Commissioners sign off on $4.4M bond issue

Aug. 15--CROWN POINT -- The Lake County Board of Commissioners approved Wednesday a bond ordinance that will raise more than $4 million to pay out settlements to people who have sued the county for alleged wrongdoing in recent years.

The ordinance authorizes the county to sell bonds, payable over a 10-year period, to fund at least 28 settlements reached in 2018 and 2019.

Known as a judgment bond, the loan is needed because the county has about $700,000 in its self-insurance fund -- well below the $4,006,617 it owes to plaintiffs as a result of the settlements.

At $4.4 million, the bond issue authorized by the ordinance would cover the judgments plus associated legal costs, according to John Dull, an attorney for the Board of Commissioners who worked on some of the settlement negotiations. Dull had originally proposed a bond issue of $5 million but revised that figure down after wrapping up negotiations with a final plaintiff earlier this month.

"I shot high, then we came back to where we're at," Dull told The Times.

The Lake County Council passed the bond ordinance on second reading Tuesday. Now that county commissioners have signed off on the proposal, it will be sent to the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance for final authorization.

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Neither Dull nor Matthew Fech, the commissioners' primary legal adviser, expects the DLGF to reject the bond issue, which will pay an annual interest rate of no more than 6%, according to a draft of the ordinance.

Lake County has issued bonds to pay for legal settlements several times in the recent past, but the latest proposed judgment bond is significantly smaller than the previous two. Lawmakers approved a $7 million judgment bond in 2015, followed by a $7.5 million bond in 2017.

The latest judgment bond ordinance comes after county attorneys finalized the last of 28 settlements that will be paid through the bond issue. That lawsuit, filed in 2017 by the family of deceased Gary transit police Officer Burt Sanders, was settled in early August for $680,000, according to county records.

Other high-dollar settlements to be paid through the judgment bond include a deal to pay $550,000 to a Hammond man who suffered brain damage when a Lake County police officer slammed into his car during a vehicle pursuit in 2016, and $354,000 to a group of Lake County police officers who were owed unpaid overtime under federal labor law.

"Our attorneys worked extremely hard to effectuate the best possible settlements in cases against Lake County," Fech said. "Getting these matters settled frees up attorneys to defend (other) cases more vigorously."

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