Good morning. It is Tuesday, October 31st. It's five minutes after 10. It's Kendall and Casey on 93 W. I. B. C.

Well, coming up later in the show, we're going to speak with Nikki Kelly from Indiana Capitol Chronicle about this very article in which it states

that the Secretary of State Diego Morales has given a spot bonus to nearly every employee in his office this year.

Does include a family member and his former campaign manager for a total of more than $300,000. All right, Rob, before we get into this, please explain to me and everybody listening. What is a spot bonus?

Yeah, this is important, not because Diego is a goof and a loser because he is, but this is such an egregious abuse of taxpayer money.

And the way resources are supposed to be allocated in state government.

And so what they're talking about here is a spot bonus is a mechanism. And this was available when I was at the state and has been ever since. And it makes sense.

It is a resource available for state employees who go above and beyond what is asked. So

maybe there is some just gargantuan task given to them. They do it in a timely fashion. They get it in before a deadline. It exceeds the expectation. Maybe someone has

due to, you know, a layoff or an illness, been doing the work of two or three people. And you as either an agency director or in this case, as a state

white office holder, have the ability to say, look, you have exceeded the expectation set forth to an extent that here is something outside of your agreed upon salary in order to say, thank you for your service to the taxpayers. Now, let me be very clear about this.

They're supposed to be very rare. They're supposed to be used with immense discretion. And they are only supposed to be used to reward the absolute best performance that just blows the expectation, the reasonable expectation of the taxpayer out of the water.

All right. Well, it sounds like it's not going to be something that happens all the time and for an entire department.

No, absolutely not. No, it like you would you would hear about when somebody would get a spot bonus when I so I worked in the state auditor's office. And then in the as the pharmacy board director, you would hear about it.

Right. Like we have given Cindy a spot bonus because well, we were down to customer service reps for two months. And yet the amount of customer service calls that were answered were equal to or above what we normally have.

Cindy has exceeded her expectations. Everyone please put your hands together for Cindy. Right. I mean, these are the things we're talking about. We're talking about people who should get these spot bonuses.

Okay. Well, 80 bonuses were dolled out this year to 68 staffers in the secretary of state's office. 68 staffers. The office has 75 employees.

So pretty much all of them got a spot bonus. They all went above and beyond. Think about if you're one of the seven who didn't.

What are you doing? Are you seeing the writing on the wall, perhaps?

And very important to note, his brother-in-law, who I believe already has, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe already has a six figure salary with the state of Indiana, who Diego hired one of his first

hires was his brother-in-law also received not one according to capital capital, not one, but two of the spot bonuses.

Yep. So these bonuses ranged in price from $500 to $12,000. Can you imagine a $12,000 bonus? So it's an average of $4,540 per employee.

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