Now that 2015 is done, here’s how things looked regarding the city’s murder rate for 2015.*

Here’s what the stats looked like so far based on the latest figures provided by the Department of Public Safety from January 1 – December 27.

Of the 142 murder victims, local adult criminal histories were found for 114 (80%) of the victims. These 114 people  accounted for 459 adult felony arrests.

Where criminal  histories were found:

• 43 (38%) had a previous weapons arrest
• 63 (55%) had a previous drug arrest
• 69 (61%) had a previous crimes against persons arrest.

Of the 102 suspects where a name was known, prior local adult criminal histories were found for 84 (82%) of the suspects.  These 102 people accounted for 331 adult felony arrests:

• 42 (50%) had a previous weapons arrest
• 49 (58%) had a previous drug arrest
• 62 (74%) had a previous crimes against persons arrest

There have been 11 juvenile victims. We’ve also had 14 suspects under the age of 18.

The racial relationship between victims and their suspects was as follows…

• Black victim – Black assailant = 56
• Black victim – White assailant = 4
• Black victim – Hispanic assailant = 0
• Black victim – Unknown assailant = 53
• White victim – White assailant = 19
• White victim – Black assailant = 18
• White victim – Hispanic assailant = 0
• White victim – Unknown assailant = 4
• Hispanic victim – Hispanic assailant = 1
• Hispanic victim – Black assailant = 3
• Hispanic victim – White assailant = 0
• Hispanic victim – Unknown assailant = 4
• Asian victim – Asian assailant = 0
• Asian victim – Black assailant = 0
• Unknown victim – Unknown assailant = 0

Forty-one (29%) of the 142 murders were known to have been  motivated by drugs.

Forty (28%) of the victims of known drug-related murders died as the result of gunshot wounds.

More than 80% of the city’s murders occurred in IMPD’s North, Northeast and Northwest Districts.

And just for the record, blacks are about 25% of Indy’s population, and have been 77% of the murder victims.

*This does not include the double homicide that took place after December 27th.  My sources tell me there may be more to that than law enforcement is willing to release right now.

Well, it’s that time of year where I trot out my top ten stories of 2015.   So here we go, in reverse order to get you to read all the way down to the bottom…

10.  Dan’s  Departure –  Dan Coats decides not run for re-election to the U.S. Senate.  I was planning to list all the people running for his seat and then the candidates running for their seats and the people running for those seats but we figured it would be probably be easier to draw a map of the human genome blindfolded.

9. Statehouse Sex Scandals.  Whether it’s Moed, McMillan or Ashley Madison, the moral of this story is there’s something rather nostalgic about that phone you had from 1998.  Also, if you can’t keep it in your pants, at least keep your phone in your pocket.

8. Ballard Bails.  After serving two-terms as Mayor, Greg Ballard calls it quits.  Democrats first called him the “Accidental Mayor”, now they just call him undefeated.   Joe Hogsett runs and wins, proving that if you run long enough, eventually you will get somewhere.

7. Governor Glenda.  What more needs to be said?

6. Just IN was Just Out.  Proof that a good idea can go bad if not communicated properly, which is kind of ironic seeing how the point of a state-operated wire service was to more efficiently communicate information about the state.

5. Road Rage.  Only in Indiana can you spend more money to fix roads, damage one while making improvements to it and everyone gets mad at you for not spending enough money on roads and infrastructure so you end up spending more money on roads and infrastructure.  Did you follow all that?

4. ISTEP Mis-Steps. Anyone ever remember having all these testing problems from 1987-2012?

3. Drugs R’ Us. In the same year that the Hoosier state saw serious problems with meth, heroin addiction as well as the spread of HIV and needle exchange programs, we also saw the creation of the First Church of Cannabis under the RFRA statute.    Stuff like this is enough to drive you to drink.

2. Same-Sex Marriage Legalized.  The U.S. Supreme Court codified the holding that same-sex couples are entitled to be as happy as the Lovely Mrs. Shabazz.

1. RFRA Madness.     Can anyone ever recall when something that was so unnecessary managed to cause so many problems and bring Indiana’s economy and Governor Mike Pence’s political career to the brink?  If you can, let us know and we’ll make it the new number one.

Happy New Year!!!

I know it’s fashionable to get worked up over Donald Trump.  Even I let my emotional nature get the best of me briefly when the Trumpster said the U.S. should ban the entry of all Muslims into the United States.  Of course he had to back step that comment somewhat when it came to U.S. citizens, (that pesky Constitution)  but still he got everyone all worked up.

The political experts say Trump is popular because he taps into a certain voter anger that wants to “Make America Great Again.”   Well, I did a little checking into those “voters” and here’s what I found.  Contrary to popular belief, Trump isn’t really all that popular.

Yes, he polls on average about 23-27 percent of the likely GOP voter.  But you have to break that down.  The most recent Gallup survey showed Republicans were about 28 percent of the electorate. So on a good day, the Trumpster has the support of about 25 percent of 28 percent of the total voting population which equals seven (7) percent of the complete electorate.  And I am being generous here because not all Republicans vote in a primary.

But let’s take that seven percent and compare it to some other numbers.  First of all, conventional wisdom says 10 percent of the population is crazy, so there’s that.  Second, I went back and found my list of things that poll higher than 10 percent.  Here they are…

1. Congress
2. Richard Nixon during Watergate
3. Lawyers (present company excluded, of course)
4. Legalized Marijuana.
5. The IRS
6. Anti-Semitism (It polls at about 15%)
7. Jar Jar Binks (Sorry Star Wars fans)
8. Cockroaches
9. Donald Trump (yes, pre-Presidential candidate Trump beat new Trump)
10. Nickelback
11. Lice
12. Toenail Fungus
13. Used Car Salesmen

And here’s some food for thought, 30 percent of Americans believe in bigfoot.   This is why I don’t get worked up over Trump.   I do worry that we don’t spend enough on mental health care in this country.

A proposal is being introduced at Monday night’s City-County Council meeting that would raise Mayor-elect Joe Hogsett’s expected salary from $95,000 to $125,000 annually when he takes office in January.

In the world of bad ideas, politically speaking, this ranks up there with inviting Jared Fogel over to babysit.

As I wrote over at Indy Politics, Proposal 413 would increase Hogsett’s incoming salary by $30,000.  The proposal also raises the Council’s pay. Since the Council’s pay is one-twelfth of the Mayor’s salary,  members would go from just over $12,000 annually to $16,000, in addition to already being paid for each meeting they attend and if they hold a leadership position.

When originally asked about this last week, Hogsett said he wasn’t familiar with the details and said he would defer to current leadership.  Council President Maggie Lewis said the raises were needed to attract “the best and brightest” to city government.

Where do I start?

First, I agree in principle that we should pay elected officials a lot more than what we do.  I think if you’re running a billion dollar operation, you should be paid more than $95,000.  Also, I fully understand the Mayor of Indianapolis’ salary has not been increased since 2002, and when adjusted for inflation, the $125,000 is not an insane figure.  Also, the Mayor of Indy should make at least as much than the Mayors of Carmel, South Bend, Ft. Wayne and Evansville.   The same goes for the City-County Council.  I think these guys do a lot of work and should be paid more.

Now with that said, this is the wrong way to do it.

It would have been one thing to have done this a year ago, when no one was sure who the new Mayor would be and what the new Council would look like.  Doing it in December, at the end of the year just looks really, really bad. And it would have been a much easier argument to make about attracting the “best and brightest” if we hadn’t already had an election.  Or at the least the proposal could have called for the salary increases to be phased in over a four-year window.  Anything but the way it’s being offered right now would preferable.

Also, Hogsett ran on a campaign of being frugal; remember the car with no power windows, the old, smelly sneakers and cutting his office’s budget every year when he was U.S. Attorney? And who can forget when he said he’d go after the “downtown insiders who steal the taxpayer’s dollars”?  How does getting a $30,000 salary bump help that image.  If anything it makes it worse, by reinforcing the worst stereotypes of the typical politician.  Plus, as the city looks for ways to add more police, anti-crime programs and cover basic services, giving elected officials raises should be the last thing that should be on anyone’s agenda.

And if that wasn’t enough, here’s another reason why this is a bad idea.  On the original proposal, Republican Councilor Jeff Miller is listed as a co-sponsor.  I spoke with Miller this weekend and he said he never consented to having his name on the proposal and has instructed the clerk to take his name off the list.  So that raises another red flag.

Like I said, I do believe local officials should be paid more overall, but this is the wrong way to do it.  It would have been one thing had this been done back in January, if the salary increases were phased in over time or made effective in 2020.  But do it this at the last hour, in the last month of the current Council is wrong on so many levels.

Hogestt should tell his fellow Democrats to pull the measure and if they don’t ask incumbent Mayor Greg Ballard to veto it.  Nothing good will come of this and it will set the incoming Hogsett administration off on the wrong foot and down the wrong path.

How ironic is this?  Apparently the economy is improving so much in Indiana that the Department of Workforce Development is laying off 60 employees whose job it is to help people find jobs.

That’s right.  I found about this late last week.

DWD is letting 60 people go in its Work One centers across the state because it is losing the federal funding that pays for those positions.  The way the system works is that the more people out of work, the more federal aid states receive to help them find a job.   Well since Indiana’s unemployment rate has been falling, the state has been getting less assistance.  This year it’s been to the tune of about $3 million.

