THE PETE AGOSTINO FILE

§01 — The Man and the Office

Peter John Agostino — "Pete Agostino" — is a shareholder of Anderson, Agostino & Keller, P.C., of South Bend. His firm's biography lists his practice areas as municipal law and civil litigation. He holds Indiana Attorney No. 10765-71, the number on his own court signature blocks. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1986, after Notre Dame: a B.B.A. in 1983 and a J.D. in 1986. His office, in his own filings, is 131 South Taylor Street, South Bend. The Hawkins Family Foundation's own page describes him as a board member and "co-owner, Anderson, Agostino & Keller, PC," which corroborates the shareholder status his firm states.

St. Joseph County's official Town of Roseland page lists the town's government as it stands today: President Mike Schalk, members Curt Lynn and Elizabeth McCombs, Clerk-Treasurer Ann Rulli — and Town Attorney Pete Agostino. The president’s own file is File No. 2. He has been in that chair since at least October 2000, when a South Bend Tribune article of October 23, 2000 identified "Town Attorney Peter Agostino" advising the council on the South Bend water-sewer lawsuit funding and a proposed Fire Protection Territory with Clay Township. That is more than twenty-six years of records with his name in the town's chair. Whether every one of those years was continuous is a question the records leave open, and this file leaves it open with them (§04).

The role on paper is not ceremonial. The town's 2025 council agenda template carries "PETER AGOSTINO, ATTORNEY" in its header. The January and February 2024 minutes list him present and advising on ordinances, motions, a bond payment, and direct deposit. On December 17, 2024, a St. Joseph County Area Plan Commission record shows "Peter J. Agostino, town attorney for Roseland" speaking for the town's floodplain-ordinance amendment. When Roseland's government acts on paper, its attorney is in the room, and the attorney is Pete Agostino.

§02 — The Missing Paper

Start with what does not exist in any public source this file could find. No resolution hiring him. No appointment vote. No engagement letter. No competitive-selection record. For a town-attorney engagement now in its third decade, not one piece of the hiring paper has ever been published, and his tenure predates the town's posted minutes archive, so the archive cannot supply it.

The money is the same shape. No rate, no retainer, no annual total, and no payment record for his Roseland work appears in any public source searched. Twenty-six years of town-attorney work with no published figure is the documented state of the record, and this file states it as exactly that: an absence. Not an accusation. An absence.

The records that settle both questions exist, and they are named here so they can be pulled: the council resolution or engagement letter and the January organizational-meeting minutes for 2000 and each reappointment year, by public-records request to the Town; and the Town's claims dockets and accounts-payable registers for the vendor "Anderson, Agostino & Keller" from 2020 through 2026, or a vendor-payment pull from Indiana Gateway. Until one of those pulls lands, the engagement behind twenty-six years of advice has no paper the public can read.

One public pay figure for his government work does exist — for a different client entirely. The South Bend Community School Corporation pays his firm $300 an hour. It is carried at §09, its renewal at §05, and it is the only number of its kind in this file.

§03 — The Night He Seated the President

On January 11, 2024, the Roseland Town Council met in regular session, and its own minutes record this sequence. Member Elizabeth McCombs stated she did not recall a vote being taken at the January 4 organizational meeting. Approval of those minutes was tabled. Town Attorney Pete Agostino then recommended that a motion be made to ratify the vote for Michael Schalk as Council President. Schalk moved to ratify his own election. Ryan Catanzarite seconded. The motion passed 2–0, with McCombs abstaining.

Everything else Agostino is recorded doing at that meeting is routine counsel work in the same minutes: reporting Planning Committee items, restating ordinance language, asking Schalk to restate the SBOA-training motion and stating it did not supersede state law, and advising on the bond transfer and direct deposit.

