Hogsett Already Considering New Tax Increases First Week On The Job

It's quite remarkable. Mayor Bart Peterson got booted out of office, in part, after he and the Democratic-controlled City-County Council raised the local income tax rate 65%. Ballard spent the past eight years auctioning off city assets to his campaign contributors, along with raising taxes and fees. He just raised the local income tax rate 10% this past year. Less than one week on the job, Mayor Joe Hogsett is already talking to Fox 59 News' Russ McQuaid about the prospect of yet another tax increase.

“Well, they would not be my default position as a first resort,” said Hogsett in his first sit-down television interview after being sworn in on New Years Day. “I mean, clearly adding to the tax burdens of the people of Indianapolis would be something that would come only if all other avenues had been exhausted, but again, to re-emphasize, everything is on the table because the long term financial stability of our city is at stake.”

“I think the accounting of the past is no longer applicable to today,” said Hogsett. “I think the one-time sale of city assets has allowed previous administrations to balance the budget but I don’t see many assets that are still available to take advantage of those one-time revenue enhancements.”

You didn't think he would roll back the generous tax giveaways the City doles out to the politicians' campaign contributors or retired the downtown TIF district, which long ago outlived its necessity did you? This is what's really driving this talk of yet another tax increase. He's got to pay off the police and firefighter unions for their support in this past election. Yes, their contracts are due to be renegotiated this year. God forbid their wages be frozen or reduced like has happened to the wages of most workers in this country since the Great Recession of 2008.

“The fact that all of those contracts will be negotiated this year has advantages and disadvantages,” Hogsett said. “The advantages are that you get all of the city employee compensation packages and benefits packages at least discernable for three or four year period. The disadvantages are that they come at the same time at a time when the city is not particularly well suited to be making significant increases in those compensation packages. The fact that all three of those contracts will be negotiated this year will put us in a position at the end of the year to know much more discernably what the next three to four years after that will bring.”

Keep in mind he's talking about raising taxes just for current obligations. This doesn't include the downtown mafia's plan to enact a new local income tax to fund the multi-billion dollar regional mass transit plan they're itching to get going on. All of these engineers, consultants, construction companies and bond lawyers who bankroll these corrupt bastards' political campaigns can't wait for a fast return on their investment in the puppets they elected to run our city-county government.

By the way, the old Russ McQuaid would have been all over the story of how former Mayor Greg Ballard ordered IMPD resources committed to the filming of his son's movie, which appears to portray our local police department in the same negative way Hollywood typically portrays police, instead of just reading the talking points handed to him by the downtown mafia. If this happened in almost any other city in this country, the media would be all over this story of self-dealing and nepotism only Advance Indiana has bothered to tell you about. Here in Indianapolis our media aids and abets our politicians in the theft of our public assets. You have to live here to believe just how much of a third world banana republic our local government has become.