The downtown mafia doesn't disappoint. They handed a new script to our self-absorbed, incompetent mayor and he ran with it. Yes, Mayor Greg Ballard teases the public with a press release saying he had a big announcement today to make on public safety. Instead, one of the tax increases already on the table for consideration for hiring additional police officers that the last 65% increase in the local income tax failed to produce seven years ago is now being proposed to be uses for a five-year, $25 million preschool program for children who come from lower income families. Education is not the responsibility of the consolidated city-county government, but this mayor will now raise your taxes to spend money that should be paid out of existing school budgets, such as the Indianapolis Public Schools, which we recently learned had a budget surplus of $8.4 million after falsely telling the public it had a $30 million deficit.
Mayor Ballard is proposing using additional money raised through the elimination of the homestead property tax credit, which will net the City about $7 million a year, on his preschool initiative. Ballard plans to turn that $5 million a year over to the unelected board of the United Way of Central Indiana, which the downtown mafia has been rest assured will deliver grant money to the education profiteers who are popping up all over the state and who are dumping big-time money in the campaign committees of corrupt pols like Mayor Greg Ballard. That money will be used to match nearly $25 million in federal and state money Gov. Mike Pence recently announced he would make available to Marion County for his preschool pilot program for children in low-income families.
Perhaps spending more money on preschool education is a swell idea, but it's not the responsibility of City-County government. I realize Mayor Ballard wants to create new programs and hand out money to campaign contributors for his re-election bid, but if Gov. Pence's Path to Quality program is worthwhile, then the school districts to whom we're paying precious property tax dollars every year should be funding it. They're not part of the equation because the education profiteers would be shut out, and that's what this is really all about. Ballard is already wasting millions of our tax dollars a year administering charter schools his office has approved for the benefit of his various campaign contributors, which under state law the City is entitled and should be assessing on the education profiteers. Now he wants to give away $5 million a year in new taxes and spending to an organization run by people who are not in any way accountable to the public or even representative of the taxpayers of Indianapolis.
Meanwhile, the Marion County Income Tax Council began deliberations last night on plans to raise your income taxes at least another $25 to $30 million a year supposedly to hire additional police officers on top of the $7 million a year they plan to raise through the elimination of the homestead property tax credit. That of course is a total lie because we know the downtown mafia's new criminal justice center to be built, operated and maintained by a foreign consortium starting next year will cost city-county taxpayers most of the promised new revenues in new annual outlays, leaving no additional revenues in the long-run to support hiring the 100, 200 or 300 new police officers these irresponsible public officials speak of funding on any given day with yet another tax increase as yet another diversion from their true motives for getting their hands on more of your tax dollars.
This is the only place you will get straight talk on what's really going on with your public finances. The management of the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis Business Journal and each of the local TV stations in town are all in bed with the downtown mafia on these bait-and-switch, shell game schemes to launder more of your tax dollars into the self-serving purposes of the ruling elite who could give a damn less about you or your children's station in life. They will feed you nothing but propaganda about these proposals and will silence anyone with a dissenting viewpoint. Wake up, people.
UPDATE: A reader points out that Ballard's plan is a retread of an idea first tossed out during the last mayoral election by his Democratic opponent, Melina Kennedy, to repurpose Rebuild Indy money to fund grants for early childhood education.
6 comments:
“This is the only place you will get straight talk on what's really going on with your public finances.”
You aint whistlin’ Dixie on that statement, Gary!
I thought voting for members of the Democrat Party would be a way to block the cronyism rampant in the local GOP when it comes to City affairs. I learned real quick this was faulty reasoning; elected “officials” sure don’t take long to show themselves for what they really are made of and that brings me back to Mr. Ballard.
I heard the teasers about the mayor's purported big "public safety" announcement and that right there was a tip off some type of tax money scheme was in the works. Just how stupid do Mr. Ballard and the MCRCC and all its connected politicos (save Counselor Christine Scales) think we taxpayers are? Mr. Ballard should be ashamed to come before the people with the scheme he presented.
In fact, just about all Marion County Republicans should be ashamed of how their party often works against the best interests of the taxpayers as is being done in this case. And the MCRCC wonders why many walked away from their organization and washed their hands of them.
All the current signs point to the probability that the next Mayor of Indianapolis is going to be a Democrat. While I am sure Indianapolis will be better off without this "incompetent, self-absorbed" mayor, I am not sure that the City will be any better off with a Democrat mayor.
"I had to say 'I told you so,' but I told you so."
-Bart Peterson
There are a couple things that need to change in the way IMPD is funded. 1) when an officer retires, their salary is not left in the budget and then passed onto the officer hired to replace him/her. That money goes back into the general fund, then IMPD must beg for the money to be returned to hire the new officers. At the rate he is saying he wants to hire by 2018, those new hires will just barely get the numbers above where we are now due to attrition.
2) when an officer is involved in a crash that was not the officers fault, the insurance money received for the damage does not go to replace the car or repair it's damage. It too goes to the general fund and the replacement or fixing of the car comes from IMPD'd budget.
Both fixes would go a long way in helping ease the pinch in both areas.
This tax increase has nothing to do with hiring additional police officers. That's the classic bait-and-switch these corrupt pols pull to convince taxpayers they should live with higher taxes. I can go down a laundry list of things that will consume these additional revenues before that first new cop is hired because the priorities of the mayor and council are not what they tell the public. He's already telling you upfront that part of the tax increase that was supposed to be used to hire more cops according to the IMPD staffing proposal is going to instead be spent on an early childhood education welfare entitlement for low-income, single parent mothers. Assuming that would actually help reduce crime, which it won't, it would take more than a decade to see the results.
I agree funding Pre-School is not the responsibility of City Government. I suspect there will be Charter Schools and Churches waiting to dip their hands into the Pork Barrel.
This is a "Free-Day Care Program" that Mayor Blowhole can use if he decides to run for Mayor. He can sell himself as Friend of the Poor. Even if a Democrat is elected Mayor, the scam will still work for the financial benefit of the connected.
Once again our alleged newspaper is touting another increase, there are at least three articles in today's paper singing the praises of duh Mayor's new proposal. We hear from the editorial board, Matt Tully and a CEO of a local nursery about what a grand plan this is and then there is the front page headline Mayor Tragets Crime.
As others have stated this is just more of the soso bait and switch tactics of this administration. Everytime a new tax or fee is proposed to "hire officers" or "increase public safety" the money is spent elsewhere. So we eliminate the homestead property tax credit and some of the money goes to pre-school and some will go to poublic safety. And the city-county isn't responsible for public education so what authority does the mayor have to divert those funds to schools? As to "some of the money" going to public safety we all know that when the mayor says some he really means none.
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