked Phipps for taking an interest.

Kudos to CM Phipps for making the Human Rights Commission's revival a priority.

Subsequently, perhaps no other single topic better illustrates the doctrine of Civic Gahanism than the history of our reconstituted Human Rights Commission:

Fundamental change is imperative, so long as nothing fundamentally changes.

Here's a short summary from 2015.

It was never Jeff Gahan's idea to enable a human rights commission, but in the grand scheme of political maneuvering, there was sufficient support that he acquiesced, pausing only to be assured that he'd receive credit for the sham he at first opposed, and would extract payback chits from those duly assuaged, redeemable for bonded boondoggles down the road.

Consequently, New Albany was gifted with vintage Gahan intellectual infrastructure: An entity neutered and defanged at birth, suitable primarily for posturing and press releases. The sycophants were delighted, and so little of merit occurred (for once, actually by design) that a whole other entity (Southern Indiana Equality) was privately created.

If you can find anything in this story to suggest a vote to re-elect Jeff Gahan, please let me know. While you're pondering this, consider yet again the "human rights mayor's" abysmal record in matters such as ... well, human rights.

Also from 2015:

Often in these pages, we advocate the notion of progress by design, and since 2012, New Albany has possessed a reconstituted Human Rights Commission. Since it was formed again and duly stocked with appointees, it has had very little to do, not because New Albany is a fundamentally functional utopia of tolerance and good sense, but because City Hall's evident design for the HRC has been that it remain unused -- reserved for show and public relations pronouncements, while kept hermetically sealed and out of controversy's way.

This has disgusted me from day one, and continues to do so. It implies that "quality of life" derives solely from capital intensive building projects, and has nothing to do with fundamental human dignity. It is both cynical and cowardly to first enable a Human Rights Commission, then render it caged and impotent.

My most recent reprinting of the following column on the topic of the Human Rights Commission was on March 21, 2011. The column itself was written in 2009. Ironically, as I read the final paragraphs, there is considerable irony. We certainly did determine that the members of New Albany's political class could vote "for" something.

Unfortunately, they seem to be content with form over content. This needs to change.

The HRC was reformed, then immediately stripped of working parts and left to rest atop blocks in City Hall's dustiest file cabinet. This was fine with the mayor, who never wanted it to be viable, anyway, and was perfectly content to accept the plaudits for a commitment to human rights that he doesn't possess in any discernible way, shape or form.

If Gahan, a self-described Democrat, did in fact possess such a commitment to human rights, chances are he wouldn't be telling people that the best solution to the housing "project" is to demolish it and ship housing authority residents to the county somewhere, perhaps in tent camps, as though he were speaking of toxic waste or cordwood and not human beings.

But in the end, the saddest cut of all is that Phipps, who has danced the limbo to Adam Dickey's increasingly discordant Democratic tune, went along with this shell game from the very start, garnering his own participation trophies and gold stars, and accepting a non-functional Potemkin facade of an institution as quid pro quo for rubber-stamping every one of Gahan's TIF bond and "quality of life" over-expenditures that crossed his desk.

It's a damned shame.

Gahan's done nothing for Phipps. Neither has the Democratic Party. Perhaps independence is the only true way for a New Albanian to preserve even a semblance of integrity amid the chicanery, dullness and corruption taken for granted by the big fish here in this tiny bird feeder of a town.

---

Let's summarize the current situation.

The revised, updated and currently moribund human rights ordinance was the work of the city's non-corporate attorney at the time, Stan Robison, who based it on an existing ordinance in Bloomington.

The commission formed to oversee the ordinance -- to educate and hear cases stemming from complaints about violations -- was emasculated from the start via a handy mechanism for all potential activity being shunted first to one or the other city attorneys.

The HRC was built for show, and in truth, it was unable to achieve even this in spite of the efforts of well-meaning commission members like Brad Bell, who saw the rot almost from the start and jumped a hamstrung ship to try his hand at an autonomous organization called Southern Indiana Equality -- which lasted two years and recently was disbanded.

In 2017 Robison, the architect of the subsequently neutered human rights ordinance, was appointed to the public housing board when Jeff Gahan packed it with bootlickers and sycophants willing and eager to implement the mayor's annexation of public housing properties for future luxury, and the necessary expulsion of hundreds of residents in the absence of a viable plan to shelter them.

When asked about the public housing putsch, Phipps the human rights campaigner has replied (in effect) that is no business of his.

Phipps' purportedly "Democratic" party has watched the human rights commission crash and burn, supports Gahan's public housing incursion, and continues to exist in an Adam Disneyesque netherworld of hypocrisy, wherein it is encouraged to criticize a Republican mayor in Charlestown for doing what a Democratic mayor in New Albany is doing even when the party's two best hopes for 9th district Congress surely know better.

The Putsch Man Cometh: Jeff Gahan waxes delusional about being a public housing "advocate," then cheerfully explains why he should be summarily deposed in 2019.

Welcome to Jeff Gahan's perfect Come to City: Human rights ordinances aren't worth the digital ink it takes to spell the word "deleted," while David Duggins, Stan Robison and Bob Norwood are in control of peoples' lives.

I'll stick with this meme from my 2015 campaign.

Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 2: Ulrich out, Robison in as city council attorney (15 January 2009).

LAST: Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 1: Gavel passed and triumphant Wizard on best behavior as council meets (6 January 2009).

The more things change, the more they stay the same: Having engineered the 2009 council presidency for Dan Coffey, Jeff Gahan joined Coffey in swapping city attorneys.

Relevant for 2017?

Coffey, undemocratic Democrats "win" as Lorch ousted from city council attorney position.

---

Ulrich out, Robison in as city council attorney?

15 January 2009

WTF?

I didn't attend tonight's meeting, but Lloyd just phoned, and evidently Jerry Ulrich has been displaced as city council attorney by Stan Robison.

I'll let the Highwayman provide the rest of the story in due time, but he also says that during non-agenda item public speaking time, Robison and council president Dan "Wizard of Westside" Coffey took ex-kingpin Jeff Gahan's place in publicly urinating on the Constitution v.v. a request to consider redistricting.

Whooo-eee. Stay tuned for a fuller report.

---

NEXT: Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 3: What The F@#* Opie? Ya Ain't Seen Nothun Yet! (16 January 2009).

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Apparatchik, or nomenklatura?

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

But why all these new words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words?

It's because a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys are eligible for this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, for those of us who want nothing more than to understand why we must pay legions of Louisvillians to do what locals can do on their own, more creatively and for less overall expense, all we have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something.

Again this week, our words are occasioned by the inquiry of a regular reader:

Can you explain why these are Shane's excellent new words, not Bob's or Larry's?

The idea for this column dates to a brief social media exchange between the senior editor and Shane Gibson, the city of New Albany's "corporate" attorney, as opposed to "garden variety" or "proletarian" attorney (Stan Robison).

In a revealing moment of pique, Gibson offered that NA Confidential is prone to using big words solely from a desire to be "smarter than everyone else."

Of course, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck ... but we digress.

To be sure, New Albany cultural dissidents often joke that the only city ordinance enforced with any degree of consistency is the one prohibiting the public use of words containing more than four syllables, and at least now we know who wrote it.

The specific word provoking the attorney's unsocial media ire was nomenklatura, as borrowed from Soviet-era Russia.

Or should the word have been apparatchik? Let's take a look at the difference.

Apparatchik /ˌɑːpəˈrɑːtʃɪk/ (Russian: аппара́тчик [ɐpɐˈratɕɪk]) is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government "apparat" (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management called "nomenklatura".

It's a difference in degree.

The nomenklatura (Russian: номенклату́ра; IPA: [nəmʲɪnklɐˈturə]; Latin: nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.

Virtually all were members of the Communist Party. Critics of Stalin, such as Milovan Đilas, critically defined them as a new class. Trotskyism uses the term caste rather than class, because it sees the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state, not a new class society. Later developments of Trotsky's theories, notably Tony Cliff's theory of State Capitalism, did refer to the nomenklatura as a new class.

The nomenklatura forming a de facto elite of public powers in the previous eastern block, may be compared to the western establishment holding or controlling both private and public powers (media, finance, trade, industry, state and institutions…)

Clearly, Shane's excellent new word is nomenklatura; there's nothing gray about this particular eminence.

Conversely, the apparatchik in this scenario?

Probably Stan.

Green Mouse: Stan Robison has resigned as city attorney.