§04 — The Long Roseland Record

2000 — the water-sewer era. As town attorney, Agostino advised on the funding sources for the town's position — the Build Indiana Fund, the Toll Road Corridor Fund, and the Bond Bank — and on forming a Fire Protection Territory, across the January–April 2001 window. A separate litigator, Jay Lauer, was the town's litigation counsel; the town was then paying $45,000 a year to Clay Township for fire protection.

2004 — the violation somebody else answered. In Opinion 04-FC-138/139 (September 13, 2004), the Indiana Public Access Counselor found the council had violated the Open Door Law, a majority of its members having viewed a property without notice. The council's response to that complaint was filed not by Agostino but by attorney Glenn L. Duncan, signing as "legal counsel for the Council." Why the town attorney did not answer it is not in any record this file found. It is the first appearance of a gap that recurs below.

2007 — a $50,000 settlement on his watch. In November 2007 the council approved a $50,000 settlement of Cheryl Engel's suit over roughly $98,000 in code-violation liens, driven by a St. Joseph Superior Court order from Judge Michael Scopelitis. Agostino was town attorney in that period, subject to the continuity question below. No public record attributes fault, or contested advice, to him in it, and this file does not either.

2012 — the opinion in the Town's favor, in his hand. A resident, David R. Snyder, filed a formal complaint alleging the Town violated the Access to Public Records Act, and characterized a February 17, 2012 letter from Agostino in heated terms. Those characterizations are the complainant's words — an allegation the Counselor never adopted. What the opinion records is that Peter J. Agostino responded on behalf of the Town on February 17 and February 21, 2012, produced records, and won. Public Access Counselor Joseph B. Hoage, March 29, 2012, Opinion 12-FC-61:

That opinion matters to this file beyond 2012. It is the documented precedent that the Roseland town attorney personally answering records requests is a long-standing practice in this town, blessed by the Counselor himself. Remember it when §08 reaches the records wall of October 2026, where no Agostino role is documented at all.

The Lipsky gap — an open question, stated as one. Public Access Counselor materials from 2007–2008 name Michael Lipsky as Roseland's town attorney. Combined with Duncan's 2004 response, the paper shows two other lawyers in or near the town attorney's chair in the middle of Agostino's tenure. Whether those were special-counsel engagements or a genuine interruption is not found in any record in hand. The settler is named: the Town's engagement and appointment records for 2000–2010. Until they are pulled, this file says "since at least 2000" and nothing stronger.

Recall-era litigation. South Bend Tribune archive index entries show Agostino arguing for the town side in a Roseland recall case, conceding his constitutional argument was novel. That is an index entry, reported here as reported; the underlying article has not been pulled. The settler is the Tribune archive article and the recall case docket.

§05 — The Roster

Roseland is the file's center, but it is not the practice. Agostino is one of the most retained municipal lawyers in St. Joseph County, and the rest of the roster is part of the record: it is where the only public pay figure lives, where his documented judgment calls sit, and where two of his 2023 clients sat on the board that hired him.

South Bend Community School Corporation — hired January 30, 2025, on a 4–3 vote. The board hired his firm and declined, by the same 4–3, to retain the incumbent firm of Church, Church, Hittle & Antrim, district counsel since 2018. Trustees Stuart Greene, Marcus Ellison, and Kate Lee voted against. The terms, approved April 30, 2025: $300 an hour, no retainer; the firm represents the district and the board, with Agostino holding primary responsibility; the agreement runs from February 2, 2025, and either party may terminate it, the board without cause. On March 9, 2026, the board renewed the engagement for another year — 5–0, with Trustees Jeanette McCullough and Bill Sniadecki absent — at the same $300 an hour, legal assistant fees capped at $300, termination without cause preserved (South Bend Tribune, March 10, 2026). The total the district has paid at that rate is not found in any public source; the settler is the district's claims dockets and BoardDocs payment records.

