More on Mayor’s Plan
Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson unveiled his crime plan tonight. I was teaching and could not see it live, but my DVR recorded it so I watched as soon as got back to my place. I made it a point to watch it twice, so I could comment intelligently.
The Mayor is right when he says the pre-1977 police pension is the albatross around the city’s neck and it must be removed. His idea to borrow more than $450 million to make the pension solvent by putting it into a fund administered by the Public Employee’s Retirement Fund or a private firm is not necessarily a bad idea. With a reasonable return on investment, the pension fund should do quite well.
What I am not a big fan of is nearly a half-billion dollars in new debt that could potentially grow into more than a billion dollars in payments over the life of the loan. If I want that, I’ll go to the Payday loan place on East Washington Street. I would rather the Mayor use any revenue stream generated from consolidation or Hometown Matters to pay off the balance of the loan.
An aggressive payment schedule would eliminate the loan debt in less than a decade, thereby freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars in funds that can be used for public safety or tax relief.
The Mayor has put an interesting idea on the table, it just needs some tweaking.
I’m glad to offer it.
