NOT WITH A BANG, BUT WITH A REALLY LONG WHIMPER
That’s how Monday night’s City-County Council and four years of Democratic Control came to an end. It wasn’t short by any means. The meeting started at 7 p.m. and finished shortly before midnight. Measures to start a process to repeal the public safety tax, have the council approve tax abatements, tie the unionization of hotel workers to a $48 million city financing plan for the new Marriott all failed for lack of votes. Only 12 Democrats showed up for the last meeting and one Republican was absent.
The more interesting moments weren’t what happened, but how they occurred. For example, Councilors got deadlocked over an ordinance that would have included more than $400,000 in missed pay for several hundred Marion County Sheriff’s Deputies. Democrats Ron Gibson and Paul Bateman changed their votes to allow the measure to pass.
Council Attorney Aaron Haith and outgoing Minority leader Phil Borst won’t miss each other after some testy exchanges over parliamentary procedure. Republican Mike Speedy decided to shoot for a lot more face time by commenting more Monday night than I have ever seen him do so in the three years that I’ve been watching the body.
By the time it was all said and done, nearly five hours had gone by and a lot of people were tired and ready to bolt. I was one of them. There is an old saying that the two things you don’t want to see made are laws and sausage. As a Muslim, I’m not supposed to eat pork, but a couple patties sound really good now