Indiana Barrister: First to publish Ballard's plan to avert the CIB crisis

Kudos to Abdul to being first to blog Ballard's plan to avert the CIB crisis on Indiana Barrister! He beat the Indy Star and other bloggers as far as I can tell. WIBC might have put it on the air earlier though. I know they were on it.

As of 4:45 pm, Gary Welsh (as usual) already has a detailed analysis published at Advance Indiana which essentially says Ballard's plan is to tax and spend his way out of the problem, while reminding us that the CIB's alleged $8 million tax cut is really a tax INCREASE of $12 million this year. You see, the CIB increased it's budget $20 million. (that's the part they always conveniently leave out).

Ballard's plan doesn't nearly go after the Colts and Pacers hard enough. Ballard calls for the teams to each contribute $5 million. The rest of the money will come from a temporary increase in Marion county alcohol tax, car rental tax, hotel/motel tax, and increase in ticket sales and the sports taxing district.

Ogden has already called out that "temporary" tax increase usually means permanent, although Abdul pointed out that Ballard has already given back the unused portion of Peterson's COIT increase we did not use.

So does that mean we’ll give the Pacers $10 million instead of the $15 million Simon wanted and call it a $5 million contribution from the Pacers? My guess is yes and if our mayor gives those billionaires a dime, I'm going to do everything I can to see to it he is not re-elected.

In the meantime, if the tax increase does go through, I'm renting my cars and buying alcohol in Johnson or Hamilton county.