The Camera Doesn't Lie

Hoosiers for Fair Taxation has posted several YouTube clips which are "must viewing" for Indianapolis voters. The clips of Council President Monroe Gray speaking before the Meridian Street Foundation are astounding. Area residents trip Gray up with ease on basic questions of how local government operates in Marion County. His utter failure to grasp the most basic understanding of city-county government is visibly shocking to the folks in the room. How can this happen? How does a man like Monroe Gray attain one of the most powerful positions in our local government? If you watch that clip and conclude we need four more years of Democratic control of our City-County Council, then you deserve the absolute worst in terms of governance.

One of the other clips involves an exchange between attorney Darla Williams and Mayor Bart Peterson at a recent public forum concerning the mayor's MBE/WBE policies for city contracts. She challenged statistics his administration had produced claiming 22% attainment of MBE/WBE contracts. Mayor Peterson flat out stated her numbers were wrong, but he could not provide the true numbers to her. Williams quoted from numbers his administration supplied to the National League of Cities over which Peterson currently presides. What I don't understand is how easy it is for any member of the public to stand up at a public forum and address someone like Gray and Peterson and elicit answers which demonstrate ineptness and a complete lack of candor to any reasonable person. Our local media, however, too often give these guys a free ride. While Gray has recently come under increased scrutiny by the media, Mayor Peterson has gone virtually unchallenged after eight years of rule and so little to show for it when you break apart the numbers and the accomplishments.

The willingness of private citizens to go to these forums, ask the tough questions our news media is unwilling to ask of our elected officials, record it and upload it to the Internet to share with their fellow citizens is bringing a whole new dimension to representative government. I would note that the folks doing this work are not party hacks. They are operating on the outside with virtually no assistance from the established political parties. These folks are working circles around the Marion County GOP in breathing competition into this year's municipal races in Indianapolis. If we are successful in turning out Mayor Peterson and the current leadership of the City-County Council, it will be attributable to the work of these folks and not anyone in the established political party. Hats off to the folks who are making a difference by informing voters this year. Both political parties have failed the public miserably this year.