Pay-to-play special interests are POURING MONEY into Jeff Gahan's coffers to the tune of almost $150,000 in the past ten months.

At The Aggregate News, Nick Vaughn has initial coverage of today's candidate financial report filings.

On Friday, October 18th at noon, candidates across the State of Indiana running for municipal office were required to submit their "Pre-General" financial reports which disclose the amount of money they spent and raised since May of 2019.

In an effort to make information more accessible, The Aggregate News has received financial reports for all of New Albany's candidates. We have posted them on our Local Elections page. In the coming days, we will be analyzing the reports and will publish a story with our analysis. In the meantime, we encourage everyone to look through the reports.

As expected, Payhan's special interest donors dug deep in an effort to keep the gravy train rolling for another four years.

Incumbent Democratic Mayor Jeff Gahan raised the most money in the reporting period and possessed $276,472.87 before spending nearly $204,000 in the same time period. He currently has around $71,000 cash-on-hand.

That's the overview. It's going to take a while to digest 24 pages line by line, but suffice to say that Gahan's best out-of-town, pay-to-play friends have been extremely generous.

All the reports can be found here.

Here's a look back.

Gahan's first quarter CFA-4 has been filed, and it's another massive, quivering edifice of pay-to-play cash.

Gahan's first quarter CFA-4 has been filed, and it's another massive, quivering edifice of pay-to-play cash.

There is another $21,460 in the bank for Dear Leader, a full 35% of it coming from a $7,500 honker of a donation from Jorge Lanz -- this time skulking behind a different corporate alias.

Added together with his de facto city department (Jacobi Toombs & Lanz), this pushes Lanz over the $40,000 mark in lifetime pay-to-play love offerings to Gahan, eclipsing Clark Dietz's previous first-place total.

In fact, many of the heavy hitters are absent from Gahan's first quarter report, which points to two conclusions.

1. With $128,000 already in hand at the beginning of the year, Gahan had enough cash to absorb $40,000 in expenditures from January through March (only $16,000 net expenditures).

2. Gahan has been sufficiently untroubled by his opponent David White to allow his heaviest donors to keep counting spare change in preparation for the generl election in November.

Gahan's expenditures include a whopping $13,550 to EMC Research, located far outside the city limits in Columbus, Ohio.

Note the scratching of backs: Gahan gave $3,000 to ProMedia, which promptly returned $1,000 of it.

We'll be back when there is time to further analyze the numbers, but the conclusion is obvious: Gahan's pay-to-play campaign finance Shop-Vac is alive and well.

In 2017, days after Denton Floyd closed on the Reisz building using taxpayer money, these four high rollers involved with the project all donated to Jeff Gahan's re-election campaign.

$8,500 in one day's not a bad cut, eh? In 2017,the mayor sucked in just shy of $60,000 that we know about -- and it wasn't an election year.

If you want to know what the Reisz building is about, follow the money -- and keep track of the transactions.

Taxpayers foot the bill as this Gahan for State Senate video features the mayor talking about his lofty Summit Springs achievements.

Gahan's cult of personality is taking on hitherto elusive grandiosity as political decision time draws near.

He's giving us a shining city on a hill -- well, a summit at least -- and preparing a successor if the occasion arises.

Is it Beer Thirty yet?

Finland's "basic income" scheme interests Adam very much.

It isn't the first time this has been mentioned.

The Green Mouse has learned that our local Democratic wunderkind Ambitious Adam has proposed a very similar plan for New Albany: Basic Gahan Income (BGI).

The way it works: First, competitive bidding on contracts is to be eliminated entirely. Instead, the city will pay a set amount of money on a monthly basis to construction companies, pavers, consultants, vendors, builders, engineers, architects and others pledging fealty to Oz.

In turn, these recipients of BGI will pay back their own pre-set basic monthly amount, though to the Gahan for Next Whatever campaign fund, and not to the city itself.

It's boilerplate, right? Might as well be trend-setting, and often invited to address conferences devoted to the preeminence of campaign finance.

Just so long as THEY pay expenses, right Adam?

Finland Will Pay Everyone in the Country $876 a Month, by Briana Madden (US Uncut)

To fight poverty and boost its own economy, Finland is planning to issue a check for $876 to every citizen, every month. The concept is called basic income, and the Finnish government is getting closer to finalizing its implementation this month.

The Finnish Social Insurance Institution (KELA) is drafting the plan to pay every one of its 5.4 million people $876 per month, tax-free, which would replace social support programs, such as welfare and unemployment benefits. Though a proposal from KELA isn’t expected until November 2016, a pilot stage is currently planned prior to full implementation of the program.