Navistar Clawback Cave Another Mayor Ballard Sellout for Immediate Financial Gratification

Ever notice how politicians who make the most references to doing things for "our children" or for "our future" are often most eager to sell out that future for their immediate political benefit?

Take Greg Ballard. Literally.

The Citizens Gas water deal? You've heard me ad nauseum on how we're mortgaging future water rates for sidewalks now.

But I predict you’ll see a similar story on downtown parking meters soon. The City wants to lease them to a contractor. Such a deal could pay a percentage of total dollars collected each year or a flat fee each year. But I foresee the mayor taking a lump sum up front in exchange for a lease term lasting the remainder of his permissible time in office times two.

(Maybe that’s why the Mayor is so confident that he won’t use the Cit Gas money to pay the $15 million in Conseco maintenance costs for the Pacers. He knows the money train is choo chooing into town).

But there are other indicia of Mayor Ballard's short-term fixation.

A few weeks ago, the Indianapolis Star’s Ted Evanoff reported on the City’s Navistar “clawback.” For the uninitiated, when city officials kowtow to business owners by giving them tax breaks, they do it frequently under the condition that a certain number of jobs will be created.

Indianapolis gave Navistar $18 million. When Navistar tanked and laid off 1,000, the City went to get its money. Navistar said no.

From the story:

When Navistar refused to repay the money, the city faced a long dispute in court. Rather than run up a big legal bill, Mayor Greg Ballard’s administration agreed the city would accept $5 million from the company.

First, the Office of Corporation Counsel is all sunk costs. The City pays the same amount to its lawyers whether anybody in the office works or not. So what the Mayor is admitting is that nobody in his office can litigate a contract case? Yow! That’s scary.

But for the sake of argument, let's run with his idea that his folks are too incompetent to handle this. Say litigating the case could have earned Indy an additional $4 million, or half of what we were promised. If so, eight Indy attorneys billing $250 per hour could each spend 10 hours per week every week for two entire years, and we'd still double our money.

Can any attorney out there conceive of how a contract interpretation case could have required more work than that? I can't envision how one would cost more than $250,000.

In short, the Mayor could have gotten the City a LOT more money, but he took pennies on the dollar. What good would more money do him if it didn't come until his successor occupied the 25th floor of the City-County Building?

Navistar Clawback Cave Another Mayor Ballard Sellout for Immediate Financial Gratification

Evans Mayoral Bid Curious, But His Water Company Meddling Dead-On

Democratic City-County Councillor, Jose Evans, will file paperwork at 2:30 p.m. today that establishes his "exploratory committee" to run for Mayor of Indianapolis, a move that will surely have people shaking their heads.

With a clearly-established candidate among party faithful in Melina Kennedy, a formidable "outsider" candidate in Brian Williams, and even an African-American candidate in former At-Large City-County Councillor Ron Gibson, one may ask, "What's the play here for Evans?" Is this what iPOPA has dubbed a "Braveheart maneuver" (trying to get concessions from your opponents to force you off the battlefield) or just an effort to elevate profile, as Jim Shella with WISH-TV suggests.

Before Gibson's entry, Evans had a hail mary-type long-shot chance at potentially garnering support for a plurality in an inverted Thomas Carcetti/The Wire scenario. But now that Gibson stepped in, he forces Evans to fight to preserve the segment of voters with no real connection to political folk but who think it's time for Indianapolis to have an African-American mayor.

Also, it's not clear who supports Evans' bid yet, nor will we find out immediately. Evans is not announcing his candidacy like Gibson, who drew at least 50 supporters to a rally; he is only handing over paper for said "exploratory committee," which makes it sound like Jose is two-stepping his way into the race. This late in the game, Evans cannot afford to be coy, and he should expect some political blowback from this effort. To paraphrase sage words once uttered by Democratic Party Chair Ed Treacy, "We need fewer candidates, not more."

But when praise is do, I give it, and here it is.

For months, Evans has been criticizing the Ballard Administration's handling of the water company, and he's been trying to publicly force the Mayor's Office to discuss what plans its has for a sale to Citizens Gas. I've seen at least three separate press releases for such calls that went unheeded and, perhaps in part because council Democrats just assumed Evans was seeking the limelight and going rogue, nobody signed on.

This is not to say none of the D's on the council weren't paying attention. Democratic City-County Council leaders have been working behind the scenes collecting information, believing that the Mayor would let them know before any real progress was made, and last week, the caucus introduced a resolution seeking that the mayor ensure a public process. That resolution was sent to the rules committee by Republicans, and the meeting at which it was to be heard last Tuesday was cancelled.

Now guess what? Democratic blogger Terry Burns reports there is now a "deal" that will be presented to the caucus this evening. The presentation was already made to Republicans on Monday, and I'm told that, but for Citizens and its attorneys, no presentation would have been made at all to Democrats.

