The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial today entitled Urban advocates. The editorial addresses the “100k Coalition” covered in the Journal Gazette by Benjamin Lanka. The Coalition is purportedly a coalition of large counties which will lobby the General Assembly about issues peculiar to counties of their size.
In post on that story, I noted the conspicuous absence of Lake (pop. 490,000), Porter (154,000), and LaPorte (109,000) Counties. The editorial also notes the absence of these counties along with Vigo and Madison counties, and suggests the reason for their absence is that Democrats tend to dominate these counties, whereas the Republicans tend to control the other counties which were invited: Allen, Hendricks, Monroe, Delaware, St. Joseph, Vanderburgh, Johnson, Hamilton, Elkhart, Tippecanoe and Marion counties.
The editorial:
They have dubbed their fledgling group the “100K Coalition.†But it’s curious that they extended invitations only to selected prospective member counties, most of which have Republican-led governments – leaving out such large population centers as Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Madison and Vigo counties, where Democrats tend to dominate.
Commissioners insist that there was no partisan political purpose behind their exclusion, that they reached out to counties that most closely share Allen County’s needs and interests. And to be fair, Lake County’s Byzantine taxing structure probably doesn’t make for much common ground with Allen County.
County officials have said the coalition is open to other counties that meet their urban county criteria, and that Vigo county was accidentally overlooked. But it sure makes little sense to begin organizing a coalition by ignoring almost a third of potential members off the bat. A coalition that is seen as fostering more partisan squabbling is bound to fail.
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