Indiana

Them Dems

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

I wish City-County Council Democrats would get their act together and start acting like the loyal opposition as opposed to the Keystone Cops of the Council.

With tonight’s budget vote pending, Democrats held a news conference complaining, once again, about the Ballard administration failing to hire 100 police officers and wondering where the money went.  In addition they introduced an ordinance tonight that would hire 25 police officers which would be funded mostly by taking money out of public safety’s contractual services budget.  Someone apparently didn’t do their homework because the money the Democrats wanted to hire officers would have come from contracts used to maintain the hiring and promotional process, legal settlements and other services.  Of course all this could have been avoided if Democrats wrote the original public safety ordinance to say money “shall” be used to hire 100 additional police officers as opposed to simply “authorizing the hiring” of 100 police officers.

Also at their news conference, they  “wondered” where the $5 million in anti-violence funds went for youth programs, community outreach and crime prevention.  The answer is nowhere because today was the deadline for groups to apply for the funds.  By the way, at last count the number was 85 and growing.  But you see what I mean?

This is not the first time in this process my Democratic friends have fallen short.  They complained about the Council using the Administration and Finance Committee to reconcile a number of city agency fund balances when they did the same thing a few years ago.

In addition if you are also planning to complain about the budget when it comes before a final vote it would help if your members didn’t vote for it in committee.  A quick check of documents shows out of the 86 budget votes cast by the Council members in separate committees, there were only 6 “no” votes.  Bill Oliver cast two “no”votes; one of which was to cut the arts budget by more than $500,000.   Joanne Sanders, Vern Brown and Mary Moriarty Adams cast one “no” vote each in committee and Bob Lutz was the lone Republican “no” vote on the Airport Authority’s budget.

I hope my friends on the left side of the aisle (my left, facing them) will learn from this experience that being the loyal opposition means having your facts and your act together.  This city needs a healthy two-party system to function.  Three, if you count the Libertarians.  Council Democrats have done enough messing around and it’s time for them Dems to get their act together.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).