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It's no secret that the Hulman-George family, which owns the IMS, is in the midst of some serious estate planning these days with the only suitable family heir Tony George now ousted entirely from the family-run business and his elderly mother Mary Hulman-George not getting any younger. Although Hulman & Co. CEO Mark "Rent-A-Civic Leader" Miles says the family has absolutely no intention of selling the IMS, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the move by state lawmakers to force Indiana taxpayers to finance $100 million in improvements to the race track will increase its bottom line value to a potential buyer. Miles' assurances aside, House Ways & Means Committee Chairman State Rep. Tim Brown (R-Crawfordsville) tells the Star he plans to include an "in the event of sale" clause in the legislation to allow the state to recoup at least some of its investment in the IMS if that happens.
Following a hearing on the measure in the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Chairman Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, said the bill may be amended to let the state get back its money in the event of a sale of the historic home of the Indy 500.
“I think we’re going to look at some sort of financial interest,” Brown said, describing it as “kind of like a lien on a mortgage.”
“The bottom line is that by doing this bill it increases the asset value of the Speedway,” Brown said, and the state should have some way to recoup its investment that made that possible . . .
“We are not considering selling it. We are not positioning it to sell,” IMS spokesman Doug Boles said. “The (Hulman-George) family is committed to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It’s been in their family for 68 years, and there is no consideration whatsoever to change that.”
Fine, then call their bluff, Rep. Brown. Require the IMS to repay the entire amount of state-funded improvements if the family sells the IMS during the next 20 years. Don't allow yourself to be played by Miles, whose primary aim is the millions he personally hopes to make if this deal goes through as planned. We're still wondering the size of Jim "Rent-A-Civic Leader" Morris' bonus for winning $43.5 million in taxpayer subsidies to date for billionaire Herb Simon's Indiana Pacers.
Mayor Greg Ballard's power grab bill, which among other things will eliminate the four at-large city-county council seats now held by Democrats, may lead Senate Democrats to join with conservative Republicans to defeat the multi-billion dollar tax-and-spend mass transit plan Ballard and his fellow fake Republican mayor in Carmel support. The Gannett-owned Star, which is nothing but a mouthpiece for the mass transit proponents, explains:
Sen. Jean Breaux, D-Indianapolis, said she would “love to have mass transit and I think it’s very important,” but would vote against the transit bill if Senate Bill 621 advances. And she would try to persuade her fellow 12 Democrats to follow suit.
She says Mayor Ballard wants both bills to pass, and he likely will need Democrat support to get the transit bill through a Republican-dominated Senate that is growing increasingly skeptical about transit.
“He has to decide which is most important, which is he the most concerned about,” she said. “And I would hope he would be most concerned about mass transit ... and that he would consider it to be more important than controlling government.” . . .
Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, said Senate Bill 621 is a blatant power grab and it is possible all or some of the Democrats could follow Breaux’s lead to vote against the transit bill. He and Breaux see it as a bargaining chip.
As they say, politics does make strange bedfellows. Fake Republican Jerry Torr (R-Carmel), the House sponsor of the massive tax increase to fund mass transit, tells the Star he's taking heat from some of his own caucus members over his legislation after Gov. Pence yesterday expressed his reservations about his plan to raise taxes at a time so many Hoosiers are still reeling from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Torr, an influential Republican, said he’s already taking heat from his caucus for supporting the transit bill and its potential tax increase.
Democrats, he said, need to focus on one issue at a time.
“If they want to hold a gun to their own heads, then that is exactly what they are doing,” Torr said. “If they want to throw their constituents under a bus to try to affect another bill that is no way related, I think their constituents should be pretty disappointed.”
The governor, he said, has not spoken to him about legislation since January. At that time, he said Pence promised to keep an open mind. Torr noted that the transit legislation would allow voters to decide whether to raise their own taxes, not lawmakers.
Torr said the bill does have language that prevents the rest of the state from covering any cost overruns, although he admitted lawmakers could reconsider any law each year. Torr, though, said he’s satisfied that the financial planning behind the transit bill is solid.
Meanwhile, Star columnist Erika Smith, a paid media whore for the proponents of mass transit, turns in yet another column touting the mass transit plan. I believe this makes about her eighth such column this year. It begins: "OK, transit supporters. Go ahead. Let out a collective sigh of relief. Maybe even a cheer or two." The woman obviously has no respect for herself as a legitimate journalist and is just another example of why so many Indianapolis readers have ended their subscription to the increasingly irrelevant daily newspaper.
