All This For $0.54?
As much as I love democracy and enjoy citizens gathering to address their grievances with their local officials, it would be nice if they did their homework every once in a while. The union crowd Monday night jammed-packed the City-County Council chambers with their supporters to encourage the Council to pass Proposal 242. On the surface, the proposal would provide a tax rebate to certain classifications of workers in the hospitality industry.
The way the measure works is that any hotel employee who works in the Professional Sports Development District and initially makes between $10,000 and $25,000 annually (that number is later adjusted for inflation) is entitled to a tax rebate. According to the ordinance the rebate will be equal to the amount the worker paid in county taxes or the difference between the hotel worker’s total wages and the hospitality income threshold, whichever is smaller. Also the ordinance says the total amount paid will either be $250,000 or 10% of what the city pays for outside consultants during the prior fiscal year.
Pretty simple stuff, right? Not so much. The proponents argue that rebate is “fair” because the city provides a lot of incentives for the downtown hotels and workers should “share” in some of the benefits. I thought they were “sharing in the benefits” by working a job that otherwise would not exist on behalf of the city of Indianapolis, but that is neither here nor there. The two things I find most fascinating are one, advocates say the rebate would be to the tune of about $200 for a worker making $25,000. To put that in perspective the worker would receive a rebate of equal to 0.008 of their annual income. Or to put it another way, 54 cents a day. To paraphrase Sally Struthers, that’s definitely much less than the price of a cup of coffee.
And please note, not every hotel worker will get that 54 cents. If you make less than $10,000 annually, you are out of luck. And if you make more than $25,000, no one has any use for you. I would think the part-time hotel worker is as entitled to that 54 cents as much as the full-time worker is as well. Secondly, the new economic bogeyman is the “consultant”. Never mind the engineering consultant on a road or environmental project probably has a better skill set than the person who makes beds, but that’s another story for another day.
Basically, this is classic election year pandering. Let’s call it for what it is. When the leader of the group introduced herself as a “community organizer” that told me everything that I needed to hear. You would think that rebuilding the city’s infrastructure, making it safe and livable, keeping taxes reasonable, looking for non-property/income tax based ways to pay for city services and attracting and keeping larger conventions so that these hotel workers (who make between $10,000 and $25,000 annually) can actually have a job would be enough. Apparently it isn’t.
I had a few suggestions on how some of these workers could put a lot more money in their pockets. They could get better skills and thus, better jobs. The ones who smoke could quit the habit; $4 – $5 a day for pack of cigarettes adds up after a while. They could advocate a tax cut on behalf of all citizens so everyone gets back more of their money. Of course when Republicans do that, Democrats accuse them of engaging in election year pandering and promoting irresponsible fiscal policies. I’ll stop right there.
