Budget; Bang or Bi-Partisanship?
On Monday night, the Indianapolis City-County Council will take up Mayor Greg Ballard’s second budget, $1.22 billion, and by all indications much of it should pass (no big shocker) but with overwhelming bi-partisan support. I make this assumption based on committee votes. Here is a breakdown.
- Administration & Finance – 7-0.
- Public Works – 7-0.
- Metropolitan Development Commission - 7-0.
- Community Affairs – 7-0.
- Library – 7-0.
- Airport – 6-1.
- Indy Go – 6-1.
- Health & Hospital – 7-0.
- Police – 5-2.
- Fire – 7-0.
- Sheriff – 5-1. (The Committee was split, party lines, over taking $2.5 million from the jail bed fund and using it to shore up the Sheriff’s pension fund. However only Bill Oliver cast the sole “no” vote on the entire budget.
The budgets where Councilors were more divided, and that was bi-partisan was the Capital Improvement Board budget which passed 4-3 with Democrat Jackie Nytes voting “yes” and Republican Bob Lutz voting “no.”
The Parks and Recreations vote was the only area truly split along party lines. Republicans voted for it and Democrats against. Point of clarification, Indiana Barrister had previously wrote that all three Democrats on the Committee voted against an amendment that would have allowed for city employees to compete for privatization contract. While all three Democrats did vote against the Parks budget, saying it did not offer enough money for Parks, only Bill Oliver voted against the privatization amendment.
Perhaps the biggest point of contention in this entire was over a position that I’m willing to bet 95 percent of the city had no idea existed, the Director of the Telecom and Video Services Agency. Currently the position is held by Rick Multra. The original intent of the agency was to regulate right-of-ways used by cable franchises, however many of those functions have were transferred to the state when the the Legislature passed the Telecommunications Act of 2006. An amendment was introduced to eliminate that position, however several Councilors expressed concerns about the “institutional memory” of the position Multra argued his office brought in more money than it spent. The city countered however that the position is not what it was and many of the TVSA functions (auditing) can be done cheaper. The amendment was defeated but I would not be surprised to see it come back up on floor Monday night.
Overall, from what I have seen, this budget process has been very civil, low key and less contencious than the last couple of years. Why? Several reasons: there is less money to fight over, we’ve gone through one year of this process and all parties are familiar with the Ballard administration’s style. And third, the Ballard people actually know what they’re doing when it comes to crafting a budget and dealing with bricks and mortar issues. After all, they did take what was projected to be a $200 million shortfall in 2012 and turn it into a $50 million surplus.
Not bad. Now we can turn our attention to the smoking ban Democrats are going to try to bring back once the budget is passed.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Actually the TVSA amendment, to put Maultra's position back in the budget, did pass in committee when Barb Malone voted with the Ds. A floor amendment would have to be passed to take it back out again. I agree that there will likely be an attempt to do that.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:38 am
Tle Telecommunications shift to state control, is one of the stupidest pieces of legislation to ever make it through our General Assembly. And that's saying a lot.
Need further proof that our legislature can be bought? The cable lobby lined up and bought this boondoggle.
Need proof that the cable companies need regulating at the local level? Ask the next ten cable customers you know, about their service, billing questions, etc. At least half will have horror stories.
Maultra and his agency at least monitored calls to cable companies, wait time, and had some control over rates, fees and service. Now, it's almost nothing. Free reign for the cables.
Comcast belongs in the Customer Service Hall of Shame. Right beside AT&T. Since deregulation, they behave this way with glee–no possibility of getting kicked around for lousy service.
And at the end of the day–we need some protections, as well as monitoring of the fees the cables pay for rights-of-way they're mauling all over town.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:55 am
TA,
Most of the regulatory effort still has to start at the local level, even with state involvement. Elimination of Maultra's office will stop that regulatory effort. Maultra also advocated that the city collect rights of ways fees from telecoms for use of public property like virtually every other city in the U.S. does. That didn't make him popular with a certain figure in the Ballard administration who represents AT&T. I'm sure that's just a big coincidence though.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:38 am
So sad, Paul. And beleive me, I would be the first to jump on Ballard, but the deregulation began under a Democratic State House and a Republican governor. The state toiok overe that responsibility, I believe three years ago (timeframe uncertian, but recent).
That deregulation was accomplished largely for the ebenfit of AT&T and its then-new cable-TV biz, and Comcast, Brightpoint, etc. AT&T hired away George Fleetwood from O'Bannon's staff many years ago, and he cashe din on connections, as did others.
But none of the state dereg DISallowed localities their rightful oversight re: rights-of-way, etc. Have you seen the disgusting manne rin which the cables/AT&T have chopped up rights-of-way all over town, and failed to repair afterward? Especially in the last couple of years. It took me 18 months to get AT&T to come back and fill in some holes they left.
And please tell us who represents AT&T. I'm in a fog–seriously. I don't know.
The comments from the corpcounsel's office re: Maultra were hilarious–because most of the legal and biz community recognizes that Ballard's CorpCounsel office is a complete and utter joke–a training ground for future Icemiller/B&T/BakerDaniels partners. Their work product and logic the last 20 months has been, well–laughable, simplistic and naive, at best.
September 21st, 2009 at 8:12 am
Just a reminder of the sources of smoking bans, RWJ Foundation, owned by big pharma, and the coalitions, more concerned with “social change” than the bans themselves:
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912
And what the 99 million dollars was going to. Note on page seven the “inside -out”, provision going for patios later, AFTER business owners spend thousands of dollars to build them to accommodate their smoking customers, clearly showing that the tobacco control activists have ABSOLUTLY NO CONCERN about local issues or businesses.
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf
Here's the “model ban” from page eight that many communities copied, printed, and passed. It's the “smoking ban for dummies” It only takes a few minutes to fill in the blanks naming your community, the administrators names, and blanks to customize it to your community according to the width of your sidewalks.
http://www.no-smoke.org/document.php?id=229
September 21st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Wow…interesting info, General.
I'm adamantly against smokign anywhere in public, or in any business that operates as a commercial establishment via public zoning ordinances. Your right to smoke anywhere stops at the point my lungs have to inhale the foul stuff.
But it occurs to me, that if more people quit smoking, we're going to have a huge tax canyon to fill.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:57 am
Actually, smokers cost IN $390 million (conservative estimate) every year. A study was conducted by the Bowen Research Center here in Indiana. http://www.worksmokefree.com/PressRelease_pdfs/...
I can't find the full study, but I will try.
And you can find Generalsn ALL over the country posting that same info over and over again. I'm pretty sure he works for a tobacco company.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:55 am
TA,
Most of the regulatory effort still has to start at the local level, even with state involvement. Elimination of Maultra's office will stop that regulatory effort. Maultra also advocated that the city collect rights of ways fees from telecoms for use of public property like virtually every other city in the U.S. does. That didn't make him popular with a certain figure in the Ballard administration who represents AT&T. I'm sure that's just a big coincidence though.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
So sad, Paul. And beleive me, I would be the first to jump on Ballard, but the deregulation began under a Democratic State House and a Republican governor. The state toiok overe that responsibility, I believe three years ago (timeframe uncertian, but recent).
That deregulation was accomplished largely for the ebenfit of AT&T and its then-new cable-TV biz, and Comcast, Brightpoint, etc. AT&T hired away George Fleetwood from O'Bannon's staff many years ago, and he cashe din on connections, as did others.
But none of the state dereg DISallowed localities their rightful oversight re: rights-of-way, etc. Have you seen the disgusting manne rin which the cables/AT&T have chopped up rights-of-way all over town, and failed to repair afterward? Especially in the last couple of years. It took me 18 months to get AT&T to come back and fill in some holes they left.
And please tell us who represents AT&T. I'm in a fog–seriously. I don't know.
The comments from the corpcounsel's office re: Maultra were hilarious–because most of the legal and biz community recognizes that Ballard's CorpCounsel office is a complete and utter joke–a training ground for future Icemiller/B&T/BakerDaniels partners. Their work product and logic the last 20 months has been, well–laughable, simplistic and naive, at best.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Just a reminder of the sources of smoking bans, RWJ Foundation, owned by big pharma, and the coalitions, more concerned with “social change” than the bans themselves:
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912
And what the 99 million dollars was going to. Note on page seven the “inside -out”, provision going for patios later, AFTER business owners spend thousands of dollars to build them to accommodate their smoking customers, clearly showing that the tobacco control activists have ABSOLUTLY NO CONCERN about local issues or businesses.
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf
Here's the “model ban” from page eight that many communities copied, printed, and passed. It's the “smoking ban for dummies” It only takes a few minutes to fill in the blanks naming your community, the administrators names, and blanks to customize it to your community according to the width of your sidewalks.
http://www.no-smoke.org/document.php?id=229
September 21st, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Wow…interesting info, General.
I'm adamantly against smokign anywhere in public, or in any business that operates as a commercial establishment via public zoning ordinances. Your right to smoke anywhere stops at the point my lungs have to inhale the foul stuff.
But it occurs to me, that if more people quit smoking, we're going to have a huge tax canyon to fill.
September 21st, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Actually, smokers cost IN $390 million (conservative estimate) every year. A study was conducted by the Bowen Research Center here in Indiana. http://www.worksmokefree.com/PressRelease_pdfs/...
I can't find the full study, but I will try.
And you can find Generalsn ALL over the country posting that same info over and over again. I'm pretty sure he works for a tobacco company.