Thursday, April 30, 2009

CIB Out Of Business As Of September 1?

Not surprisingly, the CIB has called an emergency board meeting for tomorrow morning at 11:00 a.m. as a consequence of the General Assembly adjourning last night without approving the $47 million bailout proposal for the CIB. In recent months, we've heard the CIB's President Bob Grand suggest that Lucas Oil Stadium might be closed if the rescue plan failed. Last week, CIB Treasurer Ann Lathrop told a legislative committee that the CIB had a contingency plan to start cancelling conventions if the legislature failed to approve the bailout plan. Expect the "sky is falling" dramatics to pick up even more at tomorrow morning's emergency meeting. I'm picking up indications that the CIB plans to announce that it will no longer be able to conduct business as of September 1, 2009 because of its budget shortfall. The CIB faces a $27 million debt payment in September. The CIB rushed to repay a $17 million debt to the State of Indiana earlier this month, which came due in June. It could have asked the State to defer the payment but chose not to in order to put further pressure on the state legislature to win approval of its bailout plan, which calls for a series of higher taxes and the capturing of additional state revenues from an expanded professional sports development area downtown. Governor Daniels may wait until June to call the legislature back into a special session to approve a 2-year state budget. CIB leaders are likely to renew efforts to get a bailout plan approved during the special session as part of the state budget.

5 comments:

M Theory said...

Gary, are you going to the meeting? I think I might slip in over my lunch tomorrow.

Still no mention of giving the Oil Can back to the state or of bankruptcy as options...other than on the blogs, of course!

Unigov said...

Amazing not one politician has mentioned the one logical solution - a ticket tax.

Sports nuts wanted Conseco and Lucas, they got it, they should pay for it.

Indiana has become Bizarro world. Everything is backwards.

Jon said...

Timing is everything, too bad they were in business long enough to build Conseco and Lucas.

But seriously, this is just the end of round one. We will hear more doom and gloom from the CIB about what a ghost town Indy will be without the Pacers and the Colts. And then there is my personal favorite, "we can't lose 66000 jobs".

Indy4U2C said...

Bye Bye Irsay!

Seth M. Ward said...

It would be a sad day if the Colts ever left this town. I used to live for Saturday's and Notre Dame football....but now all I have are Sundays....If that was taken away from me, what would I have....NADA. Like your blog. Wish you had a follow widget. I will book mark your page and add it to my blog. Keep up the good reporting. www.theasphaltblogger.com