In the public policy debates over expanding the Convention Center and building the RCA Dome, Conseco Fieldhouse, Victory Field and Lucas Oil Stadium, Democrats and African-Americans were included in a bipartisan and biracial consensus to achieve those civic goals.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened during the Capitol Improvement Board’s (CIB) funding crisis.
The Ballard Administration, the Daniels Administration, the CIB’s leadership and Indianapolis’ business leaders have emulated the national Republican Party by adopting the GOP’s positioning as the Party of no!
Were efforts made to consult or sit down and work with local Democratic and African-American leaders on finding a solution for the CIB’s woes? No!
Every idea African-American leaders or Democratic lawmakers proposed to help the CIB reduce its over $20 million deficit was met with resounding no’s.
African-American politicians and most of the Black community felt strongly that taxes didn’t need to be raised. Our politicians and community felt that the simple move of some slot machines from the Hoosier Park and Indiana Downs racetracks to downtown Indianapolis would drastically alleviate the CIB’s financial problems. How did Mayor Greg Ballard, Governor Mitch Daniels and business leaders greet our community’s positive suggestion? With a resounding no!
City-County Council Minority Leader Joanne Sanders proposed diverting some state sales tax money generated by downtown hotels to reduce the CIB deficit. Her plan got a categorical no!
Indianapolis’ Democratic legislators insisted if Marion County taxpayers had to pay for the woes of facilities suburban residents benefit from, those suburbanites should bear some of the tax burden. Again, the Ballard Brood, Daniels’ Denizens and the Business Boyz said no!
The Pacers wanted relief, to the tune of $15 million, to not operate their fieldhouse. I proposed if that was done then the Pacers should give the city the rental monies from all non-basketball events at Conseco Fieldhouse (i.e. circus, ice show and concerts). That common sense idea was met with a big no from the Pacers!
A major reason for the CIB crisis has been the building of Lucas Oil Stadium. The old RCA Dome was a minimalist facility, with little glitz and glamour. That lack of panache kept the Dome’s maintenance and staffing costs reasonable.
Lucas Oil Stadium is opulent compared to the Dome. The stadium’s designers, along with CIB officials and Gov. Mitch Daniels created a three-quarter billion-dollar edifice that’s beautiful and glamorous. But designers, builders and politicians failed to realize how that glam would add to the CIB’s cost of operating the stadium.
That sharp jump in expenses is the major reason for the financial crisis.
Former Mayor Bart Peterson, current Mayor Ballard, Gov. Daniels and the CIB’s leadership didn’t learn a lesson I learned at Northwestern University in 1971.
I was part of student government and we regularly met with Northwestern’s President Dr. Robert Strotz. An economist by training, one day we asked him why was the university running a deficit when they were able to get donors to build a bunch of new campus buildings.
Strotz looked at us and flatly said, “We got the money donated to build the buildings, but not the money to operate them. That’s why we’re in a deficit.”
I never forgot that lesson. It’s a lesson to those responsible for building Lucas Oil Stadium should’ve learned. Their failure’s costing us today.
The Ballard Brood and Daniels’ Denizens’ refusal to consult and include Black elected and civic officials in the decision making process, combined with a stubborn refusal to consider our community’s every reasonable suggestion for solving this mess, goes against the spirit and practice of how Indianapolis has worked for decades.
If the City-County Council fails to approve increasing taxes on hotel rooms and fails to authorize the CIB to accept a $9 million state loan, things will get rough. That will affect our Black community.
I’ve supported every major improvement done in Indianapolis over the past 27 years.
But since our community’s politicians, leaders and institutions have not been consulted or included in solving this problem, we need to sit on the sidelines this time and let those who said no solve this problem themselves.
Our community’s representatives on the City-County Council must vote no on Proposal 285, which deals with the CIB mess. The governor, mayor and the business community created the mess and then spurned our community’s help. Let them stew!
What I’m Hearing in the Streets
Last Friday, Secretary of Education Arne “Dissed Black Expo” Duncan and President Barack Obama announced a $4 billion “Race to the Top” program of educational reforms they’re trying to push on the states.
Gov. Daniels and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett are salivating at the prospect of Indiana getting a fair share of those billions.
The money targets underperforming schools. The same schools Daniels and the Indiana Legislature under-funded in the new state budget.
I mentioned Duncan’s Expo no-show when I asked him, during a White House press briefing, whether his administration would explain, in detail, his planned educational reforms to African-Americans. Duncan ducked the question.
In the briefing Duncan explained one goal of “Race to the Top,” an initiative supported by African-Americans, would make it easier to reward and promote good teachers and fire bad ones.
It seems teachers support that goal, according to a recent survey of IPS teachers. That survey reported that teachers would like IPS to make it easier to assign teachers where they need to be and end the bureacratic games, politics and ineptitude in teacher assignments.
But the voluntary survey of nearly 1,700 teachers, undersampled the district’s Black teachers by 45 percent.
The survey was paid for by The Mind Trust and conducted by The New Teacher Project. Their gross undersampling of Black IPS teachers and failure to ask survey respondents for age and gender information is sloppy research that doesn’t meet the standards of an acceptable research methodology.
The debate over teacher standards, licensing and qualifications will be fierce in Indiana in the coming months. The Mind Trust and The New Teacher Project should be ashamed for disseminating incomplete data and grossly undersampling African-American teachers in the school district with the largest number of African-American residents and students.
See ‘ya next week!
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915.
