This will not go down as one of House Republican Leader Brian Bosma's finer moments in the legislature. Just moments ago, he chastised House leaders for allowing a $47 million bailout proposal for the CIB to die. House leaders removed the Allen Co. CIB language and other local government capital-related projects spread around the state from HB 1604 and inserted them into another House bill without the bailout language for Marion County's CIB. Bosma criticized the decision not to include a bailout for the CIB, suggesting it would result in the loss of thousands of jobs. That's right. He thinks the failure of lawmakers to give Marion County the right to enact several new tax increases and capture even more state revenues to finance our mismanaged CIB will lead to catastrophic economic consequences to Indianapolis. That's the kind of talk I became accustomed to hearing Chicago pols spew every year when I worked for the Illinois legislature if state lawmakers didn't produce a financial fix for their schools, their transit system, their airports or whatever financial crisis their own corrupt mismanagement could produce. The fix was always higher taxes and no accountability. Perhaps Mayor Greg Ballard and the GOP-controlled council will now employ Republican principles to fix the CIB instead of the tax and spend failing ways of the past. Rep. Bosma should rededicate himself to learning how a true Republican would handle this CIB mess. Let's now get to work on permanently fixing the CIB so this never happens again, and it is forced to live within its approved budgets, not running deficits year after year as it has done for the past decade. This process should begin with Mayor Ballard calling for the resignation of the CIB's leaders and their replacement with persons committed to finding a solution without demanding higher taxes.
UPDATE: The House just voted down approval of a two-year state budget. The General Assembly will finish the session without completing its only constitutional duty. A special session will likely be called by Governor Daniels early next week to work out a budget deal. That leaves yet another opening for the forces pushing a CIB bailout to push for its inclusion in the final state budget. This fight isn't over yet.
8 comments:
I dunno. From over here, it looks like Brian Bosma did act like today's 'true Republican' in pushing a bailout.
This legislature just penalized businesses with a whopping tax increase to cover an unemployment fund shortfall, passed a bill against dog abuse, and against cell phone abuse by teenagers while driving until age 18. Wow, all this in 4 months. Sugar cream pie anyone?
Patriot Paul, The reason we have a UI shortfall is because Governor O'Bannon and the legislature years ago recklessly agreed to reduce UI taxes on businesses and increase benefits. We've known for years that the fund would go bankrupt but both sides just pointed the finger at the other and watched it happened. The business community is now paying the price for refusing to go along with an incremental approach years ago that could have helped avoid this debacle.
Well, the business community is paying the price, but maybe it's time some fundamental questions are asked. Like, "Why should businesses be compelled to fund unemployment insurance?" Why shouldn't this be something that employees fund, or not, at their own choosing? We don't expect our employers to fund our auto insurance, or homeowners insurance, yet we do tend to expect them to fund other insurance, such as health care.
I think the business community rightly resists regardless of whether the item is presented in incremental or lump format.
Why do we pay these idiots? They can't even pass a budget.
Regarding CIB - if funding for a CIB bailout gets rolled into the approved budget, our state representation will be no better than our Washington representation.
Profits are privatized and losses are socialized - the expected result when private finance has usurped control of government.
Patriot Paul, please pass me a slice of that sugar cream pie!
I agree with Mike Kole on the fundamental question of why businesses should cough up anything. It seems businesses are the collection agency for the government, get thrown into TIF districts or arbitrarily absorbed into makeshift sports districts, get socked with an unconstitutional 3% property tax assessment, along with a myriad of other fees, so when they say 'no' to the government on hikes, who can blame them. Just look at the amount of vacancies downtown and across the state.
There are very few 'true republicans' left in the statehouse.
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