Loading ...Statehouse SOS
Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson is asking the Governor to call a special session of the General Assembly to solve Marion County’s property tax problems. Talking to reporters and pundits this afternoon the Mayor said Marion County residents are facing massive property tax increases and Indiana lawmakers should help solve that problem.
The Mayor wants the state to restore cuts in property tax replacement credits, take over child welfare payments and pass his Indy Works government consolidation plan. The Mayor says doing so would save taxpayers $88 million and also benefit other counties in Indiana as well.
A statement from the Governor’s office said “The suggestion from Mayor Peterson came completely out of the blue with no prior notice. Governor Daniels has supported some elements of the mayor’s proposal, but this year’s General Assembly chose a different way to assist homeowners with property tax relief. If there proves to be significant legislative sentiment for the extreme measure of a special session, the governor will give the idea consideration.”
I can’t blame “Hizzoner” for doing this because come Monday, all hell will likely break loose in this town as tax bills come due. The Mayor also said he didn’t come to assign blame to anyone, but to ask everyone to work together to solve the tax crisis. The Mayor is too much of a gentleman to point a finger, but I will.
If anyone deserves blame for part of Marion County’s problems is State Rep Bill Crawford who blocked the Mayor’s Indy Works program from passage. Crawford was more concerned about protecting Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer’s job than saving the taxpayers’ money.
And if you think the SOS flares are going up now, wait until next week when the tax bills hit the mailboxes.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
It’s mighty peculiar than your pointed finger so blithely skips over Republican Senator Jim Merritt who made that last-minute change to the legislative deal intended to pass Peterson’s consolidation plan. Merritt knowingly dropped in that ‘poison-pill’ to screw things up…
June 28th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Wilson,
I was there every day, you weren’t.
Abdul
June 28th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I was there those closing days when the deals were made. I even have photos of you taken while I was there daily that last week.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
And did you have as much access as I did?
June 28th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Can someone answer for me what happened to the money the city got when they took over Washington Township Fire? The cash is why the city wants the Fire department, and that would be fine IF they are spending the money back on the fire department, training, etc…
ALSO, Bart is just trying to divert attention away from the FACT the HE is asking for NEW TAXES!!!!!
Bart lies!
How much would it cost US to have the legislature come back in to session? Huh Bart? Are you paying??
Ignore Wilson
June 28th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
FYI: your new property tax information (and bill!) is available already on the Internet at http://www.indygov.org . There’s a $4 fee to access it at home right now…
June 28th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
The bill will come soon enough. If we spend the $4 to get it Bart will blow it anyways!
June 28th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
consolidation was killed by bill crawford because as the idiot he is he finally realized 6 of the 9 township trustees are democraps and 3 of the 6 are black !
duh! way to go crawford
oh yes, and to halp his crooked friends carl drummer and sweetpea gray
June 28th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
A more precise URL for tax info
https://www.civicnet.net/apps/property/information/ia/property
June 28th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Bill Crawford I hope that you have learned a lesson. If not the lesson is this: When you don’t do something that Bart Peterson wants you to do, you will be attacked and insulted, he will send idiots like Glenn Howard and Duke Oliver into the community to tell people how bad you are. Bart Peterson thinks that he owns all Black people, Don’t laugh, he certainly owns some, doesn’t he Glenn Howard, Gregg Porter and William Oliver.
June 28th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
This doesn’t get Bart off the hook. He’s BS’d about the number of police officers and their costs, he’s forgiven tens of millions of dollars of debt owed to to the city (to the taxpayers!) for the sake of a new stadium deal that additional city taxes assist in financing, and he’s allowed tax dollars to be used in bond incentives to profit private enterprise.
I’m a big fan of business development, but not when it takes needed tax dollars and allocates them to the pockets of financiers and investors.
If Bart were truly representing Marion County residents in fiscal matters and in an honest fudicial capacity he would have laid everything on the table from day one. He hasn’t done that. Instead, he’s played a cat and mouse game. He leads when it comes to private interests and he reacts when it comes to citizens and fiscal responsibility.
Todays announcement isn’t leadership. It’s another reaction. He’s a day late and a dollar short.
June 28th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
In 2003, when the last big tax hit, our fine Mayor called Gov. O’Bannon for a special session too. O’Bannon told our Mayor to take a hike.
This press conference is same old same old vintage Peterson grandstanding and is NOT new news at all, just a revisit to the 2003 grandstanding on the exact same issue. Another Politics 101 move by O’Conner (this guy needs a new playbook). He did get the press so I suppose you can’t argue with success. It’s just that it’s soooooooooo phoney and people still buy the crap.
June 29th, 2007 at 7:30 am
I love Peterson’s plan to have the rest of the State step in and take care of some of Marion County’s problems. My Mayor also created some problems, i.e., a new, largely unfunded, multi-million dollar concert hall, multi-million dollar traffic circle landscaping contracts, and a $55 million dollar waterpark. My property tax bill went up 61% this year. I think the rest of the State should be forced to pony up and cover the spending my Mayor, James Brainard, imposed as well. Good idea Bart (:
June 29th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Politics at the state-level aside, can anyone who tries to stay informed on local politics say that they are truly surprised by any of this? I’m not. I’m still waiting to figure out where all my money’s going to go. To fix Indygo? To fix the schools? To fix public safety? I won’t hold my breath.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am
Peterson and O’Connor need to pull those false ads off the television. Promoting lies will not get him reelected in November.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:11 am
Peterson and O’Connor need to pull those false ads off the television. Promoting lies will not get him reelected in November.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:47 am
How is it that there are 92 counties in this state that had tax increases, but only one with 35% to 100% increases? It seems like Bart is running for County Tax Assessor — a job he seems to do far better by neglecting the impending property tax crisis than he did as Mayor.
This ditty surfaced on CafePress recently: http://cafepress.com/telejoke.