The Indy Chamber of Anti-Commerce Wants Suburban Taxpayers To Bail Out City Of Indianapolis

No legitimate business owner would pay membership to belong to the organization called the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. It exists solely for the benefit of a few corrupt businesses that use government as a tool for self-enrichment at the expense of all the rest of us; it could give a damn about rank-and-file business owners and taxpayers. More importantly, it is now an extension of the municipal city government since it merged with Develop Indy under one umbrella organization that is heavily funded with city taxpayer dollars. Against that backdrop, it comes as no surprise that this anti-business, anti-taxpayer organization is proposing a commuter tax on suburban taxpayers to funnel more money into the most corrupt, mismanaged municipal government in the state of Indiana to further enrich their self-dealing business interests. The group's head, Mike Huber, who lacks any basic understanding of what it takes to run a business because he's been on the government payroll virtually his entire adult life, tells the IBJ what a wonderful concept a commuter tax is, an additional income tax of up to one-quarter percent on suburban workers who commute to Marion County:

This is one of the most significant, if not the most significant, fiscal issues facing Indianapolis' ability to invest in its amenities, and therefore, is a serious nine-county issue," said Huber, a former deputy mayor under Mayor Greg Ballard.  

For this press release masquerading as a news story, the IBJ drags out the usual suspects to concur in Huber's view. The multi-millionaire businessman Jeff Smulyan of Emmis Communications claims it's a "fairness issue" that he feels strongly about. "You can't be a suburb of nothing," he says. The reporter would lead us to believe that Mayor Ballard hasn't decided where he stands on the issue, but it quotes his chief of staff, Ryan Vaughn, as saying, "We absolutely believe there needs to be a discussion about it." Of course, Vaughn answers to Barnes & Thornburg's Bob Grand, not Mayor Ballard, who handed control of city hall to Grand and his law firm the day he was sworn into office. Westfield Mayor Andy Cook, another fake Republican mayor, says he believes that "we need to spread some of the costs Marion County is facing to the suburbs," Cook said. All of these sorry characters are also supporting state legislative efforts to raise everyone's local income taxes to fund a mass transit boondoggle to stretch Indianapolis' IndyGO system into the suburban counties.

Instead of blaming people who flee Marion County to live in the suburban counties for Indianapolis' fiscal woes, why don't they do some introspective thinking about what it is they are doing wrong in the first place that makes people choose to live beyond the borders of Indianapolis?. Clearly, consuming a disproportionate share of the available tax dollars to fund world-class sports facilities and luxury hotels and luxury housing projects for pay-to-play contractors has done little to stem the general trend of people with means gravitating towards the suburban counties.  Notice that Huber's concern is focused on the city's ability to fund "amenities," not basic city services. By all accounts, there has been no shortage of funds when it comes to funding whatever luxury amenities the downtown mafia envisions; it's funding of basic city services and our schools that always comes up short. Every time our taxes are raised under the guise of paying for basic city services, the powers that be play shell games with the additional revenues that prevent the added tax burden from being allocated to the priorities sold to the public in the first place to gain approval of tax increases. Fellow blogger Fred McCarthy has the right idea about this bad notion:

Various over-sold and over-used property tax schemes have put municipal functions in financial need.  Now we have a proposal to exacerbate the problem by increasing income taxes without ever looking over the shoulder to check where current revenues are used - or abused. 

For one who spent a lifetime career with a variety of business associations, it is a tragic reversal to see one of the largest of such organizations support new taxation without a single suggestion that the need for a serious review of current spending policies should come first.

President Reagan was surely correct when he said the closest we’ll ever come to perpetual motion is the initiation (and funding) of another government program