“This is a 4-year-old story. This contract was voted on then, and even (McDermott’s) people voted for it,” Batistatos said. “As a board member, if I have a question, and it’s my job to be fiduciarily responsible, and if this was such a burning issue, at what point did Tom (Dabertin) or Andy say, ‘Speros, can you walk me through this? It begins within the board itself. If they say, ‘Well, I didn’t know,’ I would say, ‘Well, did you ask?'”
Batistatos said McDermott’s release of these figures is a distraction from the larger issue — Hammond’s $224 million debt.
“Hammond has a $224 million ticking time bomb, under the mayor’s watch for the last 16 years. Yet that has yet make a headline. This is political,” Batistatos said.
But McDermott said Wednesday that context is everything — only about $30 million to $40 million of that is civil city debt. About $87 million is from the Hammond Sanitary District, which remains under an EPA mandate for stormwater improvements, and a good…
