So here I am finally following up my promise to pay much more attention to the machinations of our local government. My laptop wasn’t connecting to the shitty city wifi at first so I was forced to take manual notes, but ah ha! Now technology has returned to me. Anyway, here’s my first thoughts:

• The meeting opens with a long-winded and incredibly sectarian Christian prayer. This has got to be unconstituional. Where’s ACLU-Indiana?
• Can someone explain to me the point of “recognizing” people at the beginning of the meeting? Yes, that’s wonderful that your neighbor showed up to see you today, but we the taxpayers of Marion County don’t really care.
• Next the election of the new officers. Ok, we know that they have to make it official. We know the Democrats have to nominate their token opposition. But the results are preordained. Hell, Cockrum was already listed as the council president before the vote. Since the results are preordained, can we please spare the long-winded bio of our new president Councilor Lutz? Thanks.
• Next up, the pointless acceptance speech. My inner libertarian (I normally keep him locked in a closet) is weeping.
• A call for working together and mutual respect. Anyone want to bet me that this won’t last through the meeting?
• The VP they handled with no bullshit. Much better.
• President and VP has different vote totals. Weird. I missed who voted differently
• A break for the meeting of “the committee on commitees”. Is this actual government or parody government. My inner libertarian is now slitting his wrists.

More to come after the break.

Update: Ok, not much more to come after all:

• An update on committees. The committee to get Monroe Gray hasn’t met yet. Wasn’t this the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER? I guess not.
• Public Policy committee. A bunch of necessary appointments. No bullshit, thankfully.
• No special resolutions! Per Jason, this is a minor miracle.
• Proposals. Mostly appointments. But there it is, the resolution to take control of the IMPD from the sheriff and give it to the mayor.
• That’s it. Proposals need a comment/discussion period for obvious reasons, so we’re done for the night.
• Crazy revolution guy got interviewed by the media. That’s bound to be high-larious.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s democracy!

Update: Okay so the formatting is totally munged up on this. No idea why. I'll try to fix it later, maybe tomorrow

6:49pm: Well the first meeting of the new CCC is about to begin, and it looks like the circus is already in town. There's a guy here all dressed in American Revolutionary garb. I hope to hell he gets up and talks when/if there is a chance for public comment. Comedy gold. I'll try to live blog as long as the battery holds up, so be sure to refresh this entry if you are reading this in real time.

7:01pm: Group picture time! I hope they do a serious picture then a serious one.

7:05: Another reason I love Angela Mansfield - she is the only council member to obviously and (it seems) proudly to not bow her head in prayer nor say amen. Takes balls, and admire that. the CCC "opening prayer" seems so blatantly Christian, it's gotta be illegal.

Also, new Councilor Smith had to be reminded to vote yea that he was present. Off to a blazing start.

7:08: Pointless introductions of people and what I am sure will be pointless resolutions that do nothing as usual. Putting laptop to sleep until something meaningful happens.

7:12: President nominations. For Republicans, Bob Cockrum (we all knew). For Dems, Mary Moriarty Adams (sacrificial candidate). Apparently Councilman Lutz found it necessary to list that Cockrum has grandchildren as part of his qualifications. Okay. Vote was 17-11.

7:15: Cockrum statement, talks alot about workign together, do what's necessary, not necessarily what's best etc. Pretty simple.

7:17: Vice president nominations: For Republicans, Kent Smith (we all knew). Dems sacrificial candidate is Mary Moriarty Adams again. Vote was 18-10. Who was the swing? I didn't catch it. I'll have to check the minutes when they post it.

7:21: And everyone is off to recess for the Committee on Committees. God I love government. Don't know if that means the general meeting is over, or I just wait it out. I'll be back if anything happens. I suspect it will.

7:41: We're back from the Committee on Committees! It's as if thousands of libertarians screamed out and suddenly were silenced.

7:44: The Beating A Dead Horse Report: They are re-opening for 2008 the committee looking into Monroe Gray. Really. Sore winners, often?

7:48: NO SPECIAL RESOLUTIONS!! HOORAY!! Can we throw a parade?

7:49: Reading various proposals. Most of the early ones are for Ballard appointments. What few there are. There's also a Vaughn proposal in there having to do with IMPD, which may be the big "put the police under the mayor" thing but not sure.

