They Deserved The Money

That a great society program designed to help the poor instead ends up allegedly enriching its administrators and cronies without doing much to alleviate the social ills it was supposed to correct is almost so commonplace that it isn't really newsworthy in Northwest Indiana.

So it isn't any surprise to read in the Northwest Indiana Times that attorneys for officials on trial for a alleged misdeeds related to a GUEA -- the Gary Urban Enterprise Association -- building sale say this:

Three Gary men took $150,000 of the $200,000 sale price of a building they didn't own because they deserved the money, their defense lawyers argued in court Monday.

The men -- County Councilman Will Smith Jr., tax collector Roosevelt Powell, and attorney Willie Harris -- had to work together in 2001 to sell a vacant grocery store to the Gary Urban Enterprise Association, attorneys said during the first day of the first GUEA fraud case to go to trial.

GUEA Gary Urban Enterprise Association trial Northwest Indiana politics