(La Porte County, IN) - La Porte County Attorney Shaw Friedman says Tim Stabosz is unsuited for the job of County Auditor.
Friedman said Stabosz has had “little desire to learn it, and that’s why these mistakes keep happening. He admitted to the County Treasurer when he was sworn in that he had never before worked in an office or supervised personnel, and it shows.”
Friedman said Stabosz blames this latest mistake on an employee Stabosz didn’t properly train and a vendor that has worked for the county successfully for many years.
The latest mistake is on the property tax billings recently sent out to homeowners. The identical figure on the supplemental homestead deduction credit as last year is reflected on this year’s billings.
More than 22,000 corrected tax bills will have to be reprinted and sent out again. Friedman said the cost of paying the vendor and postage would run into the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars due to this mistake.
Friedman said the mistake is from Stabosz losing focus on his job to keep creating turmoil in the county government and attacking him and other officials politically and personally.
“Had Tim Stabosz only spent 1/100th of the time he’s spent challenging my legal bills to cross-check these homestead credits before those bills were sent out like all prior Auditors have done, this mistake could have been avoided,” Friedman said. “He’s let his fanatical obsession with going after me overwhelm any obligation to do the job the taxpayers elected him to do. Sixteen months of claiming corruption and fraud with NOTHING to back it up."
Friedman proceeded to say this about Stabosz:
"He’s erratic, unfocused, and unwilling to do the hard work of that office. He never spends a full day in the office, often coming in late afternoons because he’s spending his time at home as a day trader or working on political attacks as head of the local GOP club.
His obsession with trying to find something, anything wrong with my legal work, caused him to blow a deadline to make the county’s bond payment on time last July 15th. He’d been warned a month before about the deadline, but because he was so focused on trying to show my legal advice was wrong on the Franklin Street bridge project, he took his eyes off the ball and missed the bond payment.
Then to compound his mistake, he didn’t disclose that missed bond payment for four months to our financial advisers, costing taxpayers $200,000.00 in a refinancing that had to be canceled in November.
The County Republican Party ought to be ashamed that they nominated him for this office, knowing that he caused the same chaos and turmoil when he was a city councilman attacking former Mayor Blair Milo and City Attorney Becca McCuaig.
I remain very proud of the work of my office in providing good, sound legal advice to this county, and I’m so gratified by the many calls from dept heads and elected officials who value our advice and counsel even in the face of these outrageous, baseless attacks by this Auditor who is completely unsuited for this critical job in county government.”