7:51: Motion to adjourn. Record setting short session.

So Greg Ballard was inaugurated yesterday. Our long city-wide nightmare of peace and prosperity is over! (Yup, those taxes Bart raised to put more cops on the street? The ones Ballard and local idiots hate so much? Murder down 19% in 2007.)

The inaugural address is interesting in that he proposes all sorts of things AND wants to cut spending. How’s he going to do that? But an oft overlooked part of the speech* caught my eye:

“For too long the elves, dwarves and 10th level mages in our city have went untaxed. I will propose a Fictional Characters Tax to help ease our tax burdens and pay for my proposed programs”

Makes sense to me.

*Really, he said it.**

**Not really.

Something that Masson posted today (dude, what are you doing up and on your computer at 5:49am?) led me to leave a comment I figured I would share with you. I essentially made a similar point in my post about the Council meeting this week, but this distills it a little better. First, Masson:

my impression was that one of the main reasons for picking Ballard over Peterson was because of Peterson’s push to increase the county option income tax. Turns out, Ballard doesn’t think that tax hike was so bad. Because, he’s going to keep it and isn’t going to try to repeal it. Except maybe “sometime down the road.”

And my comment:

Because I can’t stand to go to Advance Indiana and give myself a stroke, I’ll write this here. The COIT increase *cannot* be repealed or modified for two years. That’s law. It has to do with it being technically a state tax I believe. So Ballard’s whole campaign based on how bad it was (which is a separate argument*) was based on an implied lie that he could even do anything about it anytime soon. The fact that his supporters are upset about this shows how little they knew about an issue that was central to their voting for Ballard. *A vast majority of the COIT increase went to more police on the street and to fixing the public safety pension problem. I find it strange that Ballard both ran with the support of the FOP *AND* on a campaign that the COIT increase was bad. That… cognitive dissonance made (and still makes) no sense to me.

Thoughts?

I’m still working on a few issues for Indy Council Watch. A change you may have noticed is that now permalinks for the syndicated entries link to indycouncilwatch.org. I am going to dig into the plugin code to see if I can add a “Syndicated From:” line to every syndicated entry so we have proper attribution going on. Hopefully I can do that in my down time between XMas and New Years.

Update: So I already got the “Syndicated From:” working.  Much thanks to Rad Geek for the quick answer via email and for his awesome FeedWordPress plugin.

Final meeting of 2007, and final meeting of the Democratic majority on the CCC. If this story in The Star is any indication, it could be an interesting night.

Two proposals that City-County Council Democrats are introducing today would put new limits on the mayor’s authority to borrow money or grant tax abatements.

A spokesman for Mayor-elect Greg Ballard objected to any policy changes before he takes over in January.

Proposal 555 would allow council members to take an advisory vote on tax abatements before the Metropolitan Development Commission approves them. Tax abatements are initial breaks given to companies to entice them to build in the county.

Proposal 556 would allow city residents to voice their opinions before the mayor could borrow money. The public referendum would be nonbinding, so it would not stop Ballard’s administration from issuing bonds or tax warrants.

Both proposals would make the process of granting abatements or issuing new bonds more difficult and public by forcing referendums before city officials could make decisions that Mayor Bart Peterson has made without the extra step.

I still find it humorous that Ballard is against the outgoing Democratic Council doing what he campaigned for in 2007. Could he be just wanting to save the political gain from such proposals for himself and the Republicans in 2008?

* Former Indianapolis Colt Bill Brooks was recognized in the audience. Other than he, it was mostly recognizing family, etc in the room.

* Annnnd we’re onto the special resolutions and the like. I still believe if I was on the council I would eliminate these as they waste immense amounts of time. Hand out the resolutions to the council members, put them in the minutes, but just vote on them as handed out with the recognitions in them. There really is no need to spend so much time on them before the real business of running the council is done. I’ll be putting the laptop in sleep mode until these are done.

* I was going to ignore the special resolutions but really, a special resolution recognizing the runner up football team from Pike HS? Councilman Randolph practically gave an analysis of the team. And recognizing an Eagle Scout? really? Are these necessary?

* A series of resolutions recognizing retiring exiting council members.

