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Geminus will take over for Lake County Drug Free Alliance By Carrie Napoleon Post-Tribune correspondent Last Modified: Sep 24, 2012 06:25AM Geminus Corp. has been tapped by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to be the lead agency for the new local coordinating council for distribution of the fees charged to drug and alcohol offenders in Lake County. The entity will be dubbed the Lake County Substance Abuse Council and will take over for the Lake County Drug Free Alliance, which was disbanded Nov. 15 by Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter and former Sheriff Roy Dominguez after the ICJI froze its accounts amid questions about spending. Mica Perry, ICJI communications director, said the Governor’s Commission for a Drug-Free Indiana appointed Geminus to the role at its regularly scheduled March 23 meeting. Geminus and Regional Mental Health were at the meeting to provide a brief overview of their proposals and respond to questions. Perry said all applicants including the sheriff’s department were given the same information and opportunity to submit a proposal to the Governor’s Commission for a Drug Free Indiana by the March 23 deadline. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich said he is very disappointed with the way things turned out, starting with how Dominguez disbanded the DFA without prior notice to Buncich a month and a half before he took office. Buncich said the program, which distributes between $300,000 and $500,000 annually for drug and alcohol enforcement, prevention and treatment, should be in the hands of the prosecutor and sheriff. “I am not pleased with the outcome. I still intend to pursue this and have every
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intention of regaining it in the future,” Buncich said. The sheriff said he had met with the local coordinator for the state who outlined the necessary procedures to have the council reestablished and had requested an opportunity to present the application. Before the department’s application was presented Geminus was selected as the lead agency. “Just to turn it over to a private agency, I’m disappointed and saddened,” Buncich said. The funding distributed through grants from the local coordinating council has been used by local law enforcement to purchase equipment and to fund drug education awareness programs such as D.A.R.E. Heather McCarthy, vice president of prevention services for Geminus Corp., said the company runs a number of different coalitions throughout the county and decided to apply to become the lead agency for the LCC when it learned the state was looking for other administrative organizations to run it. She said nothing about the application was covert. McCarthy said she was aware Geminus was one of three agencies that wanted to apply, including the Lake County Sheriff’s Department. McCarthy said the grant application process should begin soon and she is hoping funds will be awarded to recipients by July. She said the agency is reaching out to the former members of the Lake County Drug Free Alliance to be part of the new Lake County Substance Abuse Council, which plans to seat a seven-member board. The first meeting for the new Lake County Substance Abuse Council is at 1:30 p.m. Thursday at Geminus in Merrillville.
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