It’s no big secret that I’m a big fan of government consolidation and property tax caps.  I think if done properly there is more efficiency, accountability and eventually savings.  It’s good for political parties because there are now fewer offices to fight for and they can make better use of their resources.

I am not surprised that some members of the General Assembly and local government officials aren’t totally on board with consolidation and tax caps.  A lot of lawmakers got their start in local government and most of the folks at the grass roots level have local government ties.   But anyone who is in local government or at the Statehouse should pay attention to this because I think there’s a big set up right down the road.

On the one hand, lawmakers seem to be back tracking on the state implementing Kernan-Shepard government consolidation reforms to streamline local government, and instead turning those decisions over to the locals to decide if they want to reform.  While I think that’s the state abdicating it’s responsibility to maintain a uniform local governing structure, it is consistent with those who believe such decisions should be made at the local level.  However, people seem to be forgetting one thing, property tax caps.

Although the most recent analysis of the current tax caps shows its impact was not as draconian as some local governments originally thought, we all know what’s coming in 2010.  And here’s some more food for thought, if lawmakers do nothing, a one-percent property tax cap on all Indiana property is a more realistic prospect than you might think.

Let’s say  lawmakers don’t pass the current tax cap structure into the Constitution.  The caps are challenged and thrown out because they are not “uniform” as required by the  Constitution and are thrown out. What happens next?  Lawmakers will have to come back with a more “uniform” system, which I could argue means all property would have to be capped at the same rate.  Now which do you think lawmakers will shoot for?  The one percent rate for residential property or the three percent for commercial?  Anyone who said three can forget about ever getting re-elected!

Now let’s put the two together.  Property tax caps are here to stay in one form or another and the full effect will be here by 2010 and there is a chance that one-percent across the board could become the law of the land.  Second,  we have local governments, who if some members of the General Assembly get their way will have to decide if they want to consolidate and cut services.  So if you’re an Indiana lawmaker, why wouldn’t you want the locals to make the tough choices and that way you can wash your hands of the whole thing and let them take the fall?

It’s almost deliciously Machiavellian, which is maybe why it took me all of five seconds to recognize what was happening.

For the people who are opposed to government restructuring and reform, let me ask you three questions?

1. Are you defending the school district in Southern Indiana where the school board voted to give itself the same taxpayer-funded health insurance its teachers and administrators have?
2. Are you defending the Mayor of one of the largest cities in Northern Indiana who drove to Indianapolis in a taxpayer-paid for Hummer H3 to tell state lawmakers his city is strapped for cash and it needs to raise the property tax caps on business?
3. Are you defending the  Central Indiana township trustee that spends more than $2.50 to administer every $1 of poor relief?

If this isn’t what you’re defending, what are you trying to protect?

Legislation has been introduced in the Indiana Senate that would have school start after Labor Day and end by mid-June.

I have never been a big fan of school starting before Labor Day and now with ISTEP taking place in the Spring I can’t think of any real, logical reason for school to start in mid-August.

While Indiana schools are required to meet 180 days, you can still meet the schedule by shortening breaks and adjusting the calender.  This isn’t rocket science, just stop padding the calender.

Your thoughts?

I’ve known about this for a while and now it’s official, the City of Indianapolis is stepping up its efforts to crack down on panhandlers.  It’s going to ask the Legislature to pass a law restricting where panhandlers can beg for change;  including banning panhandling  within 25 feet of any ATM or active parking meter.  It’s high time the city did this.  

I was downtown yesterday and approached by a panhandler and told him I couldn’t help him so he immediately approached a woman who was standing on Meridian street trying to stay out of the cold and he got in her personal space and started begging.  I made it a point to stay close by in case things got silly, but luckily they walked away to go beg to someone else.

The downtown begging had died down for a while, but it is getting ridiculous again.  Instead of sitting off to the side and holding a sign, the beggars are literally standing in the middle of the sidewalks, obstructing pedestrian traffic, begging for money and then having the audacity to get an attitude if you don’t part with your hard earned money.

The anti panhandling law is long overdue.  And while we wait for something to happen, I also want to suggest that we need to stop giving these people money.  Panhandlers would not beg if there was no money in it.  Remember how your favorite pundit begged for change this past summer and made $30 in two hours?  Just for the record, I donated it to charity.   Which I suggest you do the same should you ever be approached.

Indiana Lawmakers continue to chime in on the state’s current budget situation.  Here are some of their positions..

Republican State Senator Luke Kenley

• While he opposes tapping into the state’s savings account, the real wild card in all this the federal economic stimulus package.  He says the stimulus could create another dynamic however lawmakers need to realize any money from the federal level is temporary and should not be used for long term on-going programs.  
• The tax caps are working and he doesn’t see how lawmakers could adjourn without passing tax caps and getting them closer to a vote to put them into the state constitution. 

