The second city controller to serve in the Ballard administration over the past five years is departing to join a conservative think tank as an educational choice fiscal analyst. City Controller Jeff Spalding will join the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice as Director of Fiscal Policy and Analysis. His last day with the city is May 10. Spalding's tenure has been marked by extremely disingenuous budgeting gimmicks, coupled with tax increases, in sharp contrast with the honestly-balanced budgets and lower taxes promised by Ballard during upset win over former Mayor Bart Peterson in 2007. It's a bit ironic that Spalding is joining a think tank named after a famous conservative economist like Milton Friedman who would have deplored his handiwork for Ballard.
News of Spalding's departure comes just one day after the Indiana House of Representatives passed a bill earlier approved by the Senate which strips the Indianapolis City-County Council of power and shifts it to the mayor's office. Among other things, the city controller will be able to dictate spending guidelines to other constitutional offices in the unified city-county government on a quarterly basis, bypassing the council's role in reviewing annual budgets it adopts for all city-county agencies. Ballard has decided that he can't work with a Democratic-controlled council so he has convinced the Republican-controlled state legislature to strip the council of authority critical to maintaining checks and balances in government to create a powerful mayor fashioned after corrupt big city mayor's offices like Chicago.
UPDATE: I wanted to add that if you're interested in applying for Spalding's job as controller, please send your resume to Barnes & Thornburg c/o Bob Grand.
3 comments:
Resume? Hell, you probably don't have a prayer of a chance at the position unless Bob already is your buddy. No resume required.
The Republican Party is just controlled opposition to the moneyed interests that run Marion County and the US, internationalists that they are. The left and right instead of fighting each other should join together to defeat that power which is tyranizing us all, as Paul Craig Roberts explains so well in one of his last posts.
...anyone know if our U. S. Attorney has launched an investigation into all of the Public Safety Funds that Frank Straub had his hands on?
-I was thinking that the Controller resigned to get away from the fire.
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