Fishers: Scandals, issues and stories

The community of Fishers is approaching an historic milestone:  Its first-ever city election and its first Mayor. But as we sort through the transition to a city, we might do well to think about some things that have happened in the last few years.  Some of them may continue to be issues, some not, but all are cause for reflection.   So, in no particular order:

1.  Council districts.  Council members have self-dealt for their own advantage for years in drawing council districts.  If they moved out of the district, they redrew the district lines.  There were two notable instances of this, starting with....

2.  The strange case of Scott Faultless' Geist home.  About 2005, it was said that then-council president Scott Faultless had moved into a fancy new house adjoining the south shore of Geist Lake.  The problem was, that property was not in the town limits of Fishers, and there were no adjoining connections to the town as required by state law.  In a very sudden, and strange, move by the Town Council, they annexed 4 different parcels, INCLUDING THE LAKE BED, and then Faultless' home.  Then they redistricted to include it.  That home was the only Geist home for years that was "in Fishers".  People still mutter that if this wasn't illegal, it should have been.  It certainly was bending the rules for power's sake.    And even stranger....

3.  The never-ending case of Charlie White.  In September 2010, it was revealed (by me) that Town Council member Charlie White did not live in his Delaware Township council district as required by law, but had moved all the way across town to Saxony.  White resigned, admitted he "made a few mistakes, I will learn from this" and thought no big deal, after all he was a member of the Fishers Town Council and the GOP candidate for Secretary of State.  However, the Hamilton County Prosecutor asked for and got two special prosecutors to investigate possible criminal charges.  In the meantime, White was elected Indiana Secretary of State.  After assuming that office, a Hamilton County Grand Jury indicted White on felony charges, and White started changing his story.  White would ultimately be convicted of 6 felonies, including vote fraud and perjury, and was removed from office.  He is currently trying to overturn his convictions, by attacking his defense attorney as incompetent, former Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi, who is himself under investigation.

4.  City Council districts.  State law requires the current Town Council to draw the new City Council districts.  Unlike the at-large nature of the Town Council, there will be 6 real neighborhood districts and 3 seats at large.  But the Council has not yet acted, and has rejected suggestions for citizen involvement in drawing the districts.  Given their history of self-dealing (there is a LOT more than stated above!), it would be a REALLY great idea if they did this.

5.  Geist annexation.  Starved for a tax base due to the "bedroom" nature of Fishers, the Faultless-led council decided to annex the Geist area as a source of new tax revenue.  Geist residents were not happy.  Faultless, never one to pass up an opportunity to make enemies, started spewing lies about Geist that they did not "pay their fair share", called them "freeloaders" and worse, all of which was funny, as much of Geist existed prior to Fishers' explosive growth.  Instead of finding a "win-win" way to bring them into Fishers, Faultless, with allies Stuart Easley and others, fought a scorched-earth campaign to annex, which they eventually won, state law being totally one-sided on this issue.  But Geist residents have not forgotten.

6.  The 2011 Council election.   Backed by a combination of people who were all unhappy with the council majority, the 2011 GOP Primary in May 2011 saw all but one contested seat for Town Council, unprecedented for Fishers, which normally had no contests at all. Geist United Opposition leader Pete Peterson narrowly beat a Faultless-Easley backed opponent in a Geist district, and Renee Cox upset incumbent Eileen Pritchard, also in a very tight race.    In the fall election, two Democrats sought a council seat and the clerk-treasurer's job, but were defeated by wide margins in a very low turnout election.

7.   The 2012 City referenda.  This was without a doubt the biggest political fight in the history of Fishers. Pro-City proponents had organized as "CityYes", a bi-partisan group, two years after I called for Fishers to become a City in January 2007.  After submitting petitions in May 2010 asking for a November 2010 vote, the Faultless-led council stalled, and came up with a "reorganization plan", with a committee chaired by prior Town Council President Walt Kelly, who is now a candidate for Mayor.  The Reorganization Plan would have merged Fishers and Fall Creek Township and resulted in a figurehead mayor appointed by the council. Outraged unincorporated citizens and pro-City Fishers residents banded together to defeat Town Hall's proposed Reorganization and turned Fishers into Indiana's newest City.  I personally am very proud of the significant role I played in this movement, and thank all the people who worked so hard to make it happen.

8.  Fishers lack of an adequate tax base.  This was talked about a lot during the 2012 referendum campaign. Fishers has a poor history of economic development, and has a real problem growing the business property base sufficiently, which hurts not only itself, but HSE schools as well.  Partly this is a lack of executive leadership, partly the "committee" nature of town government, and some other things, such as overuse of TIF districts (a long, boring, but important subject for economic development and local government finance). Carmel, the same size population as Fishers (just over 80,000) has TRIPLE the tax base of Fishers. Recently Carmel is landing large new employers while Fishers bleeds jobs.

