South Bend City Hall Met in Secret and Then Moved to Silence the Public
- Logan Foster
- Jan 21
- 4 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
By Logan Foster | Redress South Bend January 21, 2026
South Bend’s elected officials are not even pretending anymore.
At 6:00 p.m. on Monday, January 5th, 2026, the South Bend Common Council held its annual organizational meeting. The published agenda scheduled the session to run until 7:00 p.m. In that hour, the council elected its leadership and confirmed the council attorney, decisions that set agenda control, committee power, and legislative authority for the entire year.
At approximately 7:00 p.m., immediately after adjournment, a majority of that same council relocated together to Manny’s Sports Bar.
Those council members were Canneth Lee, Ophelia Rodgers, Sharon McBride, Sheila Niezgodski, and Karen White.
They were joined by Bianca Tirado, the elected City Clerk, and Darryl Scott, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff. Darryl Scott reports directly to Mayor James Mueller, tying the Mayor’s Office to the gathering in both optics and authority. No notice. No minutes. No public access. Just a private table where the city’s legislative and executive power sat shoulder to shoulder, out of view, minutes after deciding who would run the council and who would serve as its attorney.
What Happened Next Wasn’t Coincidence
Two days later, on Wednesday, January 7th, 2026, those same officials filed the first bill of the year.
The proposed ordinance does not expand transparency. It does not strengthen ethics rules. It does not protect whistleblowers.
It eliminates the public’s ability to file complaints against the very officials who wrote it.
A Bill to Erase Public Complaints
The ordinance, filed in the City Clerk’s Office as Bill No. 01-26, repeals and replaces the section of the municipal code that allows residents to file written complaints against council members. It explicitly “eliminates the process and procedures for filing complaints against council members” and argues that such complaints are too often “frivolous, meritless, repetitive, and legally incorrect.” It urges South Bend to join other cities that do not allow formal complaints at all and suggests residents take concerns to the police, the prosecutor, or the ballot box instead.
Read that again.
City Hall meets privately, immediately after major votes, with senior executive officials. Then, forty-eight hours later, it introduces a bill to shut down the public’s only formal mechanism to complain about council misconduct.
If this were happening in Washington, it would dominate cable news for weeks.
Officials will say the Manny’s gathering was social. They will say no business was discussed. They will say critics are overreacting.
The public is expected to believe that a governing majority just happened to end up at the same table with senior executive staff right after a consequential meeting, and that nothing remotely related to city business came up.
That claim is not serious.
Even if no formal deliberation occurred, the appearance alone is disqualifying.
When a quorum of a legislative body assembles privately, immediately after exercising power, in the company of executive leadership, the burden is not on the public to prove misconduct. It is on officials to demonstrate restraint, judgment, and respect for open government.
They failed that test. Timeline of Events
January 5, 2026 – 6:00 p.m.: Common Council organizational meeting
January 5, 2026 – ~7:00 p.m.: Council majority meets privately at Manny’s Sports Bar with executive staff
January 7, 2026: Bill No. 01-26 filed to eliminate public complaint process
From Private Meeting to Public Shutdown Then comes Bill No. 01-26.
It does not merely adjust procedure. It abolishes civilian accountability. It repeals the ordinance that allows residents to file complaints and replaces it with nothing. No screening standard. No early dismissal process. No penalties for bad-faith filings. No alternative public oversight mechanism.
Just elimination.
The bill’s sponsors claim they are responding to frivolous complaints. But nowhere does the ordinance define frivolous. Nowhere does it propose narrower reforms. Instead, it chooses the bluntest instrument available.
Total erasure.
When officials face scrutiny, they do not fix the system. They dismantle it.
And the logic of the ordinance is breathtaking in its arrogance. It tells residents to take ethics concerns to the police or prosecutors, as if every abuse of power is a crime. It gestures vaguely at elections, as if misconduct only matters once every four years. It frames public accountability as an administrative inconvenience rather than a democratic obligation.
And when paired with a private post-meeting gathering of a governing majority, it stops looking like incompetence and starts looking like intent.
Five council members met privately with top executive staff at approximately 7:00 p.m. on January 5th, immediately after major votes. Then, on January 7th, a bill was filed to eliminate the public’s ability to file formal complaints against those same officials.
That sequence matters.
It is not just that City Hall gathered behind closed doors. It is that it did so and then moved to dismantle the very system that allows residents to hold City Hall accountable.
This is what power protecting itself looks like.