For the second time in less than a week, IPL power customers on Indianapolis' east side are without power. The latest power outage, blamed on a transformer fire, affects about 2,000 customers. Last Saturday, problems at a substation led to power outages for more than 10,000 customers in the same area. Schools in Warren Township have been put on a 2-hour delay due to the outages.
James Holmes, the exceptionally bright neuroscience student at the University of Colorado studying under a program financed in whole by the U.S. government, had a very bright future until he became yet another possible victim of the CIA's MK-Ultra, a decades-old mind control program the agency never shut down as claimed. The young man, who now stands accused of a shooting spree at an Aurora, Colorado theater during the premier of "Dark Knight Rises," has apparently converted to Islam. The Daily Mail, citing sources, say Holmes' beard is a symbol of his "new-found faith" and that he's now praying to Allah five times a day. Not a big surprise. After all, our CIA is teaming up with the Muslim Brotherhood to rid the Middle East of every nonsectarian-led government in the region and installing their puppets who are establishing radical religious states in their place.
It's good to have a Republican governor talk like a Republican. Mike Pence not only threw cold water on the plan by a cabal of state legislators who took campaign dollar pay offs from the IMS to give away $100 million of your taxpayer dollars to the mega-millionaire Hulman-George family to make improvements to their race track today. Pence is also expressing caution about a multi-billion dollar, tax-and-spend mass transit plan backed by fake Republicans Greg Ballard and James Brainard. “I have an open mind about this issue, but I have a couple of concerns,” said Pence. “It represents a significant tax increase at a time when I’m fighting to cut taxes.” Yep, that's right. Your Republican-controlled legislature opposes Pence's tax cut plan but back a plan to raise local income taxes 20% and give $100 million away to one of the state's wealthiest families.
It looks to me like there's a need to do a lot of house cleaning in the Republican-controlled legislature, and that fight will have to take place in the primary election in 2014. A lot of Republicans forget that it was the tax-and-spend ways of the Orr-Mutz administration that swept Evan Bayh and the Democrats into the governor's office for 16 straight years, a period when the House was controlled by the Democrats more often than not. Despite the abysmal record of IndyGo with its $65 million a year budget to provide mass transit in the most densely populated areas of Indianapolis, the Senate Local Government Committee gave its approval on a 7-2 vote today to the plan backed by the state's most fiscally irresponsible mayors and a panoply of pay-to-play contractors who are already divvying up the contracts they expect to be awarded for the multi-billion dollar boondoggle.
Unlike the proponents, who have been given $2 million in federal taxpayer dollars to spend on a PR and lobbying campaign to ram this ill-conceived plan through the state legislature, opponents have had no funding to fight the corrupt forces behind it. Until today. The Americans for Prosperity PAC, which is also bolstering Pence's tax cut proposal, will throw its privately-raised money to help save taxpayers from fiscal disaster.
“Our concerns are not only about the local tax increase, but about the overall cost of such a proposal,” said Chase Downham, president of the Indiana chapter of Americans for Prosperity. “We think this particular plan is costly for our city, and we are concerned about the impact on the budget going forward.” . . .
Americans for Prosperity, a national tea party group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, is becoming increasingly involved in state politics throughout the country. The Indiana chapter recently launched a six-figure media campaign to back Gov. Mike Pence’s proposed tax cut.
Downham will meet today with Indiana lawmakers individually to discuss the group’s concerns about transit . . .
“We’ve gotten involved in similar issues around the country,” said Downham, a former Pence aide. “Any time we have an opportunity to do what’s right for taxpayers, we will do anything we can.”
Transit bill author Rep. Jerr Torr, R-Carmel, said he’s not concerned the opposition will derail transit at the Statehouse.
“All the General Assembly is being asked to do is give this option to local government and voters,” Torr said . . .
Torr better be concerned. He may rue his arrogance if he faces a decent, well-financed primary opponent for the first time in his legislative career in 2014. Real Republicans have lost their patience with him. And did you notice how the Star refers to Americans for Prosperity as a tea party group and references who its largest funders are in a thinly-veiled effort to besmirch the opponents? Fellow blogger Fred McCarthy does a better job calling out the anti-taxpayer, Gannett eggheads than I could:
This one has the above-the-fold, lead headline on the front page, as follows: "Tea party will fight transit plan." The first three words in the text are "Tea party activists...., followed by, ...and they’re willing to spend cash..." In the fifth paragraph, an organization called Americans for Prosperity is identified as "...a national tea party group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers...." The balance of the article uses nearly half of page A5.
