Commentary: The Indiana City-County Council Legislature

By Mary Beth Schneider
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana General Assembly loves local control.

Loves it! They tell you so all the time.

They feel so strongly about it that even though they’d love to give teachers better pay, what can they do? That’s a local decision. They are nothing if not people of principle.

Except when they aren’t. Usually that happens when any local tries to exercise control. Ban plastic bags? Puh-leeze. Tougher gun ordinances? No way. Determine the boundaries of Indianapolis? Don’t make me laugh.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe because the Indiana General Assembly, decades ago, decided to enact Uni-Gov without letting voters in Marion County have a say in the matter, they’ve felt pride of ownership ever since.

This week, the Republicans who control the legislature decided to show the Democrats who control the City-County Council and mayor’s office just who it is that controls this city.

Recently, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett proposed various steps to help tenants against unscrupulous landlords, including requiring landlords to inform tenants of their legal rights.

On Monday, a House committee, on a party line vote, passed an amendment stopping any municipality from regulating landlords and tenants unless the state allows it. And it specifically says landlords cannot be required to inform tenants of their rights.

The Indiana Apartment Association unsuccessfully fought that at the city level. So they simply headed to the other end of Market Street, the Statehouse, where the real power lies.

The City-County Council passed the ordinance anyway, though it likely will be overridden by the legislature and Gov. Eric Holcomb in the next few weeks.

Thursday, the legislature was back at it.

Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, offered an amendment to a Northwest Indiana transit bill, House Bill 1279, that enacts penalties against IndyGo if it doesn’t raise 10 percent of the operating costs of the express transit service – better known as the Red Line – from private funds. That 10 percent was part of the deal in 2014 to get reluctant rural lawmakers vote for something that their constituents wouldn’t ride and wouldn’t fund.

But there was no penalty for not meeting it. Under Freeman’s amendment – offered on the Senate floor in the session’s waning days, ensuring little to no public input – if they don’t raise 10 percent of the funds from something other than taxes or fares, the state will annually withhold 10 percent of the Local Option Income Taxes (LOIT) that Marion County residents are paying and would bar any expansion of the rapid transit service.

In November 2016, 59.4 percent of Marion County voters said yes to paying 0.25 percent more in income taxes for better public transportation. And the referendum passed in 79 percent of the precincts.

Freeman – who retired from his last political post as a City-County Council member to run for the Senate in 2016 – insists he’s just putting teeth into the 2014 bill since IndyGo hasn’t yet raised any private funds. But it’s harshly rewriting the terms laid out then and doing so on the fly in an unrelated bill.

Mark Fisher, an IndyGo board member who this week became treasurer of the just-created foundation to raise that 10 percent of private funds, said they only recently got IRS to OK establishing it.

“This goes beyond stuff like the apartments,” Fisher said of legislature’s action. “If this goes forward, this does undermine the will of the Marion County voters.”

Thursday, Senate Democrats vainly argued against the amendment because of the lack of public input and the impact of withholding 10 percent of local taxes from IndyGo.

“It’s not fair,” said Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson. “It’s not fair to the people of Marion County. It’s not fair to the people that ride on those buses. It’s not fair to the people that are driving those buses. It’s not fair to the whole city of Indianapolis.”

Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, asked the Senate: “Aren’t you tired of doing legislation just for Marion County? I am.”

“I agree,” Freeman said later. “I’m ready to not bring Marion County bills.”

But not yet.

And it turns out, the Senate wasn’t tired at all. Freeman’s amendment passed 37-12, with two Indianapolis Republicans – Sens. John Ruckelshaus and Jim Merritt, who recently ran for mayor – voting no.

Never mind that Indiana’s Constitution says “all laws shall be general, and of uniform operation throughout the state” – a provision so regularly flouted that it’s a joke.

They might as well make it official. They are the Indianapolis General Assembly.

FOOTNOTE: Mary Beth Schneider is an editor with TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalists.