The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 19: Department heads, insurance peddlers, duffers and a few other odds and ends from Gahan's long and winding money trail.

Previously: The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 18: Clark Dietz, CD PAC top Gahan's "Quality of Distant Corporate Donors" chart.

Some people scuba dive, but during the coming weeks we'll be plumbing the depths revealed amid 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.

A few thousand dollars here, a few more there ... fish bowl at the fundraiser, manila envelope under the mattress ... multiply the bounty by eight lucrative annual fundraising cycles ... and pretty soon, we're talking about real money.

The heavy hitters have been revealed. Here are six mid-range donors, their cumulative totals, and a pleasant golfing digression.

Lemor Dowell, New Albany Heating & Cooling
New Albany resident and business
Longtime Democratic Party fundraiser, shadowy back alley eminence grise with a given name impossible for the campaign treasurer to spell correctly on a consistent basis.
Total: $9,200

Edward and Dana Culpepper Cooper, Culpepper Group
Out of towners
Insurance and all-purpose local notoriety (formerly of Maverick, yet another Neace Lukens connection)
Total: $8,600

Lochmueller Group, Dean Boerste
Out of towners
Evansville-based engineering and wastewater consultants. The fiefdom of Dean Boerste, described to the Green Mouse as "the Warren Nash of Tell City." Ouch.
Total: $5,750

David and Karen Wood
Out of towners
Ambiguous financial planners in Louisville. Perhaps Big Daddy G needs a retirement savings plan for all of Clark Dietz PAC's and HWC's easy money.
Total: $5,500
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Ecotech (Robert E. Lee and Bryan Slade)
Out of towners
Garbage collection and purported recycling.
Total: $4,050 in nine installments over the years

Ironically, at the Covered Bridge Golf Course web site there's a testimonial by Ecotech's Bryan Slade about the great success of a corporate golf outing. In 2015 both Robert Iezzi (Covered Bridge CEO) and the legendary Frank Urban "Fuzzy" Zoeller Jr. dropped $400 into the GahAnTM -- and also in 2015, with Gahan having surreptitiously funded a renovation for Valley View Golf Course, Laurie Kraft of Valley View handed back $650 to the mayor. Golfing combined total: $1,050.

And not to omit our good friends at Flaherty & Collins
Out of towners
Indy-based nationwide developers of apartments; with the help of Gahan's TIF subsidies and sewer tap-in waivers, Flaherty and Collins built the Breakwater -- twice.
Total: $2,250

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You may have been wondering about unions, a traditional source of funding for Democratic candidates. There have been a few union donations to Gahan, most of them made during 2011 and 2012, and the most recent in 2015. It's a relatively paltry sum, leading observers to speculate just how helpful Gahan's "economic boom" has been for unions.

Perhaps the mayor's current efforts to squelch unionization at the wastewater treatment plant are a more accurate barometer of his (un)helpfulness to working people.

• Carpenter’s Union 12-10 United Brotherhood Local 613
• Int’l Brotherhood of Electrical Workers & PAC
• Indiana State Building & Construction Trades Council Legislative Fund
• Indiana UAW SAC Joint
• General Drivers, Warehousemen & Helpers #89
• Laborer’s Intl Union of New Albany
• Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 502

Total: $6,350

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The single biggest personal contribution from someone who remains untraceable is $3,500 from Adam U. Kahn in 2014. Nothing before or since.

We have absolutely know idea who he is or why a guy from New York City would give this much money to a hack politician from New Albany.

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It should be obvious by now that nepotism is a huge part of New Albany politics during Our Time of Extractive Gahanism. As such, donor roles sometimes overlap and become intertwined, as with the family members of a son-in-law appointed to a city job, the brother-in-law assigned to a board, and so on.

Just the same, here are two lists of people who work for Gahan and also give to Gahan. They're the ones who'd prefer all paradigms remain static.

First, the department heads, appointees, board members and various other higher-ups.

Terry Ginkins ... NAHA board member 8,525

(Stan) Robison Law Office ... City Attorney 5,250

David Duggins ... Redevelopment/New Albany Housing Authority 3,146

Linda Moeller ... Controller 2,398
William Todd Bailey ... Police Chief 2,000

Edward J. Wilkinson ... Sewer Board 1,860
Shane Gibson ... City Attorney 1,295
Steve Bonifer ... City-County Bldg board 1,215
Warren Nash ... Party goon, Board of Works 1,049
Cheryl Cotner (Bailey) ... Board of Works, mayoral secretary 1,000

Carl Malysz ... (Ex) economic development 700
Bob Norwood ... NAHA board member 350
John Brinkworth (Ex) sewer board 300
Matthew Juliot ... Fire chief 300
Scott Wood ... Planning & zoning 300
Michael Hall ... Non-communications stifler 250
Nathan Grimes ... Sewer board member 200
Joshua Staten ... Redevelopment director 150
Tonya Fischer ... Economic development 100
Alicia Meredith ... Parks Director 100
John Rosenbarger ... Planning & zoning 100
Anthony Toran ... NAHA appointee 100

Total: $30,768

Then, a handful of rank-and file; most of them are police and fire. I've combined them, and may have missed one or two: Seven donors, 11 separate donations over an 8-year period.

Total: $2,625

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The preceding may seem like small totals compared with the bigger corporate donors, and yet in this installment we see just shy of $80,000 in donations, or $18% of Gahan's $438,000 from 2011-2018.

Coming next in Part 20, a summary. Then we move to the expenditures side of the ledger.

#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.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Jeff Gahan launches his 2019 campaign with more of the same threats, intimidation and mobster tactics. Is this what city employees deserve from a mayor?

New Albany is 14 months away from the primary election in 2019, and yet Team Gahan already is brandishing the well-worn brass knuckles.

Seeing as intimidation is Gahan for Life's single strongest suit, this comes as little surprise, although it's a pleasant twist that no one (apart from public housing residents) has been threatened with TASERing -- at least yet.

The Green Mouse says that Sunday's riverfront clean-up quickly became a showcase for Jeff Gahan to campaign against probable primary opponent David White.

In particular, it seems that some rank-and-file city workers were reminded again that visible public support for any opponent of Gahan's might lead to reprisals or termination.

I suppose the whip is one way of inspiring devotion.

It's a timely reminder that genuine progressives cannot trust the local Democratic Party structure to share their values when the party is invested in the continued power of a mayor who pays little heed to them. If a Democrat will not disavow Gahan's persistently non-democratic tactics, how can he or she be implement the first tenet of progressivism?

It can't be done.

If you've experienced threats and intimidation at the hands of Gahan and his thuggish inoperatives, let NA Confidential know -- confidentially, of course. Your story needs to be heard by the voters.

#FireGahan2019

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As an addendum, NA Confidential has been unable to confirm whether New Albany Mayor Jeff M. Gahan or anyone working in the city's administration is under federal investigation or indictment for corruption, bribery or racketeering. It is standard policy of the U.S. Justice Department to refuse to confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of investigations or subjects of investigations. A similar policy exists at the F.B.I.

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ASK THE BORED: Whither Mickey Thompson?

Late last week, the Green Mouse reported heightened pager chatter among municipal operatives, suggesting a Gahan TV Dinner Kitchen Cabinet reshuffle was under way.

An immediate spike in Bud Light Lime sales seemed to confirm the rumors, though matters remained firmly under wraps, far below the earth's crust (and the 5th & Elm "Big Dig") in the Down Low Bunker.

The Green Mouse believes that there'll be a new Street Department chief, with Mickey Thompson becoming a full-time troubleshooter of special projects, with special emphasis on checking completed infrastructure boondoggles to ensure that contractors have done what they were supposed to do, which should mean the performance of actual work, but probably implies closer attention to Gahan for State Senate gratitude tithes.

While Thompson is to remain seated on the Board of Public Works and Safety, it isn't clear who'll replace him as head of the street department. The mayor is said to be combing the ranks of his immediate family for suitable candidates.

Before the snow, there was a vacuum truck and doughnuts.

On Wednesday, Matt Nash posted this photo at Facebook.

Just witnessed this city vacuum truck run the red light at Vincennes and Elm. On their way to a storm water emergency? Nah, they're on a doughnut run.

Perhaps there is an ordinance expressly permitting the running of red lights by city vehicles if doughnuts are at stake -- and Honey Creme's an icon, for sure.

Problem is, much like the ordinance absolving the city from sidewalk snow clearing, no one can seem to find it, although on second thought, maybe the Bored of Works has mistaken it for a DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party by-law.

Paging Mr. Disney ...

Here's how to make top dollar as a public employee in your state.

At first I thought this was a joke.

Sadly, it is not humor, but real. Thanks to W for the link.

Infographic: Who’s The Highest-Paid Public Employee In Your State?

In May, a reporter at Deadspin released a carefully compiled map of the United States’ highest-paid public workers. After Reuben Fisher-Baum culled through state salary databases and various media reports, he tallied the findings.

The list of highest-paid active employees counts 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches, and 1 hockey coach. The leftover ten include five college presidents, a medical school chancellor, a medical school department chair, a medical school plastic surgeon, and a law school dean. (The math gets you to 51 positions because Minnesota’s football and basketball coach are each earning $1.2 million.)

Cops and firemen as second-class citizens. Can they still vote, Ed?

Let me get this one straight.

The proposed legislation would create a new sub-class of citizen, who not unlike the convicted felon, would have basic tenets of citizenship denied to him?

Meanwhile, with conflicts of interests over salary deftly "eliminated," and presumably with another stake driven through the heart of one or another union (isn't this the goal?), luminaries like Bob Caesar remain free to vote in favor of monies destined to be given to bodies like One Southern Indiana, of which he's a member, and which also is a conflict of interest?

Perhaps when Ed Clere and Ron Grooms finish stroking St. Mitch's backside and appeasing the reigning populist instinct (horrors -- just as long as it isn't that untidy bridge toll populism -- chortle) by means of legislation like this, they can begin eliminating the other conflicts of interest which roll merrily forward.

Let's toast the emerging GOP nanny state.

New bill to ban public employees from certain government boards;Current elected officials could serve remainder of their term, by Daniel Suddeath (Tribune)