The Save Clay history — both sides, because both are documented. Before the school board hired him, Agostino helped form Save Clay, the community group that opposed closing Clay High School. On June 30, 2023, he signed — with firm colleague Christian J. Matozzo — a Motion to Intervene in the federal consent-decree case, United States v. SBCSC (3:80-cv-00035-PPS), on behalf of Save Clay, Inc. and petitioners Jeanette McCullough, Mark Costello, and Stacy Gates. The motion itself states that McCullough and Costello were duly elected trustees who had voted against the Clay High School closure on April 17, 2023. Judge Philip P. Simon denied the intervention on October 16, 2023. Agostino also registered "Save Our Schools" as a political action committee supporting school-board candidates.

None of that was hidden from the board that hired him. At the January 30, 2025 hiring meeting, Trustee Greene said she was "uneasy," and a member of the public urged the board to get "independent counsel." Agostino did not deny the connections. He said he was not involved in the groups' "day-to-day decision-making" or contribution collection, and he said he would withdraw from the suits against the corporation if hired. Trustee Mark Costello — his client in the 2023 intervention — was among the trustees who voted to hire him. Whether any written former-client conflict analysis or waiver exists is not found; the settler is the board's records for January–February 2025.

The schools record, sorted. What follows is everything else the public record holds about the district during his tenure, sorted the way this file sorts everything — by what the paper shows. (A) His hand: where he is documented acting. (B) Surfaced on his watch: where the findings landed while he was the board's lawyer and its public voice, and his documented role was to answer for them. (C) Inherited: conduct that predates his February 2025 hiring, printed as predating him. "Under his watch" in this file is a tenure frame — he was the board's lawyer while it unfolded and while the explanations were given. It is never a claim that he caused what he inherited, and §11 carries the other half of that honesty.

A — His hand

The investigators reported to him. The same January 30, 2025 special meeting that hired Agostino hired two outside investigators to examine allegations of illegal or unethical activity by the administration and the board over the previous five years — $90 an hour each, contracts approved alongside his own on April 30, 2025 and effective February 2, 2025, no cap and no end date; together with his $300, the board committed roughly $500 an hour of outside help. The executed agreement in the board's own records runs the arrangement through the board attorney: quarterly itemized invoices, and reports to Agostino. A separate written agreement for the second investigator has never been located.

The vote he moved. On February 14, 2025, at an emergency meeting, he asked the board to recess and move the superintendent-leave items to February 19 — a personnel vote on the sitting superintendent, deferred on counsel's ask.

The separation he announced. That same month he was the board's spokesman for Superintendent Todd Cummings's separation: paid leave to June 30, 2025, then resignation, with a $225,000 lump-sum buyout. The board's lawyer was the voice the public heard for the district's largest personnel decision of the year.

The vendor meeting. In March 2025 he sat with Superintendent Mansour Eid and Chief Financial Officer Ahnaf Tahmid across from the leadership of SSC Services, the district's facilities-services contractor, shortly before the board voted unanimously on March 17, 2025 to authorize terminating SSC's contract — termination letter to follow March 31, a 90-day grace period, the relationship to end July 1. SSC answered with offers to stay on; the termination went forward (Tribune, March 18, 2025).

The Brown explanation. In April 2025, when the district's own CFO charged that contracts to renovate the Brown building had been awarded illegally, without bids, the legal theory the public heard came from the board attorney. Agostino told the Tribune the state keeps "a pre-approved list of qualified contractors who have already submitted a competitive bid for a particular job function," that selecting from the list to avoid a bidding process is "legitimate" — and that whether the procedure "was followed all the way through the project" remained open, so he could not yet draw conclusions on legality (Tribune, April 2025). Days later he put the scale on the record himself: "One contract not reported to the board was nearly $500,000 on painting." The state auditors' own verdict on the Brown bidding is at C, and it is not his theory.

The update he fronted. On April 28, 2025, Agostino sat at the board table with the two investigators and the auditor working with them, Dianne Froehlke, for the investigation's first public update — on the grade changes and on Brown. What the investigators reported that night is graded at B and C; his seat at the table, presenting it, is documented here.