There are all kinds of "teachable moments" here for my fellow Democrats, so absorb them:

1. You can't trust anything Mayor Ballard says about "transparency."

2. There's a fine line between paranoia and political astuteness. We like to believe when people say, "I'll let you know," and that's fine. But on this one, Jose Evans fell on the right side on the line. I admire the council resolution, but I can't help but wonder. If the entire caucus had "gone public" to the media, might an enterprising TV reporter have gone to the 25th Floor and asked, "Is city legal and/or an Indianapolis law firm representing Citizens Gas negotiating and/or writing up a purchase agreement as we speak? Doesn't the public have a right to be heard on this?"

3. We should remember to check our human nature, which often lets our feelings about the "who" prevail over our logic surrounding the "what." Even if Evans' critics think he got information wrong or did this for all the wrong reasons, he rightly saw a ram-rod coming.

4. The Ballard administration is ingenius at buying off individual Dems. Now that a deal seems to be a fait accompli, expect it to chisel off individual D councillors by offering a cut of the pie. Hopefully, D councillors will not fall for the siren song and completely fail to recognize potentially catastrophic long-term implications.

5. Finally, remember Luke 12:24: "You cannot serve two masters at the same time. You will hate one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and not care about the other." Every elected official or party with the mind to take advice from an attorney better memorize the attorney's client list because the Rules of Professional Conduct require allegiance to the client's interests to trump any political friendship you think you have.

As two of the Marion County Democratic Party's most prominent advisors and financiers serve with the law firm representing Citizens Gas, the effort to persuade D's to vote in favor might actually be led by my own party's consiglieres, bringing with them, not horse heads in beds, but statements like, "This is going to happen, so you need to get what you can as quickly as you can before there's nothing left."

Ahh, my kingdom for a modicum of Democratic solidarity even when the Mayor deals a bad hand. But, hey, politics isn't pretty, and somebody has to pay for the re-election campaigns.

Evans Mayoral Bid Curious, But His Water Company Meddling Dead-On

The Ballad of Ballard - A Dramedy In One Scene

Scene 1.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard sits in his office drinking a supersized, diet Mountain Dew while reading over a stack of papers. Two advisors lurk over him, one holding the Mayor's Quarterpounder and the other holding his supersized order of fries.

Mayor: I tell you, boys, the Corps was a lot easier. Semper Fi! (SLURP!) See, back then, people would tell me what to do, and I was a whiz following their notions and whatnot. I was an implementer, not an idealator. But now I've got to figure things out all the time. I haven't had a lot of practice at that. (SLURP!)

Advisor 1 (emphatically): We know!

Mayor: 'Member when I let Senator Kenley try to solve our CIB problems with some of these so-called "ideas" while I hid under my desk? He shore got beat like a rented mule. That plan got blown up like a watermelon in Dan Burton's back yard! And 'member when I thought it was a good idea to let my donor buddy at the country club have an IMPD squad car? Look what that got me! An ethics complaint! Ideas are dangerous, so it's best not to have any. That's why I'm glad you guys invented all those Requests for Proposals, Requests for Information, and Requests for Ideas!

Advisor 2: Well, we didn't create Requests for Prop...

Mayor: They're awesome! (SLURP!) Like, you know how we still don't know what to do with the CIB, so we just said, "Here ya go, private sector boys! Tell us what you'd do, and maybe we'll let ya!" Know how we've got a City Market as productive as a Steve Buyer scholarship fund? If it weren't for consultants, private sector input, and that Board, I'd have to come up with an idea. And remember when I didn't have any ideas for neighborhood-based, crime-fighting strategies for our police, so we just privatized it by cutting some checks to neighborhood groups and ministers and telling them to use the money for idea-lizing the crime problem?

Advisor 1 (rolls eyes): Mr. Mayor, we're getting roasted on violent crime!

Mayor: Homicides are lower than ever, at least that's what somebody on Abdul in the Morning said I should be saying.

Advisor 2: We should tell people to take solace that they're only getting robbed and shot but not killed?

Mayor: That's right, they need to know that they probably won't die under my administration...because Wishard does such a great job. Good thing we're getting a new hospital. That right there....that's another good idea that I had nothing to do with. (SLURP!) See how awesome it is when you don't have ideas? You can jump on at the very end and have everybody treat you like the hero!

Advisor 1: Mr. Mayor, this is all fascinating, but we need to focus. We still have a budget shortfall, and you pledged a ten percent across-the-board cut, so we're going to have to come up with another idea for making or saving some money. We need ideas.

Mayor: Didn't you ever read Shakespeare, son?!? Remember Julius "Dr. J." Caesar? Remember when the seer warned, "Fear the Ideas of March?"