* Two resolutions recognizing the long service of outgoing members Rozelle Boyd (42 years) and Phil Borst (28 years). Bill Brooks, representing the Colts, gave them both jerseys signifying their years of service. Rozelle made some interesting comments about continuity of transitions between different mayors, a subtle, yet obvious commentary on the transition issues that Ballard has had. See The Accidental Mayor’s post from this morning “An Administration Of One” to see why this was a timely comment.

*And after over and hour, we’re finally getting to things that mean anything at all.

From this point on I’m going to try some new things with formatting to separate a sort of pseduo-secretary of the goings on from my comments. I’ll also be glossing over or skipping resolutions that had no debate or were just procedural stuff. We’ll see how it works.

Special Resolution 593
Equitable tax distribution Encourages General Assembly to apportion income tax equitably to counties that a person both works and lives in to make them more fair. In2003, the city only got 38% of the sales tax generated in this county, and many people who live outside but work in Marion county, the county doesn’t get their county income tax. Also wants the gas tax distributed just just on number of streets, but street lanes to make it more equitable as well.

Comment: I like this. It does seem a bit backwards that people generating income in this county but not living here can skew the equitable distribution of tax money. While this won’t actually do anything, it will be something to hand off to the general Assembly to see if something can get done. No opposition to this special resolution.

Special Resolution 594
Comment: Here’s the one everyone was in a tizzy about for today.
By Rozelle Boyd. Recommending to the next City/County Council review and if feasible/practical to rescind the increase in the county income tax from this year. He makes a note that this is just to review the tax increase, and only if it is feasible to rescind it. Also mentions the apparent voice of the people to rescind it, and that it is this council that passed it and this council now, recognizing the people, it should be rescinded.

Discussion
———–
Boyd: This is not calling purely for the overturn of the tax increase. Calls for a review and if feasible, only then overturn it. The purpose of this is to make sure the tax does not continue on “of its own momentum … [if another way can be found to handle the things it was meant to take care of].” Some may respond that the state legislature is working on tax issues, but it is just saying the next council should put this on the schedule, not vote right away. The language is also not saying “you should rescind” but to review and make the appropriate decision not is it binding the next council to do anything, just encouraging it to schedule and review the issue.

Borst: Moved and it was passed to convert this to a special resolution. Says it is not practical or feasible because the council is not allowed to amend or repeal this for two years.

Comment: Calls into question, yet again, Ballards’ calls for repealing this. Makes you wonder how much he really knew about the issue.

Boyd: The new council can schedule to review this at any time during that council’s time, not just during 2008.

Borst: Wants to send it to committee, which will kill it for this council. What a shitty, shitty maneuver.

Boyd: Sending it to committee is essentially wanting to kill it but not say.

Schneider: it’s crazy time! gets political by saying he wishes “your party had “cared about taxpayers” before.

Comment: What an ass. If they hadn’t done this, we would have been hammered for doing nothing about public safety. They couldn’t win. remember this was done to put new cops on the street and to deal with the pension issue. And even crazier, Schneider is supposedly a big public safety/police advocate. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, jackass. I am not going to miss this man.

Vote to send to committee passed. It was essentially killed. Good job council GOP. You want your cake and you want to eat it too. I’ll make sure to note if coming in next year you all of a sudden, magically decide to review the tax increase.

Prop 530, 531, 553, 554: Appointments and such. All passed unanimously

Special Resolution 558:
From last meeting, the one that was sent to committee that urges congress to put a hold on foreclosures. It is a proposal being circulated across the country in many cities. 558 deals with both homeowners and bank protection. Calls for more restrictive action relative to the flow of cash to maintain banks, but also protect homeowners to give them a period of time to continue to make payments and not go into foreclosure, in an agreement with their lender. Basically urges Congress to help homeowners who are making a true attempt.

Discussion
———–
Borst: Amends to be a Special Resolution passes.

Schneider: Annnnd here we go with the “rubbish” (although he’s smart enough not to say that this time) but says it’s a federal issue and not something that is “germane” and is a slap in the face to “people who pay their mortgages on time.”

Comment: Once again, Scott Schneider is an ass who has no clue about the real workings of the lending/foreclosure crisis. Dear Scott, this isn’t just an issue of lazy people or irresponsible people not paying their bills. Quit obsfucating the issue.

