Ray Szarmach News Today

More than 900 Lake County employees received the wrong W-2s due to an undetected problem within the transfer of data to Lake County’s new accounting software and council members want to know just who is going to make those workers whole. Councilman Ted Bilski, D-Hobart, is one of the 919 individuals who received an incorrect W-2. He had already filed his taxes, signed his name and sent a check ...

Auditors from the State Board of Accounts recently walked off the job after being unable to obtain the data required to fully assess Lake Countys financial condition.

Two longtime Lake County Council attorneys will keep their contract jobs after a discussion about whether their services were required now that the council’s new attorney has been on board for about a year. Councilman Pete Lindemulder, R-Schererville, asked fellow council members to consider the consulting attorney contracts the body holds with attorneys Ray Szarmach and Gerald Bishop. ...

The Indiana General Assembly appears likely to resolve a separation-of-powers dispute among two branches of Lake County government.

A Tuesday decision over who the Lake County Council should select to represent them on the county’s Plan Commission divided the panel and left one new council member without any committee appointments.

The state did not have enough evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, court filings said.

The appeals court said a 1981 Indiana law authorizing the council to take over the countys purchasing from the commissioners remains valid, even though the council waited nearly 40 years

Former Lake County Councilman Tom ODonnell, a Democrat who represented the Dyer area, has been selected by the councils current members to serve as the councils new attorney.

HAMMOND — Lake Superior Judge John Sedia holds in his hands the future of Lake County government operations. In coming days, Sedia will decide whether to renew his April 16 decision giving the Lake County Council control over purchasing and data processing, or to revise his prior ruling as requested by the Board of Commissioners that currently manages both departments. Sedia heard arguments Thursday by two attorneys intimately involved in Lake County government for decades: John Dull, for ...

The filing lists five reasons for the “court’s order to be corrected” because it’s ruling is “contrary to law by not correctly applying the statutory language in the relevant statutes” given that, in large part, the 1980 law at the center of the case was repealed.