It occurs to us that, among backers of promiscuous government spending, the label "tea party" is frequently applied as a derogatory term or even a vicious epithet. We wonder why this label is used repeatedly instead of the simple word "conservative" which never appears at all.
We also were somewhat surprised by the apparent necessity of the reference to "spending cash" while ignoring a report earlier this week that proponents have already gone through $1 million in support of the proposal. And that’s a million taxpayer dollars.
Nor do we remember ever seeing reference to "billionaire brothers" when the owners of the local basketball franchise plead poverty and drain another $10 million from the public treasury.
We do hope future discussions of the legislation, and especially of any resulting referendum on the whole concept, will be treated with objectivity and at least some attempt to present legitimate opposition along with the constant, hyped drumbeat of approval . . .
I thought I would share with you this old clip of a meeting of the Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority ("CIRTA"), an unelected, unaccountable publicly-funded quasi-governmental body that's spent millions of your tax dollars over the past several years putting together their mass transit boondoggle. This meeting is from February 23, 2011. Apparently the board members figured out they were doing their cause more harm by allowing the public to view what they were up to so they decided to discontinue airing their meetings on WCTY.
At this meeting, they talked about how they put out one fire by dropping their original plan to fund a metropolitan mass transit authority with the property tax and shifting to the income tax instead. They laughed about that. They keep talking about how the feds will take care of everything but the operating costs, which we know is not the case at all. Moreover, the federal government is broke and doesn't have money to give away for these boondoggles. They talked about trips they had taken to Washington to lobby for their plan. They talked about how helpful U.S. Rep. Andre Carson had been and how he had arranged a meeting for them with Rep. John Mica (R-FL), who chairs the House Transportation Committee and is apparently a big supporter of federal funding for mass transit. One of my personal favorites was when they were lamenting a legislative effort to correct a mistake in the 2008 property tax reform legislation, which you may recall increased state income taxes 20% as a trade off for capping property taxes. A fixed percent of state sales tax revenues is earmarked for mass transit agencies. The original legislation neglected to adjust the percentage downward to reflect the higher tax. The authority members thought it was unfair not to allow mass transit agencies to keep the windfall from the legislative oversight and were hopeful the legislation would die.
The authority is chaired by a Hamilton Co. Commissioner and government lawyer, Christine Altman. She, along with Ehren Bingaman, the highly-paid executive director of this obscure agency, do most of the talking. Incredibly, CIRTA has eight full-time staffers with a $1.7 million budget this year alone. It spends $12,500 a year providing free parking to these staff members. Their travel and conference expenses this year come in at $91,200, including $25,000 for travel alone. The staff is to be reimbursed $25,000 for mileage, $5,000 for fuel expenses, $2,000 for vehicle repairs and maintenance and $1,000 for meals. Despite the large staff, they have a bunch of outside contracts, including $48,000 for public relations, $43,000 for public affairs, $25,000 for accounting fees and $13,000 for legal fees. Their total contractual budget comes in just under $700,000. If they're spending this recklessly already, just think how they'll spend your money once they get their hands on billions of tax dollars.
My guess is that the Secret Service is pretty particular when it comes to who is permitted to do anything to the presidential limousine, including filling it with fuel. Well, believe it or not, the limousine, referred to as "The Beast," conked out on President Obama during his trip to Israel after someone mistakenly filled it with gasoline rather than diesel. Ouch.
Gov. Mike Pence is thinking out loud, at least, like a true fiscal conservative in questioning a legislative plan to give up to $100 million in state tax dollars to the privately-owned Indianapolis Motor Speedway to make improvements to the track and related facilities. State Sen. Mike Young sprung the legislation in the Senate near the end of action for bills in the first house, leaving virtually no opportunity for public debate, before the Senate rammed the legislation through on a bipartisan, 37-12 vote. The IMS doled out more than $100,000 in campaign contributions in the lead-up to the introduction of the unprecedented public subsidy as the IMS moved to add "rent-a-civic" leaders like Mark Miles to its management team. WTHR has more on Pence's comments:
The state's top political leader is voicing concerns about a plan to offer financial help to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Governor Mike Pence told reporters Wednesday that he has reservations about the way IMS bill is crafted. Pence is concerned that it provides little private investment opportunity.
The state Senate approved the $100 million plan in a 37-12 vote last month. The Speedway already spends $5 to $15 million annually on maintenance and is facing competitive pressure from newer facilities.
