In January I asked the City of South Bend for three sets of public records. The city confirmed it had received all three. Then nothing happened.
Two of those requests are now 203 days old. The third is 190. The city has not fulfilled a single request. It has not denied any request either. It has not pointed to anything in Indiana law that would allow it to withhold the records.
Redress South Bend filed all three requests, as well as the complaint that went to the Public Access Counselor.
The Records We Requested
The land records. In a televised interview with WSBT’s Bob Montgomery on or about December 18, 2025, Mayor James Mueller said there had been “a high level conversation” about developing roughly 300 acres near the ethanol plant. He said the developer reached his economic development team through an intermediary. He did not say when. I asked the city for its records on that project, cited Mueller’s TV interview, requested emails, whether a data center is planned, and whether anyone discussed tax breaks or tax increment financing.
The council records. The Common Council took up Bill No. 01-26, which eliminated the process by which the public filed complaints against common council members. I asked for the emails and messages behind it, including anything about executive sessions and the state’s Open Door Law. The request named the mayor, staff, and nine council members.
The mayor’s calendar. I asked for Mueller’s daily schedule from the start of 2025 through late January of this year, and for any written policy the city follows when it decides what on that calendar the public gets to see.
The city logged the first two requests on January 14 and the third request on January 27. Its filing numbers are AR26-0108, AR26-0109, and AR26-0188.
The City’s Response
In February, the city asked me to narrow the first two requests. I did that on February 20, cutting each down to a six-month window. Nothing from the city since.
I asked for a status update on the calendar in early March. The city wrote back that it was waiting on records for legal to review. I asked again at the end of that month. This time the answer was that the city was waiting on responsive records from the department.
That was March 31, day 63. I filed a formal complaint with the Office of the Indiana Public Access Counselor (PAC) the same afternoon.
Two weeks later the counselor’s office sent the city notice of the complaint and asked for a formal response. That was April 14. No opinion has come down since, and the counselor’s office has not sent me anything from the city.
The Last Time I Asked For Mueller’s Schedule
I have requested the mayor’s calendar before, in October 2023, for a six-month stretch. What happened then is the reason I know how long this ought to take.
That request also went slowly. The city offered to send the calendar a month at a time, then missed its own estimate. At five weeks I wrote to say I had received no records, no timetable, no denial, and no contact that I had not started myself. At seven weeks I asked again.
The next day the city told me it had reached out to “Attorney Sandra Kennedy.” Kennedy is the city’s corporation counsel, the top lawyer in the legal department.
Kennedy wrote back that same day, on the Department of Law letterhead. The request had been referred to her, she said. The calendar was being released with parts blacked out. She named the law she was relying on, a provision that gives a city discretion over diaries and personal notes, and said entries fitting that description had been removed, along with private citizens’ phone numbers and home addresses. She signed the letter as corporation counsel.
That was day 53. The records came the next morning.
The request I filed in January is slightly bigger. It covers close to thirteen months rather than six, and it also asks for the city’s calendar policies. It is still the same kind of record, a schedule kept in a city system, and the city has never said the extra months are the holdup. Its only written explanation has been that it is waiting on the Mayor’s office to provide the records.
Our Calls For Updates
Everything up to this point I did in writing. The requests, the follow-ups, the amending the city asked for, the complaint to the PAC. Over six months of it.
On July 27 I picked up the phone. I called the legal department again on July 31, and again on August 4.
A staff member took each call and, annoyed, noted that I had called before. None of the three calls produced a status update or a date the records would be produced. On one of them I was told the city processes records requests in a reasonable time. I said six months is not a reasonable time for the mayor’s schedule.
I left a voicemail for Kennedy on each of those days, on her direct line. She has not called back.
South Bend’s Legal Department
Agency size is one of the things the PAC weighs when deciding whether a delay was reasonable.
South Bend’s 2025 filing with the state’s Gateway system lists 21 people in the legal department, at a combined compensation of $1,320,478.92. Ten hold attorney titles. Kennedy’s compensation is listed at $145,983.82.
The filing does not show how many of those people work on records requests, or how many requests the department was handling this year.
The PAC Has Ruled In My Favor Against The City Before
Last year the PAC took up an earlier complaint of mine against South Bend, this one over invoices from law firms the city had hired. PAC Jennifer G. Ruby found the city broke the law. Only two firms were covered by the request, she wrote, and monthly bills should have been a small job to gather. In her opinion, four and a half months to produce the records was too long.
Ruby’s office, as well as previous PAC’s, have suggested that 30 days is the ordinary mark for producing records, adjusted for how big the agency is, how big and complicated the request is, and how much else is in the queue.
I cited that opinion in the calendar request itself, back in January, and asked the city to move promptly because a calendar is a record the city keeps anyway.
In 2023 the city signed a response to the calendar request on day 53 and sent the records the following morning. The calendar request I filed this January is 190 days old. The other two are 203 days old (at the time of writing this.) The city has produced nothing and has refused to provide any information on if or when they will fulfill these requests.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