9.  The 2014 Mayor's race.  This is just starting to get off the ground, but GOP candidates for Mayor are crawling out of the woodwork.   Some have announced, some not, but the named candidates at present are:

• Walt Kelly, former Town Council president for over twenty years until he resigned and Scott Faultless took over;
• Town Manager Scott Fadness;
• Town Council member Renee Cox, the only council member who supported the change to a City;
• Former Greenfield Mayor Brad DeReamer, who has announced for City Council, but also stated he might switch to the Mayor race.  

Have any comments or suggestions for additional columns?  Feel free to leave them here, on my Facebook page, or by email to Greg@GregPurvis.com.  

Citizen comment and involvement

One of the better things the Fishers Town Council does (and I have often been critical of them) is to hold regular council meetings in the evenings.  They also live stream the regular council meetings from the town website, and council minutes are also available in a pretty timely manner.

They do not however, routinely allow citizen comment on anything other than those things legally required to be open to public hearing, such as budgets and annexations.  Many other units of government DO allow, within reasonable limits, citizen comments.  Some even have a short "open mike" period for citizens to raise issues, or to praise something good.

As Fishers transitions from "town" to "city", I would urge the local government to be receptive to more citizen involvement and comment.  A good way to start would be the "open mike" suggestion, and citizen involvement in the transition to becoming a City, such as citizens being involved in drawing the new council districts, something the current council members are WAY too personally interested in.

Charlie White sues Carl Brizzi

According to this article in The Indiana Lawyer just published, defrocked Secretary of State Charlie White has sued the attorney who defended him in his vote fraud trial, former Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi, alleging legal malpractice.

It should be recalled that Brizzi rested the defense without presenting witnesses, a common defense tactic used to test the legal sufficiency of the State's case.  The jury convicted White of 6 out of 7 felony charges, and he appealed.  However, White later dropped the appeal, pursuing instead a "post conviction relief" action in Hamilton County alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and selective prosecution.  That matter is scheduled to be heard August 15th.

Brizzi has recently been the subject of another malpractice suit by a high-profile client who was a public officeholder (as stated in the article) plus he has been implicated in a bribery charge by his former deputy, David Wyser, who is under Federal charges and has reached an agreement to testify against Brizzi.

It is not known at this time how Brizzi's problems will help White in his efforts to get his felony convictions overturned.  One of the issues that keeps popping up in my mind is that White, also an attorney, would have had to agree to Brizzi's strategy of not putting on witnesses.  But we will see how that plays out in Court.

The never-ending saga of Charlie White.  Stay tuned.

Thoughts on marriage equality

I have had a day to try to digest yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the subject of marriage equality, and I want to share a few thoughts.

First, the Supreme Court most carefully did NOT fully-legalize same-sex marriage.  What it DID do is state that all marriages recognized by the several states are created equal, for the purpose of Federal taxation and other benefits.  To be sure, the majority opinion authored by Justice Kennedy (a moderate-to-conservative judge, if you believe in labels) did use "equal protection" language that might be referenced in future debates and litigation about same-sex marriage.

The Court did inch slightly towards full legalization in the California Proposition 8 case, by letting the trial court decision that the Prop 8 ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional stand.  But that is of zero legal weight, except if you live in California.

There are a ton of thorny legal issues raised by the incremental nature of yesterday's rulings.  If two lesbians get married in New York (which recognizes gay marriage) and move to Alabama (which does not) are they married under Alabama law?  Under Federal law?  Both?  Neither? (I have to give credit, this was raised by Justice Scalia in his rant, pardon, "dissent" to the DOMA ruling.)  And the equal protection part of Justice Kennedy's reasoning will lead to further legal challenges on that ground against states that ban same-sex marriage.

If I had to predict, I would expect within the next decade, that marriage will be between any two consenting adults. As as a hetero male of advancing years who has lived his whole life in Indiana, that is how it should be.  The State has no business telling anyone who they can love and commit to.  Nor is it the right of our neighbors to take that right away, no matter what their personal beliefs.

TIF Districts: Part I, What is a TIF district?

There has been a lot of debate recently in many communities over something intended as an economic development tool, called "TIF Financing" or "TIF Districts".  This is a debate that has raged in Carmel, Indianapolis, and more recently, Fishers.

But what is this thing called "TIF"?  That is an abbreviation for "Tax Increment Financing".   Basically, the appropriate element of government in charge of economic development establishes a "TIF District", that is supposedly in need of either economic development, or re-development.  It was originally intended for blighted areas, but the actual use has expanded far beyond urban blight.

The way it works, is say ABC Developer wants to build a $50 million dollar project, but they want help from the local government as an incentive to build in an particular community, or area of the community.  The local government can sell bonds to help the developer.  These bonds are repaid by the taxes on the increased value of the TIF district, above what the base value was prior to the development.  In fact, the taxes on the increased property value go ONLY for repayment of that debt, until it is retired.

And that is one of the controversial issues with TIF Districts.  In this case, economic development DOES NOT ADD TO THE TAX BASE, and doesn't go to other units of government that depend on the tax base, such as schools.  And many of those bond issues are pretty long-term.  So if TIFs are over-used, one of the negative side effects is to harm school financing.

Complicated, isn't it?  And the Town of Fishers has actually posted a pretty good short brochure about TIF financing, which you can get here:  http://www.fishers.in.us/egov/docs/1326921651_105590.pdf

As communities compete for economic development, TIFs are one of the tools they use.  But they can be quite controversial.  An IBJ article this week shows the strong arguments that have arisen in Carmel over use of economic development incentives in general, and TIFs in particular.  http://www.ibj.com/carmel-panel-refuses-to-back-midtown-redevelopment-plan/PARAMS/article/41626.   Similar arguments have waged for some time in Indianapolis, and are of more recent discussion in Fishers, which will be the subject of a future article in this series.

So what is the proper role of government in using incentives for economic development, and TIF districts in particular?  There are many differing views, and some of those will be explored in this series.  I hope this provides food for thought in readers concerned about their community's development.

Susan Brooks challenged by Tea Party

Recently, Carmel businessman David Stockdale announced he would seek the Fifth District Congressional seat currently held by freshman Representative Susan Brooks (R-Carmel).   Stockdale's candidacy is being openly promoted on the Indiana Tea Party's Facebook page.

What is remarkable about this is that in reality, it is impossible to find a member of Congress further right than Susan Brooks.  She has voted the GOP party line on 157 of 158 votes, 99.4% of the time.  This is despite her constituents telling her during the election last year that they wanted her to work across party lines to solve problems in Washington.  But the reality is, in her short time in Congress, she has not done what the voters who spoke to her expected.

So WHY is the Tea Party challenging Brooks?  They cannot possibly object to her voting record.  Perhaps it is her relative silence in parroting Tea Party rhetoric.  Or her willingness to actually have a dialogue with those with whom she disagrees.  Brooks recently met with a women's group who advocates more and better gun background checks for example.  But Brooks has an "A" rating from the NRA, which is violently opposed to such checks.  Curious.

A note, I also saw a sign for "Lugar for Congress", meaning Fishers realtor Jack Lugar, who ran in the last cycle as well.  Is this a sign of another wide-open GOP primary in 2014?  Time will tell.

Do Hamilton County voters care about local issues?

Yesterday, voters went to the polls in the Noblesville and Hamilton Southeastern School districts to vote on approval of bond issues, and accompanying tax increases to pay for them.  One would think, given the passion often shown for school activities, that this would have large-scale voter involvement and high turnout at the polls.  Right?

Wrong.

Voter turnout yesterday was a meager 10.4% of the eligible voters.  Only 10,547 souls out of a possible 101,390 bothered to cast a ballot.

Given the issues, borrowing tens of millions of dollars and resulting in higher property taxes, one would expect, regardless of position, that interest would be high.  But it was not.  Obviously.  Worse, the two political parties struggled to fill poll worker positions.  In my own experience, more than half the usual workers that I recruit in Fall Creek Township declined for one reason or another.

Sadly, this is not new.  In the 2011 municipal elections, only 15.85% of eligible voters participated in the fall election.  Since many offices went with light or no opposition due to the one-party dominance in Hamilton County, one would think the primary at least would have had a high turnout.

Wrong again.  Primary turnout in 2011, despite some hotly-contested races, was only 14.62%.

And here are some more depressing turnout figures from past local elections:

• 2009 HSE Schools referendum, 18.46%
• 2007 municipal elections, 20.20% (much of that in Carmel, where every race was contested)
• 2003 municipal elections, 24%

Not only do people not appear to care, it appears to be getting worse.  And I don't have a clue what to do about it.  This is a pretty affluent, and well-educated county.  People should care, and get involved.  But few enough do, and the others watch, or not.   

Not good enough.  There are more reasons than I can list to pay attention, get involved, and vote.  But people are NOT paying attention to the government closest too them.  That is sad, and bad for us all.