I generally stay away from Indianapolis-specific coverage because that beat is well covered by others, but the brouhaha in Indianapolis caught my eye. stAllio! provides some links and a general explanation of what happened last night at the Indianapolis City-County council meeting. (Abdul provided some extensive twittering from the event, incidentally.)
also at tonight’s meeting, the republican majority—who were swept into power in an anti-tax frenzy in 2007—swallowed their pride and obediently voted for a tax increase to fund the CIB. the democrats on the council were more than happy to sit back on this one and let the republicans, many of whom had signed no-tax-increase pledges, hang themselves on their own hypocrisy. one republican, christine scales, voted against. one democrat, jackie nytes, crossed over to ensure that the bill passed.
The anti-tax rabidity of the Ballard campaign against former mayor Peterson almost can’t be overstated. Then, as I recall, the public safety tax that was one of the outrage triggers somehow wasn’t ever rolled back. And now, this.
I’m sure I’m guilty of it too, but this highlights the fact that glib solutions are easy to pontificate about, but when it comes time to actually govern, the solutions get a little less easy.
Actually the justification for the Democrat 2007 tax increase, which arguably was for “public safety, is a heck of a lot better than the justification for the Republican 2009 CIB tax increase and the ones that will follow.
Bottom line is that with the CIB you have a horribly inept entity which is constantly giving away taxpayer money on poorly negotiated deals with professional sports teams. Instead of demanding reform of the CIB, the Republicans voted lockstep to throw more at the problem, i.e. the CIB, without so much as demanding the first reform to that entity. No one outside of soem naive councilors think the CIB will suddenly find religion and cease with the giveaways that got them in the financial hole they are in.
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. In other words, folks can prosper by aggressively looking out for their self-interest, but they go too far, and the backlash is going to hurt. The CIB folks are well into hog territory.
Doug, I think the CIB folks are just about at the end of the line. They’re pretty fat. Slaughter is inevitable.
You are smart to avoid commenting on Indy politics. It’s funny that Indy people mock Lake County political corruption while ignoring the corrupt politics right under their noses.
Rather than go on and on about Indy politics–the CIB alone is a novella–lemme just say your conclusion is far too generous.
This isn’t the collision of wide-eyed libertarian idealism with hard reality. It’s the cynical manipulation of public attitudes for private profit. (Just as it’s not really Indy politics, but another page from the playbook of Indiana’s bonzai governor.)