The big issues Indianapolis is concerned with include rising murders and crime, rising unemployment and continuing lack of jobs, what to do with the country’s worst bus system, taxes, our public schools, the conditions of roads, streets, sidewalks, deteriorating neighborhoods and abandoned houses, lack of police on our streets, boredom of our youth, and the general feeling that the quality of life in Indy is stagnant.
Yet nowhere in those litanies of Indy’s problems is the feeling we need to change some of the basic structure of UniGov.
During 1968-1969, the nuts and bolts of how Indianapolis/Marion County government was to be consolidated were debated in every neighborhood, on radio, TV and in the newspapers, including pages of the Recorder.
Then Mayor Richard Lugar openly discussed the benefits and reasons for UniGov and how it would work. Indianapolis’ business community, led by the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, talked it up. There were debates and forums between those favoring UniGov and those, including many in the Black community, who were strongly opposed.
Blacks felt deeply that UniGov was harmful to our community’s interests. Especially the growing pride in the community in the fall of 1967 after Gary and Cleveland elected the nation’s first big city Black mayors. At the time, the old city of Indianapolis was approaching 28 percent Black. Given the city’s Democratic leanings, some Blacks felt it was inevitable that a Black could be elected mayor.
To many Blacks, adoption of UniGov dashed those dreams.
UniGov though kept many of the political traditions and customs of other Indiana cities. The new City-County Council was formed with a mixture of district and at-large councilpersons.
While UniGov was designed to create a strong mayor, UniGov’s Republican creators put in checks and balances by giving the new City-County Council authority to approve city agency and county agency budgets and ratify appointments by the mayor of his top aides and the heads of the major UniGov departments.
Now 44 years after Lugar, Republican and business leaders’ creation, a group of individuals have proposed major revisions to the UniGov system. This reactionary legislation called Senate Bill 621 would radically change UniGov far beyond what its Republican founders envisioned.
Instead of balanced power between the mayor and council, these radical revisions would turn the council into an emasculated neutered body without the authority to sign off on major mayoral appointments.
While most publicity has been on the plan’s unwarranted and unnecessary elimination of the at-large council seats, the plan has more despicable elements.
This undemocratic proposal would give the mayor near dictatorial power over appointments to the powerful Metropolitan Development Commission which holds life and death power over the future of Indy’s neighborhoods.
Worse, this reprehensible proposal gives the unelected city controller, with no council oversight, unilateral authority to decide how the budgets of the county sheriff, recorder, prosecutor, coroner, auditor and treasurer could spend their budgets.
In an Indianapolis Star op-ed, Prosecutor Terry Curry said the plan requires “the prosecutor and all county elected officials to seek quarterly budget approval from the mayor’s accountant, the controller.” Curry added this would “end the transparent budget process in which all county agencies participate.”
Those six county offices, elected by all county voters, are offices mandated by the Indiana Constitution. The radical Republican plan to neuter these constitutionally elected officials’ power is unconstitutional – both in the Indiana Constitution and in violating the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection provisions.
This drastic proposal is “officially” driven by state Sen. R. Michael Young, R-Indianapolis, who represents Speedway and the southern half of Wayne Township, all of Decatur Township and Guilford and Liberty Townships in Hendricks County.
But this odious proposal is really being pushed by the men who pull Mayor Greg Ballard’s strings; the manipulative, scheming leaders of the Marion County Republican Party and the most Machiavellian of the mayor’s minions.
Where Mayor Lugar openly stumped for UniGov 44 years ago, our “brave” current mayor is silent, content to let his spokesperson do the talking. Though he’d be the beneficiary of this reprehensible power grab, our mayor doesn’t have the guts to publicly own up to his scheme and openly advocate for it.
More odious than Mayor Ballard’s reprehensible refusal to speak openly for or against this plan, is the extreme silence of the business community. The city’s major businesses – the banks – Indianapolis Power & Light; Citizens Energy; Eli Lilly; Fed Ex; Indiana University Health; Anthem; Rolls Royce and more through their Central Indiana Corporate Partnership and the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce have refused to express an opinion on this proposal.
They’re just as cowardly as Mayor Ballard.
John Thompson, one of Indy’s successful African-American businessmen, is the Chamber’s Board Chair. Just the second Black to hold that position. Thompson’s Chamber has refused to express an opinion on the radical UniGov revisions. A Chamber spokesperson said a month ago “We do not anticipate taking a position on this bill during this legislative session.”
John Thompson and the Chamber can run, but you can’t hide. Why aren’t you and the Chamber expressing a view on the governance of this city?
Better still why won’t the Chamber join me, the Indianapolis Star, even Richard Lugar in publicly condemning this Republican UniGov plan and demand that Mayor Ballard grow up and insist the plan is withdrawn.
The business community has been pushing hard for the mass transit renovations. I support that effort as do many Democratic legislators. But if the business community won’t stand up and demand a stop in the undemocratic and unconstitutional power grab that Senate Bill 621 is, then I won’t hesitate to join with others, if the Legislature OK’s the mass transit referendum, to insist that our community vote down the mass transit referendum.
What good is a better bus system when the political power of those riding those buses have been punished for the temerity of voting their conscience and their choices.
Senate Bill 621 must be stopped!
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