The answer he signed in the audit. When the State Board of Accounts filed its Supplemental Compliance Report on the district's 2022–23 year (Report 83891S, April 29, 2026 — the findings are at C), the report's own response pages carry the sitting board attorney's Additional Comments: Pete Agostino, disputing a $1,000 Ivy Tech table charge and addressing the federal GEAR UP grant (83891S, p. 55). The period predates him. The district's written answer to it, in the places the report preserves, is his.

The audit he announced. On February 9, 2026, Agostino told a board meeting that the district's leaders had met the state auditors the week before — the February 5 exit conference — that the audit report would be public in the near future, and that until the Attorney General's office decided whether to act on it, the district was prohibited from disclosing its details (Tribune, February 10, 2026).

The standing voice. He sits on the board's negotiating team in the ratified 2025–2027 NEA-South Bend teachers' agreement. In January 2026 he was the board's voice on its new consent-decree data committee — its role, he told the Tribune by text, is to "do a deep dive" into the data behind the decree reports, across at least fifteen areas — and Superintendent Eid told the same meeting's coverage that Agostino was the district's contact with legislators fighting Senate Bill 248, the bill to abolish the elected board. And in October 2026, as board attorney, he fielded the County Clerk's ballot-map inquiry and told the Tribune — interview October 16, published October 21, 2026 — that the precinct was in District 4 and the district was correcting its map.

B — Surfaced on his watch

The invoices nobody could see. On March 3, 2025, the WNDU 16 News Now I-Team filed a public-records request for the two investigators' invoices. The answers came from the board attorney, in a sequence WNDU printed as it lived it: on March 13, Agostino said he had not received an invoice yet; on April 1, he expected to have them in the vendor system within the week; on April 29, an invoice had been submitted and he would work on redacting personal information; after May 7, 2025, WNDU reported, there were no further updates (WNDU, May 20, 2025). When the station finally sat down with him in November 2025, the complete public accounting of the investigation's cost was this: one investigator paid $19,852 for about 220 hours through May 2025 — and the other had not submitted an invoice at all. No itemized payment to either man after May 2025 appears in any public source this file found. The investigators themselves declined to speak on camera. The board's attorney spoke for the arrangement.

The seven categories. In that November 2025 interview, Agostino laid out what the open-ended investigation he fronts had become: seven categories — grade changes, busing issues, access to PowerSchool, Brown remodeling funding, use of federal ECF funds at schools, financial issues, and personnel misconduct — more than 100 employee interviews conducted, the level of new issues slowing, another invoice expected soon, and a contract that, in his words, continues indefinitely because it has no end date (WNDU, November 11, 2025).

"Subsumed." In May 2026, the former CFO's attorney said on the record that neither the State Board of Accounts, nor the district, nor the board's own investigators had ever contacted Kareemah Fowler — despite her repeated offers to meet — and that her defense presentation had been sent to Agostino in May 2025. Agostino's on-record answer for the board (Tribune, May 2026): the board's own investigation "was subsumed or taken over or fell into the hands of the State Board of Accounts"; the reports "were to be supplied to the prosecutor and to the attorney general's office. And then they are supposed to take further action if they deem it necessary… And that's where things, frankly, are still at."

Update — November 3, 2026: the meter, still running. On October 29, 2026, WNDU reported that the investigation has grown into multiple branches spanning district finances and personnel — and put its cumulative cost, in the station's own lede, at "just over $60,000, according to SBCSC Board Attorney Peter Agostino." WNDU reported that district leaders received two extensive new reports on personnel matters that week; that the completed Brown-contracts branch had been investigated by the State Board of Accounts as well as the district's investigators, with its findings forwarded to the Indiana Attorney General's Office and the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office to determine whether criminal charges or state civil action are warranted; and that district officials have established no hard deadline for the investigation's conclusion. Agostino, on camera, explained why there is no finish line:

The $60,000-plus figure is Agostino's own public number, given to WNDU — the first cumulative total from the district since the station's November 2025 accounting of about $20,000 — but it is a total, not an itemization. The invoices WNDU requested on March 3, 2025 have still never been produced in public, and what each investigator has been paid since May 2025, man by man, remains an open item at §12. (WNDU, October 29, 2026.)

