The third time will not be a charm for Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi.   Brizzi informed me a few moments ago that he would not seek a third term in office. Running instead will be Brizzi’s Chief of Staff  Helen Marchal, who has spent 12 years in the office as a prosecutor.   She is resigning […]

Here is the actual audio from the State of the City address as well comments from the Mayor afterwards and reaction from some members of the audience.   Ballard State of the City Address – 1 Ballard State of the City Address – 2 Ballard State of the City Address – 3 Ballard State of the […]

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard delivered a “bricks and mortar” speech in his third State of the City address to the citizens of Indianapolis. The speech, delivered at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, focused on the Mayor’s accomplishments in addressing city needs for the past two years and also spelled out where he wanted to take […]

Franklin Township Schools are looking at charging students to play sports as a way to shore up its budget shortfall. According my friends over at Fox 59, the school board is trying to cut nearly $7 million from its budget. The district is already looking at cutting more than 50 teaching positions and requiring students […]

Usually the elections to run a legislative body are pretty mundane; not so much in Indianapolis. Although Monday night’s election of Republican Ryan Vaughn seemed pretty nonchalant on the surface, there was actually an attempted coup behind the scenes.  The original plan, hatched by Democrats my sources tell me, was to elect Barb Malone President […]

To be honest, it wasn’t Monday’s 75-23 vote in favor of putting property tax caps into the Indiana Constitution that surprised me the most.  What caught me off guard somewhat is the argument by House Speaker Pat Bauer that local governments hadn’t come out and made the case against property tax caps.  It was a […]

It was a busy day over at the Statehouse. Property tax caps passed the House 75-23. Ethics reform passed the House 97-2. Even elimination of township government by local referendum passed out of a House committee 11-0. All that and it’s only week two.  I’ll have some analysis tommorow.  Off to go exercise and then […]

The last chapter of the most useless form of government in Indiana may be written this legislative session.   Township government is getting it from both the left and the right and from both the Indiana House and Senate. Several bills have been introduced that either eliminate township government altogether or put the question on the […]

I’ve noticed lately that some of the comments in my blog posts have nothing to do with the topic at hand, so I’ve made a command decision on how to deal with them. For the time being, if I think the comment is completely irrelevant to the conversation I’m going to delete it. Now before […]

You would think that one of the last places a person would find racial issues would be the Indianapolis Chapter of the Indiana Democratic African-American Caucus.   That wasn’t the case on December 19th. That was the day the group held elections for some tightly contested offices.  Who ran and who won is not important, what […]