Gibson: heh. “Even President Bush recognizes the need for a short term solution”

Bateman: Loss of job, healthcare costs, predatory lending, etc all go into foreclosures, not just ‘people not paying on time.’

Lutz: Has concerns with where this came from, specifically the Larouche group. But that being said, “even the worst of us sometimes come up with a good idea…. we do have to do something and should at least go on record.” Recommends a vote for.

Comment: Nice to see a Republican actually say what should be said, that this is just a resolution for going on record with a specific idea for a solution. We’re not binding a damn thing here and this is a crisis that government needs to be involved in.

Borst: Not sure this is the answer. Funny, he never recommends anything alternately. Voting no.

Sanders: She too has qualms about the origination, but this is a good proposal.

Boyd: According to some of the testimony at the committee, similar resolutions have been passed around the country. We are not pioneers.

Vote: Passed 15-10

Comment: While this is largely just symbolic and will do nothing, sometimes you have to do this so that your elected officials higher up the food chain know what people are thinking at the lower levels. As Councilman Bateman said, there are alot of issues here that go into foreclosures, but the predatory and subprime lending really led to alot of this. It isn’t just people not paying their bills, as much as it may make Scott Schneider feel high and mighty to say so.

Proposition 561
Development of Purdue research facility on the south side(?). the first building to be constructed in the Purdue Accelerator Park(?) “Purdue’s first real research outreach into the Indianapolis area.” Business incubation, life sciences, technology. Similar park in W. Lafayette has went very well and city has a pledge of $5 million, no more than $5.25 million investment in a $12 million project. Will generate enough in property taxes to take care of the bond as well as an excess towards the existing United facility bond. (Side note, United facility is now fully staffed and used).

Comment: This seems like a good plan. We need to invest in technology incubation in the Indianapolis area. That will fuel many of the needed, high paying jobs of the future.

Discussion
———–
Cockrum: We’re still paying $14 million a year on the United facility, this (Purdue park) is a drop in the bucket compared to that. There are also hotels under construction in the area whose property tax income should offset this proposal.

Passed 23-0.

Prop 525
It’s an appropriation, and sounds pretty normal, but an off discussion happened on the votes needed to suspend the rules (as was needed for this being the end of the year). In practice all along, even when (according to J. Sanders) Borst was president, this number has been 18. M. Speedy decided to question this number that has been used for years. Nice. I hope the Dems hold them to a hard 2/3 number (19) instead of 18 next year.

Crazy hat guy is here, talking about something supposedly written by ICE Miller “Guide to policy makers” something about abandoned property. Who knows what he s really saying. Saying it’s a “conspiracy.” This guy is always a trip. No one really has any idea what he is talking about.

Finally, there was a big debate over an appropriations proposition meant to fund the police through the end of the year. There was alot of debating, public commenting and ange. Apparently the Cliffs Notes version goes something like this:

For a few hundred former Marion County Sherriff’s Deputies, after the police merger into IMPD they were only paid for one week instead of two in June to get them on the same pay schedule. That 40 hours is currently scheduled to be made up on January 3rd, but there are pension implications of the money isn’t paid to them in 2007. Of course, no one could just say it that simply. You had the outgoing City Controller saying that the money just isn’t there and that the Pension Board can modify the rules to take care of this situation. Then you had people from teh FOP and the Pension Board saying “we just want the money we deserve”

Both sides really let the hyperbole get out of hand, obscuring the real issue. To the police: You are already getting the money you deserve. That’s not the question. Framing the whole issue with words like “you’re not paying our public safety heroes” is dishonest. You WILL be getting that pay. Just not this year. To the Controller: You need to acknowledge that you do not know if it is even possible to change the pension rules, so asking the police to just hope that they can be changed and that it won’t effect their pension is sort of shitty.

I don’t know what the solution is and I had to bail before they ever got to a vote. Unfortunately the Indianapolis Star is even lazier than I am - the apparently left even before this debate because it is never mentioned in the story on the meeting this morning.

On a side/meta/housekeeping note,my WordPress upgrade from a few weeks ago has really hosed things - especially entry editing. If you see some downtime between XMas and New Years don’t be surprised.