The Green Mouse says that Stan Robison has submitted his resignation as city attorney, effective the end of 2014.

That's all we know, at least for now. Deputy Mayor David Duggins is said to be searching for a replacement from Sellersburg.

I first got to know Stan while working at the old Scoreboard Liquors, and I've always been a big fan of his. All the best to him in the future.

More on the human rights commission.

The vote may have been 9-0 on both first and second readings, but we mustn't assume a clean sweep on the third. City council contact information is at the municipal website, and I recommend residents in favor of the human rights commission to take a few minutes and communicate with the relevant district reps and the at-large troika.

Human rights commission one vote away in New Albany; Board could convene by the end of the summer, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — A human rights commission could convene within 30 days if it is approved on final reading later this month, New Albany City Councilman Greg Phipps said this week.

On Monday, the council unanimously approved the establishment of the commission, which Phipps vowed to back when he campaigned for office last year.

Phipps said there’s a need for a local board to weigh human rights complaints.

“We need to fill those positions and have a resource available if [residents] do encounter discrimination,” he said.

And there’s a wide variety of groups that could experience discrimination that should be protected, Phipps continued.

The commission’s charge would be to uphold equal opportunity for education, employment, property acquisition and access to public accommodations for residents regardless of race, religion or gender.

The human rights ordinance would replace an existing fair housing measure but would still uphold the same protections only with additional securities added.

"Honestly, if Floyd County had been paying what they were supposed to all along, this would not be an issue."

A full two days later, the News and Tribune has finally gotten around to updating the "discussion" on its Saturday editorial about park funding, and it's a doozy. Here's a sprinkling of opinion.

OUR OPINION: Mayor's veto sends wrong message.

Stan Robison (city attorney):
"The Mayor has taken a stand against the way things have always been, and he will stand by his veto to protect the citizens of New Albany against the fleecing it has taken at the hands of the County."

Scott Klink (president of the parks board):
"They must override this veto. We need one of those four 'no' votes to become 'yes' vote."

Steve (?):
"So, editorial board, by your reasoning if all of your subscribers failed to pay for 2 months of newspapers, then they could just work out an agreement to keep getting the Tribune and not pay the 2 month's bill that was owed."

NAC's view came yesterday. We believe it would be a mistake for the council to kill Mayor Gahan's veto tonight, because this issue only so much as hints at far funding larger concerns unlikely to be addressed so long as these temporary patches continue to be applied, and for so long as county government is not held accountable.

Newspaper editorial board: Let's hold hands, drink lemonade and sing happy songs about parks funding.

If I were a Nigerian in need of outside assistance in transferring my funds, I’d direct my e-mails to the following eager and willing aides: Publisher Bill Hanson, Editor Shea Van Hoy and Assistant Editors Chris Morris and Amy Huffman-Branham.

Just have one question: How is Bill Allen's building on Main Street any different?

This will require an extended excerpt, but am I awake or asleep? If the city proposes to institute enforcement against the perennially uncooperative and rambunctious Mr. Andres, may we expect slumlords to be on the run soon?

Is enforcement even permitted here?

New Albany demands Andres vacate property; City alleges business in violation of court order, zoning restrictions, by Daniel Suddeath

NEW ALBANY — The city of New Albany filed a show cause motion Wednesday accusing D Andres Enterprises of violating a court agreement to remove machinery, trucks and materials from property adjacent to the John-Kenyon Eye Institute along State Street by Jan. 31.

Company owner Dennis Andres neglected to obey a court order agreed to in November that stipulated D Andres Enterprises had to purge its equipment from the property, dispose of hazardous materials properly and follow zoning restrictions to use the area for his business, which includes dump truck and heavy machinery services.

The area in question is between the John-Kenyon Eye Institute’s property at 519 State St. and the D Andres Enterprises lot at 615 State St. There have been legal actions taken by the city against Andres stemming from the issue since 2009, as John-Kenyon Eye Institute CEO Paul Klingensmith said the adjoining property has become an “eyesore” to the neighborhood.

Perhaps oblivious to the way things tend to work in DNA's Come Down City, Klingensmith then drew himself up and spoke crazy words of revolution and upheaval, at least by New Albany's classically slovenly standards, which you can bet won't be referenced in Bob Caesar's Bicentennial coffee table book about the finest in bearded white folks and their bread.

“We want to be good neighbors, we don’t want anybody to lose their business or lose their ability to do business especially in this economy,” he said. “We just want people to clean up their act so that their property looks better, so the area looks better, so the neighborhood looks better.”

Clean up their act? Is this guy from a foreign country -- or perhaps Switzerland? Does he think he's Martin Luther, nailing theses/feces on the political disestablishment's door?

But it gets even better. Listen as the city attorney actually ... wait for it ... concurs!

But according to Klingensmith, Andres has claimed he was “grandfathered-in” to possession of the property adjacent to his 615 State St. business, but City Attorney Stan Robison doesn’t agree.

“He doesn’t own that property, he shouldn’t use it, he can’t use it, so we’re going to make it stop,” Robison said.

He described the lot in question as “pretty much a mess” and added he doesn’t fault neighboring property owners for being upset about the situation.

Hats off to Stan. While you really have to wonder whose dog Andres shot, by all means, let's rally in favor of this bizarre, against-all-tradition new precedent ... assuming, of course, that it isn't to be merely a one-miscreant deal.

Friday potpourri: Three ... two ... one ... and we have flushing.

It's true that outgoing New Albany city attorney Shane Gibson often was unfairly targeted by abuse from disgruntled troglodytes, but a change was inevitable given the third England administration's downward devolution. As the incoming mayor's appointment illustrates, the city attorney works for the current occupant, and my personal belief is that Stan will be a very good city attorney.

Mayor-elect Jeff Gahan appoints New Albany city attorney; Stan Robison has served New Albany before

Gahan confirmed that Robison sent a letter on his behalf to department heads and other supervisory employees of the current administration to tell them that they must go through the application process if they wish to keep those jobs.

---

Whenever the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce wields its legislative agenda to define what it means to be in business, I'm almost immediately embarrassed to be a called a businessman. There needs to be a different word so I can save face:

State Chamber of Commerce to roll out sweeping legislative agenda

---

The thought of Greater Louisville Inc.'s Joe Reagan taking precious pomposity time from his position on the Tolling Authority to portray a cancer specialist, too, somehow reminds me of Elena Ceausescu's inflated portfolio during Communist Romanian times:

Curtis Morrison: GLI using your tax money to redefine the definition of cancer

Either the 1st or 3rd, and maybe both.

I know it sounds obscene, but click on the image for enlargement.

Cosmic liability, Mayberry politics, designer flip-flops -- hmm, must be city council tonight.

I was teaching "beer class" (seriously) and couldn't make it to last evening's work session, so this question may have been answered.

R-09-16 Resolution To Appropriate E.D.I.T Funds To Assist Residents With Damages Caused By Recent Storms And Flooding

Can readers recall a bigger can of worms being opened by the city council than CM Jeff Gahan's proposal (evidently coming tonight) to extract EDIT funds to reimburse flooding victims?

Note that in asking this question, I'm not ignoring the drainage problems in the neighborhood behind my business interests off Grant Line. Once I owned a house there, and the blessedly unfinished basement was prone to the very same issues discussed by residents at the last council get together. Yes, I have seen sewage geysers. Three years ago, we killed a car dead by driving it into suddenly revealed, knee-deep water near Our Lady.

Just the same, as council attorney Stan Robison's pained expression last Monday indicated, does the city council really want to establish a precedent that it acts as the community's insurance fund, ready for tapping each and every time something goes wrong? How far (and for how much) does this responsibility extend? Does it ever end? And what does any of it have to do with economic development?

Answer to the last question: About as much as using EDIT monies to subsidize sewer rates, which is tantamount to a yearly political action committee donation to the re-election campaign of each city council member.

Not that storm and floor repair monies would resemble that remark in the 6th district sense, mind you.

It should be wonderful tonight, and I'll be blogging live if there's an available connection.

Go here for the agenda, spin your council wheels of flipping flopping chance and whim, and come out to the historic City-County Building tonight for these and other enduringly entertaining diversions, including the unknown landing point of the Blevins Memorial Swing Voter (i.e., CM Bob Caesar) on supplemental police funding. There's also the question of whether Gomer removes the bucket before Aunt B's cookie jar is emptied, but we'll let Goober resolve that one.

Who makes the call? President or group?

Given that the move surprised many people, both within and without the city council, it's a legitimate question to ask: How did council attorney Jerry Ulrich come to be replaced by Stan Robison?

Anyone know?

More than one city council member has been heard to remark that he first learned of the council attorney swap only upon entering the council chambers on January 15.

So, did the council's president have an obligation to consult with his betters before pulling the trigger?

In this instance, New Albany’s much ignored code of ordinances is mute, although the state of Indiana’s rule book has this to say:

IC 36-4-6-24

Attorneys and legal research assistants

Sec. 24. (a) The legislative body may hire or contract with competent attorneys and legal research assistants on terms it considers appropriate.

(b) Employment of an attorney under this section does not affect the city department of law established under IC 36-4-9.

(c) Appropriations for salaries of attorneys and legal research assistants employed under this section may not exceed the appropriations for similar salaries in the budget of the city department of law.

As added by Acts 1980, P.L.212, SEC.3.

“Legislative body” seems to imply that the entity as a whole is charged with considering such matter, although in the most recent case, it is painfully obvious that Dan Coffey made the rotating attorney decision unilaterally. Perhaps he consulted other selected council persons, but just as obviously, not all of them.

New Albany’s code of ordinances describes the president’s duties in this passage:

§ 30.16 PRESIDENT.

(A) The President shall preside at all meetings, preserve order, decorum and decide all questions of order subject to appeal to the Common Council. He shall appoint all standing committees and all special committees that may be ordered by the Council. All standing committees shall be appointed at the commencement of each year of the term of Council and shall serve only during the term of the President appointing same. He shall fill all existing vacancies that may thereafter occur in any of such committees.

(B) He shall sign all ordinances, orders and resolutions passed by the Council before their presentation to the Mayor, as well as the journal of proceedings.

(C) He shall vote on all issues, his name being called last.

('71 Code, §30.05) (Ord. 4600, passed 3-4-57)

There is no mention of appointments beyond committee members, and we'll let the "preserve order, decorum, etc" go until another day.

We’d be happy to hear from any council member or surrogate who can help us understand the process (if any) for replacing one council attorney with another.

Until then, and turning back to the state of Indiana’s guidelines for local legislative bodies, we find that there is an official remedy for Coffey's reign of error.

IC 36-4-6-6
Power to expel member or declare seat vacant; rules

Sec. 6. The legislative body may:

(1) expel any member for violation of an official duty;

(2) declare the seat of any member vacant if he is unable to perform the duties of his office; and

(3) adopt its own rules to govern proceedings under this section.
However, a two-thirds (2/3) vote is required to expel a member or vacate his seat.

As added by Acts 1980, P.L.212, SEC.3.

The question is whether anyone will use the necessary medicine.

Hmm … wonder how Jeff Gahan would vote?

Ulrich out, Robison in as city council attorney?

WTF?

I didn't attend tonight's meeting, but Lloyd just phoned, and evidently Jerry Ulrich has been displaced as city council attorney by Stan Robison.

I'll let the Highwayman provide the rest of the story in due time, but he also says that during non-agenda item public speaking time, Robison and council president Dan "Wizard of Westside" Coffey took ex-kingpin Jeff Gahan's place in publicly urinating on the Constitution v.v. a request to consider redistricting.

Whooo-eee. Stay tuned for a fuller report.

Meet the candidate: Stan Robison, Floyd County Superior Court 3, Wed. Jan. 16 at NABC.

Last week, Stan Robison announced his candidacy for the new Floyd County Superior Court 3 judgeship. The election will be on Tuesday, May 6, which of course is the date for Indiana's 2008 primary, and not coincidentally, the first of two NABC Elector nights this year.

But I digress.

Speaking personally, I've known Stan since the early 1980s. He's had a successful law practice in New Albany and has served as deputy prosecutor and public defender. He has my vote, but you don't have to take my word for it.

On Wednesday, January 16, there'll be a "meet the candidate and fundraiser" beginning at 6:00 p.m. in the Prost room at New Albanian Brewing Co., 3312 Plaza Dr., in New Albany. There'll be pizza, Progressive Pints, and the opportunity to get to know Stan.

I may be a bit late; there's a funeral earlier in the afternoon near Indianapolis. Even so, hope to see readers there at some point tomorrow night.

Stan Robison for Judge