For anyone who thinks tax caps are still a bad idea, allow me to share this bit of information with you.

Monday was a meeting of the Indiana Distressed Unit Appeals Board, it’s the body that allows local governments to raise their property tax caps if they can prove a sufficient enough hardship case.

Get a load of this, for all the crying of poverty and gloom and doom because of the tax caps, out of more than 2600 units of local government in Indiana who depend on property taxes, only two showed up asking for increases in the tax caps; the city of Gary and the Beech Grove Library District.

Both were turned down.  The Mayor of Gary may have had better luck saying the city was going broke had he not shown up in a Hummer H3, leased by the city.  By the way, Gary just signed a new lease for the Hummer at a cost to the taxpayers of nearly $30,000.

Beech Grove tried to argue that the tax caps will force them to eliminate computer services and people won’t be able to play games on them.  Somehow I think consolidation is in Beech Grove’s future.

And before I forget, there was one unit of local government that almost showed up thinking its revenue was going to be cut seven percent because of the tax caps, but it turns out the officials read the paperwork wrong, and the municipality was only losing seven dollars.

Wow, this sure is a lot of gloom and doom.

Although Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and House Speaker Pat Bauer aren’t married, you would think the upcoming debate in the General Assembly over what to do with the state’s budget surplus sounded like a dispute married couples have during hard times.

Do we dip into the savings account now or later to make ends meet, or in this case, the state surplus?

In a speech today to  the downtown Rotary Club of Indianapolis, Daniels cautioned against going into the $1.3 billion fund to help address the state’s hard times, saying the state may need the money later because early budget forecasts were off by $1 billion despite best estimates and no one knows how long the current recession will last.

On the other hand, Speaker Bauer would not categorize the money as a surplus, but as a rainy day fund that was created just for this occasion. Bauer noted the state has lost 80,000 jobs since last year and some portion the $1.3 billion should be used for job creation.  He said the State can’t dig itself out of a hole, without addressing what created the hole in the first place, job losses.

One other point of contention is likely to be a proposed four percent cut in higher education funding which amounts to about $60 million.  The Governor says despite that cut, Indiana colleges and universities will still receive more money than they have in the past.  Bauer says such cuts only harm institutions that help created jobs by educating the workforce.

The two also split over K-12 education funding, with Daniels saying schools will need an extra $80 million to reach last year’s level of funding, while Bauer says the Governor isn’t taking into account costs like health care and insurance.

One area where Bauer appears to be making some public movement is on the issue of Kernan-Shepard government reform.  Originally he said lawmakers may not have to address the issue, but when asked he said lawmakers will deal with some elements of the plan, but they have their own ideas on how to save the taxpayers money.

Lawmakers convene tomorrow.  The House Ways and Means Committee will hold it’s first formal budget hearing on January 13.

A new poll by Ball State University shows Hoosiers don’t have much faith in local government.  

The poll by the Bowen Center for Public Affairs shows 67 percent of Hoosiers want government to run more efficiently.  In addition the poll showed Hoosiers were willing to pay more for services, but only if the money went to the State and not their local governments.

One glimmer of hope for locals is that only 37 percent said local government was not responsive to their needs, but 53 percent said they would not be willing to give local government more taxing authority to solve problems.

This survey gives ammunition to pro-consolidation forces as the battle over Kernan-Shepard begins in earnest in the Indiana General Assembly.  

Already two of the biggest local government lobbies, the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns and the Association of Indiana Counties, are a lot more on board with government reform than they were in the past. 

And to be honest, the only people really opposing reform are people who are feeding from the taxpayer trough, of course they would make more sense if they didn’t misquote their own research.

Change is coming people,  get with the program.

In addition to the budget and government consolidation, there are a lot of other pieces of legislation that will try to work it’s way through the Indiana General Assembly.  Here are a few that I’ll be paying attention to. Hat tip to Doug Masson, his web blog gives a pretty good summary of a lot of these bills.  I recommend him as a resource if you’re trying to follow this stuff.

SB 11 – Prohibits an employer from banning employees from bringing weapons onto their property as long as the gun stays locked in the vehicle.

SB 17 – Reduces the amount required for disclosure of legislative gifts from $100 to $25.

SB 15 – Requires a one-year “cooling off” period before lawmakers can lobby the legislature after leaving office.

SB 20 – Requires pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions in a timely manner.

SB 40 – Caps increases in the annual property tax assessments at five percent of a home’s value unless the home changes owners that year, or the increase results from physical changes to the home.

