The Capital Improvement Board has supposedly cut an additional $7 million from its 2010 budget according to the IBJ. How those cuts were achieved appears to be a bit of a mystery, leaving it with a $5 million deficit even if new tax and revenue sources are tapped to bail out the struggling government entity. The CIB made claims its 2010 deficit was as high as $47 million. "But how it slashed $7 million since the end of the Legislative special session and how it proposes to close the final gap are a mystery," the IBJ's Scott Olson reports. The CIB claimed it had already shaved $10 million from its annual budget, bringing total budget cuts to $17 million.
The CIB is asking the City-County Council to raise the hotel tax to raise an additional $4 million a year. At the same time, the State has pledged to kick in an additional $8 million from state tax revenues collected within an expanded professional sports development area in downtown Indianapolis. The plan also calls for the CIB to borrow $27 million from the State of Indiana over a 3-year period. Despite City-County Councilor Bob Lutz's claim during the committee hearing on the tax, spend and borrow bailout plan that the CIB no longer planned to pick up $15 million in costs currently paid by the Simons under its privatization agreement to operate Conseco Fieldhouse as part of the Pacers' lease deal, Olson suggests the CIB still plans to pick up these costs.
Radio talk show host Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, who has become the de facto spokesman and apologist in chief for establishment tax and spend Republicans in Marion County, claims CCC President Bob Cockrum has 10 Republican councilors committed to voting for the tax increase. Marion County voters swept Republicans into power in the 2007 municipal election when voters protested higher property taxes and income taxes imposed under Mayor Bart Peterson. Republicans promised to oppose new taxes. How soon they forget. Democratic councilors appear poised to vote as a bloc against the plan, forcing Republicans to rely only on their own members to pass the tax increase.
2 comments:
How did they go from a $47 deficit to now $5 million deficit?
We'll never know without that independent forensic audit.
Those republican councilors need to remember that they can be swept out just like they were swept in.
And Gary...your audience is just as big as Abdul's.
Board members from the CIB stated at the committee meeting that they have "cut the budget to the bone". I reminded them that they still had suites in the Lucas Stadium, Conseco and Victory Field. Then I reminded them that food and beverage had to be in the budget. All they could do was shrug their shoulders. If they were at the "bone" I wonder where they found these millions? Something stinks in their budget and it isn't the fish sandwich at the snack bars.
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