Comments on Advance Indiana™: Council Members Have Personal Stake In Income Tax Vote

You forgot Ike Randolph and Monroe Gray will also ...

2007-07-20T20:06:00.000-05:00

You forgot Ike Randolph and Monroe Gray will also be voting on this issue. There are more that 7 CC members who have an "outside interest" in this proposal.

"If they abstain on the grounds of conflict of int...

2007-07-20T13:57:00.000-05:00

"If they abstain on the grounds of conflict of interest then someone had better be prepared to call them out for serving on the public safety committee."

They shouldn't be on the council in the first place.

12:29, however late they reach the conclusion they...

2007-07-20T13:56:00.000-05:00

12:29, however late they reach the conclusion they're inappropriately serving on the council, their conversions would be welcome.

Better late than never.

If their internal bullshit barometers cannot help them determine right from wrong, we need to nudge them a little.

Don't you think it would be hypocritical if Brown,...

2007-07-20T12:29:00.000-05:00

Don't you think it would be hypocritical if Brown, Franklin and Plowman abstained from tonight's vote on the basis of conflict of interest as this has not stopped them from sitting on the public safety committee and voting for all kinds of things impacting their jobs?

If they abstain on the grounds of conflict of interest then someone had better be prepared to call them out for serving on the public safety committee.

Regardless what the Constitution or legal rulings ...

2007-07-20T09:25:00.000-05:00

Regardless what the Constitution or legal rulings say, what happened to an ages-old maxim, which should be applied to this and similar cases:

"Is it the right thing to do?"

Of course, the answer is a resounding "no."

The very fact that we have to rush to court, or to past rulings, is indicative of the depth of the problem. If a city employee wants to run for the council, so be it. But they'd best recuse on every single matter which involves their department, directly or indirectly.

Which would screw their constituents out of some decent representation a lot of the time. Ergo, why do it at all?

No one will say it aloud, but the biggest contributor to this problem is an Entitlement Attitude. There are some in the Dem party leadership, who think they're entitled to abuse the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. Because they toiled for so long in the minority. And now they're the majority.

Tenure alone does not entitle anyone to anything.

Until we lose this attitude, the problem will get worse. Because it's like a cancer--unchecked, it grows, and what was absurd yesterday, unchecked, becomes normal tomorrow.

Do you need specific examples of that in this county?

anon, 8:47, I mentioned some of that case law in a...

2007-07-20T09:13:00.000-05:00

anon, 8:47, I mentioned some of that case law in an earlier posting on the subject. It just seems to me there was one understanding of what that provision in the constitution meant for over 100 years and then a couple of the more recent court decisions started splitting hairs and interpreting it differently. The wording of the constitution hasn't changed; only its interpretation.

Start with the 1984 case of Rush v. Carter, 468 N....

2007-07-20T08:47:00.000-05:00

Start with the 1984 case of Rush v. Carter, 468 N.E.2d 236.

Officer Rush was a Montgomery County Police Officer. He was then elected as a Montgomery County Councilman.

Mary Helen Carter, the Montgomery County Auditor, sued, arguing that under the Indiana Constitution, Rush couldn’t be a cop and a councilman at the same time.

Officer Rush argued that by law, cops were just employees of the county, so he could hold a councilman office the same as any other working stiff.

The court of appeals disagreed with Rush.

The court said that the Indiana Constitution divided government into three distinct branches. No branch of government was allowed to exercise the power of another branch.

The court of appeals reasoned that county government was just a division of state government, so county cops were bound by the Indiana Constitution.

The court of appeals said: “The obvious constitutional frailty under the facts of this case is that Rush as a county council member (a member of the legislative branch) would have, in some degree, fiscal control over, Rush the county policeman (a member of the executive branch) as well as the rest of the county police department.”

Fast forward to the 1993 case of Gaskin v. Bier, 622 N.E.2d 524.

Elvis Gaskin was Deputy Town Marshal of Edinburgh, Indiana. He was also elected to the town Board of Trustees, where he voted on police matters such as town budgets, including the budget for the Town Marshal.

Deputy Gaskin, wearing his Board of Trustees hat, then cast a vote that screwed his boss, Town Marshal Ron Beier, out of the job of Chief of Police.

Marshal Beir sued Deputy Gaskin.

Marshal Bier argued that it was unconstitutional for Deputy Gaskin to be a cop and an elected official, and that the state law which let cops hold elected offices was unconstitutional.

The court of appeals said No--Deputy Gaskin is just an employee of the town. As an employee, he can hold elected office like any other working stiff.

And by the way, said the court, The Indiana Constitution on lucrative offices only applies to the state, not to local government. All that stuff we said in the case of Rush v. Carter? We were wrong. It’s up to the legislature to say otherwise.

The judges in the Gaskin case included a guy who is now on our Supreme Court, Justice Rucker.

If you want to read the court of appeals’ latest case on this matter, look at Thompson v. Hays at http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/06060701mgr.pdf

I think it is pretty rude of city council to hold ...

2007-07-20T08:31:00.000-05:00

I think it is pretty rude of city council to hold this meeting in room 260 which is a small room. Afterall, they know a swarm of angry taxpayers who do not support Peterson's tax and spend strategy are going to show up for another rally.

Hopefully they will do the right thing and open the auditorium for the public. This IS, afterall, the public's business.

Don't forget that if the police officers and firef...

2007-07-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

Don't forget that if the police officers and firefighters have worked in a position or on a project that was funded in any part by federal dollars, they are prohibited from running for partisan office by the Hatch Act provisions for state and local employees.

http://www.osc.gov/ha_state.htm

The OSC's boilerplate language for advisory opinions reads as follows:

" The Hatch Act (5 U.S.C. §§ 1501 - 1508) restricts the political activity of individuals principally employed by state, county, or municipal executive agencies in connection with programs financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States or a federal agency. An employee covered by the Act may not be a candidate for public office in a partisan election, i.e., an election in which any candidate represents, for example, the Republican or Democratic party. It has long been established that an officer or employee of a state or local agency is subject to the Hatch Act if, as a normal and foreseeable incident of his principal position or job, he performs duties in connection with an activity financed in whole or in part by federal funds. In re Hutchins, 2 P.A.R. 160, 164 (1944), Special Counsel v Gallagher, 44 M.S.P.R. 57 (1990)."

With all of the homeland security dollars, Weed and Seed, community policing grants, public safety grants, and federal traffic safety funds that police and fire agencies receive, I'm sure most of the councilors (and police councilor candidates) have worked on federally-funded projects.