Advisor 2: Mr. Mayor, that was the Ides of M...

Mayor: Whoo hoo!!! I've got it, boys! Privatizing and selling assets is so cool, let's issue an RFP to see what ideas the private sector can come up with for my office. I bet if we talked to IBM, they might be able to figure out ways to do what I do better than I'm doing it now. I bet we could get them for a song, too, 'cause I heard they're looking for government work. Maybe if there wasn't a mayor's office here, we could do something really cool with it, like having a little Chinatown on the 25th floor with fortune cookies that read "Help! I'm trapped in a government bureaucracy!" Ha ha ha! Boy, I tell you, that'd be awesome. (SLURP!)

Advisor 2: I'm sorry, are you saying you want to privatize your entire office?

Mayor: Why not? I'm not using it all that much, am I?

Exeunt.

The Ballad of Ballard - A Dramedy In One Scene

Mayor Ballard is a Coward!

Yes, Your Honor. I'm calling you out. By name. You are a coward with a logic deficit.

In the most insane example of having your cake and eating it, too, you had the audacity to glamour shot your way into Luke Kenley's press conference about the CIB bail out proposal only to offer the following, which comes from today's Indianapolis Star:

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, who joined Kenley at a news conference Wednesday at which the plan was outlined, wouldn't say he endorsed the details but said he supported the need to preserve the convention and entertainment business in Downtown Indianapolis.

WHAT?!?!?!?

If you're not there to endorse THIS deal, what deal are you there endorsing? We don't know. Because you won't say. And you won't say because you're a coward. You KNOW you came into office on a platform of lower taxes, and here you are, ready to stick it to us already to make sure we take care of billionaires who pay millionaires to play a game.

Let me be fair, you also said the following:

"This is not about any individual teams or anything. This is about Downtown Indianapolis. This is about the convention business. This is about $3.5 billion worth of convention business, 66,000 jobs in Central Indiana related to hospitality -- that's what this is about," Ballard said. "We must maintain this economic engine."

That's the illogical part. We COULD make up the entire deficit by raising admission per ticket at Conseco events. You know why we won't do that? We're told it would be too costly. People will stop going to Pacer games. But isn't this Republican Party orthodoxy? Raise taxes, lose voters? Raise prices, lose customers? And yet, here sits a Republican Mayor saying that by RAISING hospitality taxes to one of the highest IN THE NATION, somehow we're going to save our convention employees. (In fairness to the Mayor, his non-approach benefits millionaires primarily at the expense of average folk who will take the hit on these regressive tax increases, so that part is consistent with Republican philosophy).

NO convention group books here because they want to go to a Pacer game. They book because we have a lot of low-cost but nice hotel space, nice restaurants and nightlife to enjoy, proximity between hotel and convention space, and a clean and interesting cityscape (a/k/a "ambiance").

But, Mayor, you let Luke Kenley take the largest competitive arrow out of your quiver and break it over his knee before your very eyes. (Seriously, if you're currently in high school taking your first economics class, can you PLEASE call the Mayor's Office?)

You see, Mr. Mayor, in economics we have a notion called "competition." If person A can get something CHEAPER from city B than from City I (for incompetent), they will. This means And the 66,000 people you claim to protect are all laid off because NOBODY is coming here.

Here are two other concepts you might find "neat." Demand for a good can be "elastic" or "inelastic." If demand is "inelastic," people will buy even if the prices rise insanely. Medical care is a great example. Most people like to live, so they'll sell their second-born to finance a life-saving surgery, even if you double the cost. But if demand is "elastic," an increase in price means people won't buy the good or service anymore even with a slight increase. You know what makes demand "elastic?" Having options to do other things.

So, say for instance I'm already thinking about not eating out anymore because things are tight, and NOW I'm going to have to pay even MORE, not only in downtown but everywhere in Marion County. Guess what I'll do? Eat out less. So NOW your expected new tax money never shows up, and all you've done in the mean time is hurt the very restaurants you claim you're trying to help by keeping the Pacers downtown.

See what you've done? You've stood silent while the most powerful Republican at the Statehouse save Mitch Daniels constructed a fix on a shaky foundation. But the truth is, this is what Kenley and you wanted to do all along. You'll put this ill-thought out bailout into play, SAY "Mission Accomplished," and you'll pray that President Obama gets the economy moving. Then if it happens, you act like you're geniuses. If it doesn't, you'll blame Obama for the "sluggish national economy," though we'll all know the truth. Whatever protection of, or growth of, our "hospitality economy" you could have afforded RIGHT NOW was stagnated because one of your top advisors runs in a millionaire boys club. How grand. How Bob Grand.

Mayor Ballard is a Coward!