GOOD GRIEF!
There is not a lot City-County Council Member Jackie Nytes and I agree on, but last night we were both 100% in sync with each other. The Council was bickering over the creation a government efficiency committee spear-headed by the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, when the Council bogged down over how many appointments Republicans and Democrats would have. Nytes said although the point of the committee is to be bi-partisan, but anyone watching the meeting that night would not see any bi-partisanship taking place. The only problem I had with Nytes’ statement is it didn’t go far enough. Anyone watching last night’s meeting would not have seen much of anything going on but silliness, posturing and an embarrassment to the taxpayers.
It started with the Council moving a proposal calling for an ethics investigation of President Monroe Gray from the current agenda to the “pending” agenda. The pending agenda is where motions go to die because they rarely get pulled off. And when an attempt was made to bring it back, Council members engaged in parliamentary chicanery to keep it off the agenda.
If that wasn’t enough, the Council voted overwhelmingly to limit the practice of giving take home cars to non-essential city and county employees. Councilors said the move would save the taxpayers $6 million over the next few years. I’m all for saving the taxpayers’ money, but it would have been nice to look at these savings BEFORE some people voted to take an extra $90 million annually of your hard-earned money. The mayor and county executive officers could have done all this by issuing an executive order. But that would not have been good for the cameras nor campaign literature.
Overall it was a three-hour meeting and I stayed for the whole thing and I could think of while watching the bickering, the posturing and the silliness was that in a city of more than 860,000 people, this was the best the voters could do? Good grief!