C — Inherited: it predates him

The 2022–23 supplemental report. Report 83891S examines July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2023 — every day of it before Agostino was hired. Its summary of questioned costs (p. 55) totals $767,585.46, including $210,445 in claims paid before board approval and a $271,568 conflict-of-interest finding: a district intern's company, Alignment Ventures LLC, paid for work including the Brown painting with no written contracts and no conflict-of-interest disclosures on file. The same report records that a sitting trustee's nonprofit was paid $206,000 in 2022–23 while her annual conflict-of-interest disclosure statement "was not filed with St. Joseph County as required by Indiana Code 35-44.1-1-4." The report was forwarded to the Indiana Attorney General and the St. Joseph County Prosecutor. His name appears in it only where §A records: answering it, in 2026, as the sitting board attorney.

Brown, before him. The renovation at the center of the scandal was presented to the board on May 15, 2023 with a $2.8 million project budget — up to $3.5 million with soft costs. The painting began in January 2023, before the painting company existed as an LLC. The State Board of Accounts found the district "did not adhere to statutory bidding and quoting procedures" for Brown, that board minutes contain no emergency declaration or special process exempting it, and that for several Brown vendors auditors found no formal contracts or bidding processes at all. The district CFO's own presentation of June 9, 2025 put the renovation's cost at approximately $7.5 million — approximately $8.4 million with maintenance — under a slide that reads "Project Overbudget: $4,700,000." Every one of those decisions was made in 2023–24. The arithmetic landed in June 2025, five months into his tenure.

The grade changes. On April 28, 2025, the investigators told the board they had found evidence of at least 2,500 manipulated grades at the district's high schools over three years (Tribune, May 5, 2025). The conduct belonged to the prior administration's years — a high school English teacher had resigned over it in July 2023, telling the board to its face — and it is why the investigators, and then the board attorney, were hired at all. It surfaced on his watch. It did not happen on it.

The 2023–25 audits. The two reports filed September 30, 2026 examine July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2025: nineteen of their twenty-four months predate his hiring, and the last five are his first five months in the chair. The federal compliance report classifies $12,668,761 in special-education reimbursements as questioned costs — thirteen of the district's twenty-three reimbursement requests could not be traced to its own spending records — alongside $103,000 in Title I questioned costs and material weaknesses across the district's financial reporting and federal programs. Reconciliations remained incomplete until February 2026, some unresolved items dating to 2019; $1.5 million of equipment bought with federal ESSER money during the period was never placed on a capital-asset listing. The district concurred with the findings, and the public response to them was written not by the board attorney but by CFO Tahmid (Tribune, October 20, 2026).

The capital-asset hole. In the fiscal 2020–21 and 2021–22 audits, $139,364,904 of the district's capital assets — 41% of them — stood unsupported by records, a failure that forced the State Board of Accounts to disclaim its opinion on the district's governmental activities two years running. What closed that hole is carried at §11, because it closed on his watch, and it belongs to his side of the ledger as much as to this one.

St. Joseph County — the entity and the men, one lawyer. In Cole v. St. Joseph County, 114 F. Supp. 2d 780 (N.D. Ind. 2000), the published opinion lists Agostino appearing for the county and, in the same §1983 case, for officials Mahlon Wise and Tom Borowski "Individually and in his representative and official capacities" — one lawyer for the government and for the officials sued personally. The defendants won summary judgment. Dual representation of that kind is common §1983 practice, handled under the conflict rules; this file carries it as a documented practice pattern, not a violation.

