Indiana

Budget; Bang or Bi-Partisanship?

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

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.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on September 20, 2009 (boomark / email).