This post should be showing up at Indy Council Watch within the next couple hours, whenever the aggregator catches it.

Looks like the Democrats on the City/County Council have have picked their minority leader and it isn’t Monroe Gray.

City-County Council President Monroe Gray’s troubled tenure as a Democratic leader ended tonight when he announced that Joanne Sanders would head the minority party next year.

…

In his two years as council president, Gray drew continual criticism for his heavy-handed control of meetings, conflicts of interest in a contracting business that led to an ethics violation and questions about a firefighting job that produced no documentation over seven years.

I had a few issues with Gray as the Council President, but the firefighting job and “conflict of interest” charges really began to border on absurd.  Especially when the incoming Majority Leader is a police officer and yet no one brings up conflict of interest there. BUT, I can’t say I don’t like the decision. I’m a big fan of Joanne Sanders and think she will be just what is needed as a minority leader.

In other news from the article, I must say I’m a little troubled by the number of council newcomers being appointed to committee chair positions.  We’ll see how that shakes out.

Note: I wrote an update about tonight’s council meeting but I’m still waiting on the ICW  syndication to pick it up. Hopefully will appear by the morning.

Just wondering if anyone out there in internet land knows where Ballard is working out of during the transition, or at least where the transition team is working?

There has been an idea for something entirely legal, entertaining and quite humorous. There will be video if it happens.

Indygov.org finally posted the meetings of the first quarter of 2008.

• 1/7 : 7pm
• 1/28 : 7pm
• 2/11 : 7pm
•  3/3 : 7pm
• 3/24 : 7pm

There are also all sorts of committee meetings for those interested in that as well. Check out the full PDF of the Q1 meeting schedule here.

Well tonight was the first night I went to an Indianapolis City/County Council Meeting for the Indy Council Watch project. Not much raelly went on, but if it did anything it reminded me of how much of an ass my Councilman, Scott Schneider, is. There was a proposition before the council that was essentially a position proposition. No actual law, just a “urging congress to do X and Y and Z and pass bill N” relating to the foreclosure crisis that’s hitting many places in this country, not just Indianapolis. But what should be a relatively simple prop was marred by Scott Schneider and the obstructionist Republicans on the council leading up to the end of the session. Schneider’s first comment was essentially “I don’t see why this should even be before us. This is rubbish.” ‘Rubbish’ being an actual quote from him. Other Republicans on the council argued it should go to comittee for more invesitgation and later Schneider backtracked and tried to pretend he actually cares about people who lose their homes due to predatory lending (despite his “rubbish” comment earlier) but IMO, the cat was out of the bag re: his position on even voting to say we should urge Congress to do something. Schneider is lucky he declined to run again this year or I would have made it my goal to harass him every time he made an idiotic comment like this. Sadly the Unintentional Comedy Theatre of Scott Schneider will be no more after the next meeting on 12/17. Eventually the bill was sent to the rules committee I believe, which meets tomorrow and is chaired by Rozelle Boyd and I think he should be able to get it through. It will be interesting to see how those like Scott Schneider vote on this when it (hopefully) comes back to vote in two weeks. Other than that, before it broke into a committee meeting (which I skipped) it was just a series of “special resolutions” recognizing this and that. If I were on the council I would vote against all special resolutions that merely recognize people or events and waste time. They do nothing and all they are for is give an opportunity to prove that council members like things that are really obvious. Seriously, nearly half an hour was wasted just going through three special resolutions and letting them talk (and talk and talk sometimes). Sadly nothing was said about this

Proposal 555 would allow council members to take an advisory vote on tax abatements before the Metropolitan Development Commission approves them. Tax abatements are initial breaks given to companies to entice them to build in the county. Proposal 556 would allow city residents to voice their opinions before the mayor could borrow money. The public referendum would be nonbinding, so it would not stop Ballard’s administration from issuing bonds or tax warrants.

I find it hilarious that Ballard is actually against this because he doesn’t want changes before he takes office. isn’t this the exact sort of thing that supposedly the election in November was a referendum about? The Accidental Mayor backtracks again. I’m hoping these will come up on the 17th. Next meeting: 12/17 at 7pm. You are all invited to come along.