SB 40 is something that really peaks my curiosity as it has been one of the big questions left over in the property tax debate about assessments and making sure what while increases are capped on one end, there was nothing to stop local governments from hitting consumers in the pocket on the front end.  Capping assessments at 5% gives homeowners even more predictability with their property taxes.

SB 11 and SB 20 are an interesting dichotomy in balancing employer and employee rights.  Philisophically I tend to favor an employer’s rights to regulate his or workplace and if employees don’t like it, they exercise their free market choice and not work there, so leave your gun at home and go get the box of ribbed condoms.  I’ll be watching these two bills pretty closely.

As I get ready to focus on substantive legislative issues, I figured I’d have some fun with some recent hate e-mail that was sent to me.  This was posted on another blog and the person who wrote it did not sign their name, and frankly I don’t blame them after reading this.  Instead of posting the e-mail and then responding, I thought I would mix the two.  You can easily figure out which is which.  I made no changes to the original e-mail and re-printed it as is.

******

Hey Guys,

I HATE to inform you, but our friend Abdul Hakim-Shabazz is a rat!!!!!!

(Actually under the Chinese calender I would be a  Rooster, but there’s another joke in there we won’t touch.)

Abdul works for Tom John, Bob Grand and Greg Ballard and has been for quite some time now.

(Actually my employers are Entercom Radio, Lewis & Wilkins, Ivy Tech, University of Indianapolis, my legal and consulting clients and myself)

He informs them of our comments on his blogs that they may be interested in and then discloses the indentity of the bloggers, even the anonymous ones to Tom John, Brizzi, Ballard, Joe Loftus and Bob Grand and anybody else who will pay, so they can retaliate, by leaving horses heads on their pillows.

(Actually, the comments are public so anyone can read them and no one uses their real identity or e-mail address so I couldn’t track them if I wanted to)

Abdul’s behavior is unethical and reprehensible.

(No, I’m an attorney, oops never mind that one)

I no longer listen to his show because he is soooo –phoney you hear it even in his tone, then the ass-kissing starts. He puckers up everyday!

(Actually the only person I kiss everyday is my future wife and if you’ve ever seen her, can you blame me?)

All you republicans who supported Ballard and who were mistreated, you can “thank Abdul”.

(You’re welcome.)

He did the same thing with Indy Under Cover, then he faked like the officials had a search warrant for his computer to throw the scent off. Yeah right, he was lying. There was no search warrant, he just knew people found out it was him and Ike Randolph behind the blog and they were telling on who the bloggers were making the comments.

(Actually there was a search warrant, but it was never served because it was illegal, unconstitutional and would have cost Marion County at least $1 million in litigation.   I sure could use that money now.  And by the way “Undercover” is one word, but obviously accuracy doesn’t count.)

That’s why I rarely post to his site. He’s a fink and has been selling out all his “FRIENDS” to this elite group. His, MY FRIEND, crap is so phoney…

(Nice to know I can sell something during this economic downturn)

Gary Welch has done the same thing also, which is why he was mad that he was not ‘rewarded’ by the party. He snitched on his bloggers too, but the party didn’t take care of him when Ballard won the election. Abdul did Gary Welch in with the party…There can only be one blog snitch in town and thats “Ego Abdul”.  Gary in return, retaliated against the wrong people when he was not picked for leadership in the Ballard Administration, when he should have gone after black Abdul. Instead he spent a year trashing out every black man, woman and child on the planet.

(First, I’m glad no one is confusing me with “white Abdul”.  As far Welsh goes, you’ll have to talk to Gary.)

Both Abdul and Gary are a work of art and have become very partisian, malicious, racist (yes, even abdul ‘give me an immigrant servant for free’ HakimShabazz), and dysfunctional. -Shabazz.

(Actually that should be “illegal immigrant” servant for free. )

Abdul, well, they ran his ass out of Illinois, he’s assuring he’ll have no place to go after the republicans lose the city and the state in the upcoming elections. There are very few places for a man like him to run and hide and his day is coming; he too will be discarded soon.

(Okay let’s have some fun with this one, first I had no idea being offered a job in Indianapolis was the equivalent of “having your ass run out of town” especially when you still own a home back in Illinois and occasionally get offers to come back.   Secondly, if every Republican in Indiana was thrown out of office tomorrow, I would still have a place to go, it’s called work.  And by the way, when my day comes, we’re having a big party at Nicky Blaine’s and you guys are all invited.)

Thank you Attorney Ogden for your leadership, we are behind you.

(I’d rather have you in front of me where I could keep an eye on you).

January 4, 2009 5:23 PM

*****

So much for silliness, I have real work to go do now.