FUDGING THE FACTS?
The truth is always the first casualty of war in any battle and political campaigns are no exception. I just looked at the latest campaign ad on Mayor Bart Peterson’s campaign website. The mayor is in a residential setting, very stolid, in a blue shirt with no tie. He talks about the property tax crisis. He says, “By banding together we were able to force the state to correct an assessment we knew was wrong.” Did I miss something here?
With all due respect to Hizzoner, I don’t recall him at any of the tax protests this past summer. I saw County Treasurer Mike Rodman show up and Democratic State Representative David Orentlichter, but I did not see the Mayor. The Mayor did hold a news conference on July 12 to talk about property taxes, but all he did was call for a special session to give local governments more property tax replacement credits, pass the rest of Indy Works and take over child welfare. He did not call for a new assessment. In fact, when I told his office the tax increase was going to be bigger than anyone could suspect, they told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Now I am not saying the Mayor doesn’t care about property taxes, I know he does. However, fudging the facts isn’t going to help his credibility. They’ve already been busted a couple times trying to fudge things by packing the audience with city employees on the night of the Mayor’s budget address and taking credit for cutting $50 million in the property tax levy when $43 million of it was going to happen regardless.
I hope the Mayor reads this because there’s nothing worse than trying to lead when people don’t trust you because you keep fudging the facts.