The county's lawyer in Hadley. Agostino, with firm colleague Stephanie L. Nemeth, is counsel of record for St. Joseph County, its Board of Commissioners, and its Police Department in Hadley, a takings and police-property-damage case (Seventh Circuit No. 24-2448). His June 8, 2026 Brief in Opposition in the Supreme Court (No. 25-1158) lists him for all three county parties. On October 19, 2026, the Supreme Court declined the case; the plaintiff's state claims proceed in state court. He is quoted in the Indiana Lawyer's coverage as the county's attorney on the case. He is also of record for Patricia Jordan, the St. Joseph County Coroner, quashing a subpoena in federal litigation in 2023 — counsel of record, normal practice, roster only.

The PERF opinion. In 2024–25 Agostino researched whether the County Council's attorney should receive Public Employees' Retirement Fund benefits — and concluded the position should not. The Council's rules committee then referred a past council attorney's benefits to INPRS Investigative Services. It is a documented instance of his advice running directly against a fellow official's personal interest, and §11 carries it at full weight.

The 2011 health-department memo. The published opinion in Stillson v. St. Joseph County Health Department (Ind. Ct. App. 2014) records that the department's HR director consulted "attorney Peter Agostino," that he advised on the standing-order policy question, and that he prepared a written memorandum on it dated August 3, 2011.

Townships and candidates. He was counsel for Union Township and the Union-Lakeville Fire Protection Territory in a 2013 Indiana Tax Court property-tax appeal. Tribune index entries identify him as township attorney for German Township and counsel for Clay Township in the Clay Fire Territory question — reported here as reported, the articles not yet pulled. And on October 16, 2026, he stood before the St. Joseph County Election Board as private counsel for three Penn Township Republican candidates — Doris Portolese, Kent Hizer, and Mark Voelker — in a campaign-booth complaint filed September 23, 2026 over fire-department materials and personnel at an August Osceola Music Festival booth. He filed the firefighters' affidavits, argued the statute reaches employees and firefighters rather than candidates, conceded it prohibits using government property — the fire department canopy — to promote a campaign, and called the complaint "an attack on firefighters." The Board voted 3–0 to publicly reprimand and caution the candidates, and declined further investigation 3–0. That is candidate counsel work, not a public client, and it is carried as exactly that.

Alongside all of it sits an ordinary private practice — individual defendants in Firth v. Yahoo! (2010), a Title IX plaintiff in Doe v. Indiana Wesleyan. He is a general litigator with a municipal specialty, not a government-only lawyer, and an honest roster says so.

§06 — "Talking to Pete This Morning"

On May 20, 2026, Council President Mike Schalk was recorded describing how the next day's meeting would be scripted — including the removal sequence against police clerk Heather Velez and, behind her, Chief Tim Witham. Schalk’s own file is File No. 2. Three passages on that tape concern the town attorney. They are printed here exactly as verified against the audio, with their timestamps, and then graded exactly, because the grading is where this section lives or dies.

A second recording, circulated September 27, 2026, has Schalk stating that he consults the town attorney on everything. That statement is documented — as Schalk's statement. It attaches no name, only the role, and any advice behind it carries the same grade as above: reported, on his account alone.

§07 — Exhibit C

There is a second recording in this story, and this section is built differently from everything around it, on purpose. The publisher of this file has personally heard a recording of Pete Agostino apparently discussing working to force Chief Tim Witham to resign — or to fire him if he won't resign. That is the whole of the description, and it is a firsthand listener's account. No transcript of that recording exists in hand. It is never quoted in this file — not one line, not one phrase — because a recording that cannot be printed cannot be quoted honestly.

Its provenance is stated exactly, because it was once stated wrong and corrected on the record on October 20, 2026. The recording came from the Amazon driver — the driver from the September 26, 2026 encounter — and not from officers. Officers separately described a long-running power struggle between Schalk and Witham; that is a different item, and the two are not merged here.

