I’ve seen tax bills increase from 1 percent to more than 200 percent as tax bills have started hitting the doorsteps. But some of you have wanted to know about local governments and their spending. Overall, Marion County spending is up 10 percent or $131 million more of your money. But that’s an average. Here’s a list of the worst offenders when it comes to spending.

Clermont – 162 percent increase.
Decatur Township – 49 percent increase.
Wayne Township – 40 percent increase.
Indianapolis Fire District – 36 percent increase
Franklin Township – 32 percent increase
Indianapolis Public Schools – 21 percent
Marion County – 25 percent

Now here are the governments who are spending the least of your money

Washington Township – 95 percent decrease.
Speedway Public Transit – 30 percent decrease.

Out of the nearly 50 units of local government, 18 are spending less. Only one school district is spending less, Warren Township.

Let me know if you want more info. Sometimes it pays to be a carpetbagger.

We all know about the disaster that is hitting Marion County taxpayers, but it would be nice to know just how bad it is. You can e-mail me at abdul@newstalk1430.com. Let me know how much your assessment increased as well as your bill. I want to talk about this next week. Someone has to start a revolution around here.

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.

Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson says he wants to put more than 100 new officers on the street, however I’m learning that the Administration was planning to do this a few months ago.

Sources tell me IMPD is planning to make up 200 conditional offers of employment to applicants who are going through the screening stage, with hopes of landing the 100 officers. They’ve completed the physical fitness, polygraph and interview stage. If they complete their background checks they are eligible to start at the academy when the new classes start later this year.

Sources say a decision was made last week by IMPD to combine the combine the October 15 and December 31 classes. It would take 22 weeks to train the officers and another 16 before they were fully sworn officers, so none of the new recruits would hit the streets until April of 2008.

The two classes would get the 100 applicants, the average class size is 55. The academy was not happy with this because of the large number of applicants; 55 is hard enough to manage so the quality of the training might suffer. However, the higher ups reportedly demanded they go to 100. This would explain why some of the new tax money would go towards training.

IMPD officials are meeting in the morning to talk about this, which leads me to believe there was no plan in place prior to the Mayor’s announcement today but this also begs another question. IMPD had four recruit classes scheduled between now and the end of 2008. October 15, 2007, December 31, 2007, June 23, 2008 and December 29, 2008. And assuming a recruit class size of 50 officers, we would eventually have 200 new officers. So are we really adding new officers or just speeding up the harvest by hiring people we were going to hire anyway?

This all seems a bit rushed to me. And I don’t know if this is the best way for public safety to operate. I want more officers on the street, but not like this. Besides, I thought we were only short by nine officers.

Mayor Bart Peterson’s staff this evening gave a briefing to representatives of the city’s neighborhood groups about what “Hizzoner” plans to detail in his speech tomorrow regarding public safety and city finances.

Although the Mayor’s people kept a lot of information close to their vest they did admit there was a police shortage according to some of the citizens in the room. Take that information and Deputy Mayor Steve Campbell telling me afterwards that there will be things that people can “see” in the Mayor’s proposal leads me to believe more that the Mayor will announce more cops in his plan tomorrow. There’s no word yet on what the exact number would be.

The Mayor may also outline some new sentencing recommendations for judges when it comes to misdemeanor offenses.

I was also told the Mayor’s staff pointed out that homicides were down since last year and there has not been one early release from the jail since August. Homicides are down overall, but Marion County’s dirty little secret about jail overcrowding is that the courts have changed the factors which set the bonds and it is now much easier for offenders to get out of jail because they never get there in the first place. And on any given week there are hundreds of jail beds that sit empty.

The Mayor’s staff did not give out any tax rate information, saying they want to reveal that information tomorrow.

I plan to air the Mayor’s full speech on my Thursday morning radio program.

Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson is holding a news conference tomorrow to make a major announcement regarding the future of crime fighting and financial stability in Indianapolis.

If you will allow me to engage in some freely admitted speculation, I would not be surprised if the Mayor announces he’s going to take that some of the public safety tax money and channel it into more cops on the street. I say this because the Mayor has already said the $85 million dollars will go for pension relief, courts and prosecutors and crime prevention programs. So there would be no real reason to hold a news conference unless he was making a substantive change. And the only real change which would matter would be for the Mayor to announce he was hiring more police. A spokeswoman for the Mayor would neither confirm nor deny he was going to try to hire more police officers.

I can’t say this surprises me with taxpayer revolt on the horizon in Marion County. What better way to sell a tax increase than to say it is for public safety and the hiring of actual live police officers? However, these are also the same people who said we were not short police officers, even though internal documents revealed a shortage of about 130 cops.

Tomorrow will tell the full story, and I’ll definitely be listening.

