Republican and Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. Mike Pence unveiled their legislative agendas last week at an Indianapolis conference. Not surprisingly, Gov. Pence and Republican leaders continue their fierce obsession with providing business tax breaks, while ignoring the needs of Hoosier working men and women.
In fairness, Pence and Republican leaders are renewing their effort to provide “vouchers” for low income families to send their children to pre-school.
But it’s unclear whether this initiative would stress attendance at “quality” pre-schools where children actually learn skills that will give them a leg up when they enter kindergarten. Or whether the Republican plan would provide tax dollars for parents to send their children to any pre-school, “quality” or “un-quality.”
But the centerpiece of the 2014 GOP legislative agenda is phasing out the business personal property tax.
This is a tax levied on business, not by the state, but by local units of government.
An estimated $1 billion is generated for cities, townships, counties, parks, police, fire, sheriffs and local schools from business personal property taxes that Republicans now want to eliminate.
Speaking at the Legislative Conference, sponsored by the Bingham Greenebaum Doll law firm, Gov. Pence said he wanted the tax to be phased out to minimize the impact on local governments and schools.
But, even if it phased out, an area like Indianapolis/Marion County would lose hundreds of millions of dollars permanently. That’s cash local government and schools would be hard pressed to replace.
Worse, under the constitutionally mandated property tax caps, local governments would have a hard time replacing that property tax revenue. So you know what that means, right? Jumps in local option income taxes.
Indiana’s cities, towns and counties have been hurting because the property tax caps are kicking in. Maintenance has been deferred. Employees laid off. Hiring frozen.
Here in Indianapolis, we’re hundreds of police officers short of what a growing city/county really needs. Our parks system is in deplorable shape, hurt by the administration of Mayor Greg Ballard’s cash starving parks.
Despite Mayor Ballard’s rebuilding schemes, scores of city streets continue without sidewalks or repairs, lots of streets are still in deplorable conditions.
Then there’s the negative impact phasing out the business personal property tax will have on our local school districts.
Phasing out the tax doesn’t affect the money that goes into the regular school budget. That money comes directly from the state. But elimination of the business personal property tax will drastically impact school districts’ ability to fund repairs and improvements to their buildings.
And the phase out could exacerbate a looming school fiscal crisis regarding transporting kids on buses to and from their schools.
The funds for those ubiquitous yellow school buses come from local property taxes. The rising cost to bus kids to school is running up against property tax caps in many school districts. Don’t be surprised if school districts begin to seriously look at cutting back and curtailing school bus service.
Muncie schools are already asking for a waiver from the state to eliminate bus service next August. Westfield-Washington schools are looking to end bus service in three years. Other school districts in the area are worried they may do the same.
The potential decline in local revenue could curb plans by downtown boosters to implement their Indy Velocity scheme which calls for spending millions in tax dollars on improvements to make downtown more appealing for people to live there; while continuing to turn a deaf ear and spend virtually nothing to help improve neighborhoods where the majority of Indianapolis live and work.
What I’m hearing in the streets
Nelson Mandela’s impact wasn’t just felt in his South Africa and worldwide, but also here in Indianapolis.
More than 20 years ago, Mandela visited Indy to attend the NAACP National Convention where he was presented the group’s highest award – the Spingarn Medal.
The June 17, 1993 Indianapolis Recorder reported Mandela’s Indy visit quoting him as telling some 12,000 at the Convention Center, “To attend a convention for the NAACP is for us a homecoming. We are here today not as guests but as comrades in arms.”
Mandela’s visit was part of a two-week tour of six cities raising funds to help conduct the 1994 elections where Black South Africans would vote for the first time.
Of those elections, Mandela was quoted in the Recorder article by Annette Anderson as saying, “The results they (elections) produce must inspire such confidence that their outcome is accepted by both South Africans and the rest of the world as legitimate.”
I anchored the WTLC-AM (1310) live broadcast of Nelson Mandela’s July 10, 1993, Indianapolis speech. I vividly remember the huge roar when Mandela took the stage in the Convention Center’s cavernous old Exhibit Halls A-B-C. Mandela’s legendary smile lit up the room as applause and cheers were sustained for several minutes.
My recollection of Mandela’s Indy visit was that local TV stations were there, but it seems none of the stations could find tape of his remarks and visit to air on their local newscasts last week.
Unlike the massive media coverage of Mandela’s freedom from 27 years in a South African jail three years earlier and the huge media coverage of his death, his 1993 visit here didn’t elicit coverage from Indy’s mainstream media.
Former Indianapolis Star reporter Kim Hooper covered the 1993 visit for that newspaper. Interviewed on our “Afternoons with Amos” program last Friday, Hooper said she remembered the heavy security for Mandela’s Indy visit and Hooper said the crowd “greeted him like a president.”
The Indianapolis Star ran Hooper’s story on the front page back in 1993 with a great photo of Mandela clasping hands in triumph with then NAACP National President Benjamin Chavis. On our program, Hooper said that photo was taken by Ron Ira Steele, then a Black photographer for the Star.
The Star chose not to reproduce that historic photo on its website nor in the printed newspaper last week on the occasion of Mandela’s passing. Sad.
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