The recording's place in the paper is documented. It is Exhibit C to the October 21, 2026 criminal-review referral, which describes it in the referral's own words:

The strongest honest sentence available today is this one: the town attorney's own voice, on a recording the complainant has heard and filed as an exhibit, discussing the resign-or-fire plan for the chief. It is attributed to that account, always, and it will stay attributed until a transcript or the recording itself is produced through an agency or a proceeding.

One more boundary, stated as an absence. No public record in hand names Agostino in any action concerning Heather Velez or Tim Witham — no minute, no order, no letter. His whole documented footprint in the personnel sequence is three things: Schalk's tape account (§06), the Exhibit C recording as described above, and his receipt of the Apps filings as town attorney with his written commitment to respond (§10). The termination hearing for Chief Witham is set for November 19, 2026. Who advises the council in that proceeding, and whether the town attorney has screened himself from it, are questions the Town's November 12 response and the hearing record will answer.

§08 — The Walls He Didn't Sign

Twice in October 2026, Roseland's paper moved in ways this series has documented in File No. 2. Both times, the question for this file is narrow: where is the town attorney in it? Both times, the honest answer is the same: nowhere the record shows.

October 21, 2026 — the executive session. The posted notice for the session omitted the meeting time. A Public Access Counselor complaint followed, along with reports to the State Police and the prosecutor about the notice's alteration. No document in hand names Agostino in connection with that session, its notice, or the pencil. The record that settles it: the executive-session certification and memoranda, and the Town's response in the Counselor's file.

October 29, 2026 — the paper-form wall. At 12:29 PM that day, Schalk confirmed a hand-delivered filing in writing — and in the same message imposed the wall: all further records requests on the Town's signed paper form only, no email, and video footage "up to $150.00." The writing is Schalk's, on the Town's behalf. No document in hand attributes that policy, its drafting, or its legal basis to Agostino. The settlers: the Town's written response due November 12, 2026, and any counsel correspondence inside the Town's production.

Context cuts both ways here, and this file carries it with the fact rather than instead of it. In this same town, the Public Access Counselor held in 2012 that the town attorney personally answering records requests was proper practice (§04). Attorney involvement in Roseland's records responses is documented, long-standing, and once officially blessed — which is context for the 2026 wall, and is not evidence that Agostino designed it. What is documented is that he did not sign it. What is not documented is everything else.

§09 — The Money

The money section of this file is mostly an empty chair, and the emptiness is the finding. What Roseland pays the lawyer who has advised it since at least 2000: not found — no figure, any year, in any public source (§02). What the school corporation has paid in total at $300 an hour since February 2025: not found. What the county and the townships have paid: not found. Each of those has a named settler — claims dockets, accounts-payable registers, a Gateway vendor pull — and each stays an open pull, stated as an absence and never as an insinuation.

The one rate the public can read:

His federal political contributions are a matter of FEC record, and they are printed plainly, at their full size, which is small:

Federal Election Commission records for Peter J. Agostino, employer Anderson Agostino & Keller, South Bend — rechecked November 3, 2026.

And the documented negative that belongs beside the table: no contribution by Agostino to Schalk, to any Roseland council member, or to any school board trustee was found. The people who hired him are not people he is recorded funding. No inference beyond the records is drawn here — Buttigieg never employed him — and none should be drawn by the reader either.

Indiana state and local campaign filings under his name: not found in web searches; the state portal requires an interactive search, which is the named settler. One committee role is documented — he registered the "Save Our Schools" political action committee (§05) — and his own statement about it stands in §05: a registrant, not involved in its day-to-day decisions or contribution collection. No record of Agostino holding elected office, or a public appointment in his own name, was located anywhere. Across twenty-six years of files, he appears as retained counsel. Never as the officeholder.

§10 — The Scorecard

Everything this file's publisher has put in front of Pete Agostino, and everything that has come back. The row that matters most is the shortest one in the table.

