Bart Peterson was very good to Kite Realty when he was Indianapolis mayor. He gave the large contributor to his campaign committee $25 million to build the 23-story Conrad Hilton building downtown and another $6.5 million to help bail out the company's struggling Glendale Mall on the city's north side. Indianapolis taxpayers got stuck with the bill in the form of a 65% increase in the local income tax to cover all the property tax diversions to the TIF funds, also known as the mayor's slush fund, which are used to subsidize businesses like Kite that seek public subsidies for their private development projects.
Today, the IBJ informs us that Peterson, now an Eli Lilly vice president, has been appointed to the board of trustees for the realty's trust group. Peterson will be paid $42,500 annually to serve on the board, and he'll be receiving first-year stock awards worth $62,000. It really pays for our politicians to be generous when it comes to handing out our tax dollars to favored businesses. There's always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for them. For the rest of us, there's just a tab to pick up in the form of higher taxes.
4 comments:
That seems to be the problem now. Politicians don't get elected to help their constituents. They get elected to get all their free shit & a great job from the companies they "take care of."
Republicans are just as guilty now.
Indy is all carrot and no stick for these hacks. To think I used to have pride in my government.
What will Mayor Blowhard get $$$$ when he departs?
A. A company car;
B. A 25% stake in a Broad Ripple Parking Garage;
C. A 25% stake in a Parking Meter Reading Co.;
D. All the above
These people have run Indy into the ground just like Detroit thru the Banana Republic style of Government. Aggregate all the debt from the IAA, the Crooked CIB, stadiums, unfunded streets, sidewalks, delapidated housing, etc...... What a bankrupt joke yeah keep hi jacking the tax revs into the Slushfund TIFS....
Scumbags!
Gary,
Guess what boondoggle is back in the news?
http://www.ibj.com/property-lines-2014-05-29-library-begins-plans-to-pull-branch-out-of-glendale-mall/PARAMS/post/47876
Your blog entry needs a bump back to the top.
It was a scam to close the Broad Ripple Park location, just as it's a scam to have a police substation at the Broad Ripple "parking garage."
Government tenants are just a taxpayer subsidy of a property.
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