Mayor Greg Ballard said his goal is to repeal a 65 percent income tax increase

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080410/NEWS05/804100438

Folks lets take a close look at this story in the Star.

"Mayor Greg Ballard said his goal is to repeal a 65 percent income tax increase the county enacted last year, but he hinged that promise on state legislation to reduce layers of government."

"Joanne Sanders, the City-County Council minority leader, said the promise sounds good but doesn't represent the reality of the city's budget crisis."

Now my question is this. Where is the promise to repeal this tax? Did Ballard say that he promised to repeal this tax? No he said it might happen if things works out. This is a good move on the Mayors part because the democrats who voted for this tax has already asked why he was not working on revisting this subject.

"Earlier, the Marion County Democratic Party issued a news release that said the Ballard administration had begun with broken promises. The release said Ballard did not live up to campaign pledges to bar lobbyists with a financial interest from city boards, to delay a Super Bowl bid until crime dropped and to cut the mayor's office staff."

"Ballard brushed off the criticism after the speech. He said he has done exactly what he set out to do, beginning with bringing public safety under a single chain of command and introducing a sweeping ethics proposal to make city finances more transparent."

Mayor Ballard said while running for office that he was for the SuperBowl bid. What he said was that he was against any taxpayers money going for that bid.

I never heard of the Mayor say that he would "bar lobbyists" What he said was that he would not pay lobbyists to lobby at the state house for the city of Indianapolis. Last year Bart Peterson paid $300,000 for lobbyists to do this. He has also stated that he wants lobbyist to register with the city and anyone excepting gifts of any kind to be reported so the citizens can see it. This would bring accountability to local government.


I, like many of you hate for our hard earned money to go in the form of taxes. How about instead of repealing this tax or part of this tax, we set up where it is paid on the 5.7 billion dollar debt with the stipulation it would end when the debt was paid.