His complete reply of November 2, 2026, printed in full, because all nine words of it are the only answer on file:

And one thing stated plainly, because this file does not let implications do that work: no disciplinary complaint against Pete Agostino has been filed by the publisher of this file, and no authority has said he is under investigation. What exists is a citizen's paper, a promised response, and a deadline. Nothing more is claimed here.

§11 — The Other Side of the Ledger

Every file in this series prints the subject's side of the ledger at full strength, and this one is not short.

No discipline, anywhere it can be checked. No Indiana disciplinary action, malpractice suit, or ethics finding against Pete Agostino appears in any public source searched, in October 2026 or refreshed on November 3, 2026. One honesty note, stated rather than smoothed over: the direct Roll of Attorneys lookup for Attorney No. 10765-71 — the one record that shows standing and any public discipline verbatim — has not yet been pulled, because that database takes an interactive session. It is named as an open pull in §12. Nothing in hand contradicts a clean record, and the search result stands as the record until the Roll itself is read.

A Counselor's opinion in his favor. In 2012 the Indiana Public Access Counselor rejected an APRA complaint against the Town Agostino answered for, held the Town did not violate the Act, and blessed the town attorney's answering records requests as proper practice (§04). Government lawyers are not usually handed opinions like that about their own letters. He has one.

Advice against an official's pocket. His PERF research told the County Council its own attorney's position should not carry retirement benefits — and a predecessor's benefits were referred for investigation on the strength of it (§05). That is counsel cutting against a fellow officeholder's interest, on the record, in the opposite direction from every pattern alleged in Roseland.

The conflict history was disclosed before the vote. His Save Clay representation and PAC role were aired in public, by name, at the meeting that hired him. He answered in the room and committed to withdraw from the adverse suits (§05). Whatever a reader makes of the history, it was not concealed from the body that hired him.

The audits are an inheritance, and no finding names him. The state audit reports that dominate §05 examine periods that mostly predate February 2025; the 2022–23 supplemental report predates his hiring entirely. No finding in any State Board of Accounts report in hand names Pete Agostino. His documented audit role is on the response side — the Additional Comments at p. 55 of Report 83891S and the February 2026 announcement. Whatever blame the audit conduct carries, this record does not attach it to him, and neither does this file.

The repair record is also his tenure's. In June 2025 the district completed its first full capital-asset inventory in several decades, producing a stated capital-asset balance of $239.9 million at June 30, 2025 — closing the posture in which $139,364,904 of assets stood unsupported and the state had to disclaim its audit opinions two years running. The district concurred with the 2023–25 findings, and its CFO states it adopted the district's first comprehensive written Internal Control Manual in 2025. Remediation is a district's record, not one lawyer's — but it happened while he was the board's counsel, and it prints here at the same size as the findings.

Longevity is neutral evidence, and it is his. A twenty-six-year small-town engagement, a school-board counsel role won in open session, and repeat county defense work are equally consistent with a trusted municipal lawyer. This file's pressure points are specific ones — a council president's account of his advice on a tape, a recording filed as an exhibit, and a stack of Roseland paper that does not exist in public — and in this file they stay specific.

§12 — On the Record Ahead

Monday, November 9, 2026 — the written responses to the November 3 distribution come due, including the response Agostino promised on November 2: "I will review and respond." What that response says about the May 20 tape — whether the council president described his lawyer's advice accurately — is the single largest open fact in this file.

November 12, 2026 — the Town of Roseland's written response to the October 29 filings comes due. It will show whether the Town answers through its counsel, and whose name signs it.

November 19, 2026 — Chief Tim Witham's termination hearing, in front of the council Schalk presides over. Who advises that council in that proceeding, and whether Agostino has screened himself from it, are questions the November 12 response and the hearing record will answer.

The file's open edges, each with the record that settles it:

This file stays open at this address. Every answer, and every non-answer that hardens into the record, lands here as a dated update.