Hulman & Co. CEO Mark Miles and IMS President and CEO Jeff Belskus went to the Statehouse to ask for financial help in February.
With $100 million in bonds, the Speedway will add lights to allow night racing at the historic track. It will also renovate the stands, upgrade facilities and install high-tech video boards.
Lighting the track, as well as grandstands and parking lots, could cost as much as $20 million. Building renovations and track upgrades could cost as much as $30 million. Another $10 million would be spent to make the Speedway compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The money would be essentially taken out as a lump sum loan and paid back over 20 years. A special taxing zone at IMS would provide $5 million a year. Another $2 million annually would be paid by the Speedway . . .
Let's be clear. There is nothing in the legislation that requires the IMS to contribute $2 million annually; any contribution the IMS makes to these improvements are at its discretion. The only recourse bondholders have for repayment of the bonds issued under the legislation is to capture up to $5 million a year in taxes the IMS pays to the state. If the state revenue contribution is inadequate to cover repayment of the bonds, the bondholders have no recourse against the IMS because the proposed state law bars them from protecting their interest with any lien or mortgage on the IMS.
During a House Ways & Means Committee hearing this morning on the give-away, the IMS' Mark Miles told lawmakers the Hulman-George family has no plans to sell the IMS. “There is absolutely no intention to sell it,” he said. “We're not doing things to get it ready to sell. The family fully expects to keep this business their business.” Yeah, as if he's going to admit their true intentions out loud to lawmakers. I wonder if Miles carefully parsed those words so that a new owner that included Tony George as a successor owner would make his statement true.
IMS officials are once again touting an economic development study it had prepared, which claims the IMS contributed $510 million to the local economy annually and generates 6,200 jobs. The IMS and IndyCar series actually have a relatively small number of full-time employees. As everyone familiar with IMS events knows, the IMS relies heavily on volunteers from not-for-profit groups to provide concession and parking staff on race day. Nonetheless, it claims the IMS and related sports businesses generate annual compensation to employees of over $235 million. It claims 200,000 out-of-state visitors spend $145 million combined at the IMS' three annual race events.
It looks like some lawmakers, and I'm talking about lawmakers who have an "R" behind their names, are starting to think like Republicans instead of the out-of-control tax-and-spend crowd running our municipal governments who want to sucker you into agreeing to yet another local income tax to support some pie-in-the-sky mass transit undertaking. A key Senate lawmaker who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, Luke Kenley (R-Noblesville) has pulled his sponsorship of the multi-billion dollar mass transit plan pushed by Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Carmel Mayor James Brainard a day before a key committee vote on the measure. From the IBJ:
Already skeptical of a mass-transit plan for the Indianapolis metro area,
influential Sen. Luke Kenley has dropped his sponsorship of a related bill
that’s due for its first Senate hearing Wednesday.
Kenley, R-Noblesville, said he decided it was inappropriate to be listed as a
sponsor without giving the bill his unqualified support.
“I’ve never been
too persuaded by the need for this,” he said Tuesday morning . . .
Earlier this month, Kenley told IBJ that
he had doubts about transit promoters’ financing plan, but he was willing to
give local government the opportunity to put the question to voters.
Kenley said he reconsidered giving the referendum a green light after seeing
that 60 percent of his constituents oppose the plan, according to a poll he
conducted on his website. Many wrote notes to express just how strongly they
oppose the plan, Kenley said.
Kenley, chair of the Senate appropriations committee, also serves on the tax
and fiscal policy committee, which is likely to hear the bill if it passes the
first committee. He downplayed his influence over colleagues. “I don’t know of
anybody in the Senate that votes the way I want ‘em to vote,” he said.
I'm happy to hear that Kenley is listening to his constituents, unlike many of his Republican colleagues who are drunk with power and who are more interested in currying favor to the pay-to-play crowd wining and dining them and their cheerleaders in the editorial room of the Indianapolis Star than the people they were elected to represent. My guess is that Kenley also grew skeptical that the proponents of mass transit really have no concrete vision of what it is they plan to do with the billions of dollars that will fall into their hands if, God forbid, this ill-conceived plan becomes law. The proponents' plan changes from day-to-day depending on what they believe they need to say to mollify skeptical lawmakers, but the breadth of the taxing authority vested in an unelected, unaccountable metropolitan transit authority remains intact. Let's hope more Senate Republicans rethink this boodoggle.