U.S Senator Dick Lugar tonight called for the nation to take a major course change in Iraq in order to achieve success. In a live speech on the Senate floor and posted on the Senator’s website, Lugar said the current surge is not working and the United States runs the risk of failure in Iraq unless it changes its policies.

Lugar says he does not see the Iraqis reaching a political settlement anytime soon under current conditions. He also says while the U.S. military is strong, it is not indestructible and Iraq could have devastating effects on its ability to function in the future. Lugar also calls on the U.S. to end its dependence on foreign oil by increases fuel efficiency standards. And he says a bipartisan solution on Iraq is less likely as the 2008 election
gets closer.

Lugar offers several recommendations to fix the situation in Iraq. He says while Iraq should be prevented from becoming a terrorist haven, Lugar says the U.S. should redeploy its forces throughout the region to ensure security and also remove itself from the fighting between sectarian forces.

He also says the U.S. should go on a diplomatic offensive and open discussions on Iraq with all parties that have a vested interest in the nation.

Lugar is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

I caught a lot of flack a couple weeks ago when I wrote that Marion County residents were going to have to pay about $170 million in new taxes because property tax increases, Mayor Bart Peterson’s public safety tax and increases in the county option income tax. I was told I was wrong. I was engaging in wild speculation. And some people even told other bloggers my numbers had no basis in reality.

It’s no big secret that taxes are going up. And my critics are right, the $170 million in new taxes is not the right number, but I’m living in the real world more than they are because after doing some research over the weekend, it looks like Marion County taxpayers could be staring down the barrel of a tax increase that’s at least $200 million.

Take a deep breath, I’ll still be here.

Welcome back. That’s right, at least $200 million in new taxes are about to hit the doorstep of every man, woman, child and hermaphrodite in Marion County. How did I get to that number. Easy. The Mayor is asking for $85 million for public safety + $15 million comes from an increase in the County Option Income tax + another $49 million comes child welfare payments the County has to make + a loss of the inventory tax which is being shifted over to residential taxpayers + a loss of revenue from property tax replacement credits + the trending which includes several years worth of assessments = at least $200 million in new taxes.

Marion County officials know this is coming. They got their budgets approved last Friday by the Department of Local Government and Finance. When asked to produce the new tax rates, they say they are working the glitches and make their figures are correct. However, County sources have confirmed that taxpayers will be hit with larger tax increases than anyone had anticipated. One official who asked not to be named said “there will be blood in the streets once the tax bills hit the doorsteps.” But as another government official put it “there are going to be a lot of double-digit increases.”

I take no joy in being right, but I just think it’s funny that the same people who told me I was wrong and that the bombs that were coming weren’t going to be as bad as I made them out to be will be the first ones burned at the political stake when the taxpayers rise up and storm downtown with their torches and pitchforks!

I look forward to the apology that I am due and the chaos that is about to ensue.

I just received a copy of the statement of the Marion County Sheriff’s Department regarding the termination of Rick Skirvin, a special deputy wagon driver who was fired for posting criticism of the Department on IndyUndercover, a local blog strongly critical of the department.

I expected the statement to read “Special Deputy Rick Skirvin was relieved of duty for conduct unbecoming an officer. The Department does not discuss internal personnel matters.” And I thought that was going to be it.

Instead, the one-page statement not only included the standard failure to adhere to department rules and regulations; it also includes some language that made me raise an eyebrow and grab . For example the release says “Skirvin’s false and malicious criticism was offered stealthily as an ‘anonymous’ Internet posting. Such cowardly and detrimental conduct cannot be tolerated by a paramilitary organization.” The release also calls Skirvin’s posting “dastardly.”

If the department spent as much time chasing after criminals as it apparently does on thesauruses, maybe our crime problem wouldn’t be out of control.

The release also goes on to say “The boorish misconduct of Skirvin” fell outside the bounds of constructive criticism and he should have operated within department rules rather than “under cover of darkness, Skirvin elected to anonymously spread his noxious screed over the internet. The Marion County Sheriff’s Department has zero tolerance for such pernicious tactics.”

That’s a lot of verbiage. But it does explain where all the savings from the merger went. It went to pay for the $2 words used in the press release.

I have to give big time props to Indianapolis Public Schools for implementing a dress code. Students should come to school to learn, not look like they’re getting reading to star in an MTV 2 music video. You won’t find any videos on MTV anymore. However, if IPS really wants to take this to the next level, the District should look at privatization. And not just privatizing services like transportation, janitorial clean up or food service, but the entire District.

Hire a private company and let them run the District. I don’t see any reason why a private company could not step in, take over the management and start eliminating waste and fraud, while at the same time increasing and improving student performance.

We’ve already privatized the management of the Indiana Toll Road, the Indianapolis Airport and the water company. Why stop there. Let’s privatize the schools and see real results and real reform.