Now while no one wants to see anyone lose a job, the good news for these employees is that the state is helping them find work in other areas either inside or outside of state government.  And should the unemployment rate tick back up, those folks who are laid off are first in line to get their jobs back.

Now is the economy perfect?  Of course not.  But when people at the unemployment office find themselves out of work, it means that a lot more people are finding a job.

I take that as good news; ironic, but still good.

It used to be that if you found something “offensive” you either complained to the appropriate individuals or kept it to yourself.   Now, with the internet and social media, we’re all butt hurt over every possible slight.

Whether it’s the color of a cup of coffee at Starbucks or heaven forbid, someone may actually have a different opinion about a political issue, for someone reason the Internet has become filled with keyboard commandos who feel a need to express their outrage over the latest incident that doesn’t mean a thing in grand scheme of things.

And I don’t know about you, I’ve had just about enough of these people.

I am all for a healthy debate of the issues of the day, hell, that’s how I make a living.  But what I’ve seen lately has turned into adult temper tantrums about some alleged injustice, reported by some psuedo news service that leaves out important information, like the facts of what exactly happened with the “injustice”.

So how do we resolve this?  Well, I’ve come up with the following.  The next time you see someone on social media express angst over some alleged offense, I recommend typing the following.

“If you’re getting this worked up over something you have no control over and can do nothing about, how about you get off the computer, walk outside, and go direct that energy towards something you can actually do something about, like improving the quality of life in your community?”

And here’s one for Twitter.

“Now that you’re upset, how about you direct that energy toward something you can actually make a difference?”

And if that doesn’t work, you can always de-friend or unfollow them.   It may not stop the whining and gnashing of teeth, but at least you won’t have to put up with it.

This may sound odd, but I was actually excited to see my House Democratic friends Monday  when they unveiled their plan to fix Indiana’s roads.

The last few plans they put out didn’t really impress all that much.  Their last one was to create a $250 million road fund that locals could borrow from at $5 million at a time.  So I was eager to see what they were going to do.

And then I saw it.  And then I asked myself “seriously?!”

Their plan was to take all the money collected by the sales tax on gasoline and special fuels and put that toward road maintenance.  It would generate about $525 million for roads and infrastructure with 53 percent going to the state and 47 percent going to the locals.  Sounds good right?  Wrong.

The problem is this plan has as many holes in it as the roads my Democratic friends complain about.

First of all the revenue collected from the sales tax on gasoline goes to the general fund which pays for a lot more than roads.  It also helps pay for schools, public safety, the BMV, teacher pensions, a lot of things.  If you take that out, you have to replace it.  Democrats says they would use the dollars in the state surplus to replace that revenue.  Well that only gets you about four years, at best seeing how the surplus is $2 billion and Democrats want to spend about $525 million annually.

Secondly, local governments have about $500 million in annual road needs.  The Democrat plan only covers about $235 million of that so there is still a $265 million shortfall and the surplus is gone.

Third, and most important, this does nothing to address Indiana’s long-term road funding problem.  Much like the rest of the country, revenue from gas taxes is dropping, mostly because of fuel-efficient vehicles so we will have to rethink how we pay for roads (pardon the pun) down the road.

Like I said, I really was hoping for something new and bold Monday from my Democratic friends on road funding.  Unfortunately, all I got was a plan that really fell short of expectations.   And it’s a road that we have all been down before.

The last thing I was expecting to hear Saturday afternoon when I picked up the phone was that my fellow Indy radio talk show host Amos Brown had died.

Amos died of a  heart attack while visiting his family in Chicago.  Much of the Indianapolis community has offered its words of condolences and perspective on Amos;  Republican Governor Mike Pence, Democrat Congressman Andre Carson, Mayor Greg Ballard and Mayor-Elect Joe Hogsett.   Now it’s time to add to the chorus, but in a different way.

The first time Amos and I met was at the Indy Chamber Hob Nob in 2004.  I had only been on the radio at WXNT a week or so he had been listening to get a feel for the new kid on the block and I was listening to him to get a feel for the local issues. And to be honest, neither of us were big fans of each other.  We were polite and cordial when we met but you can tell there was tension. And that tension only grew over time and it spilled onto the airwaves and into print.   It was not an uncommon occurrence for one of us to hear something the other said and then call them out about it the next day on the radio.

Yes, I know the only way for this to happen was to actively follow the other person, ironic isn’t it.

This went on for quite a while and was getting pretty intense, until the first thaw following the 2007 Mayor’s race.  The day after Ballard pulled an upset victory over Bart Peterson, Amos sent me a text message inviting me to lunch before I left to go become the new Mayor’s Communications guy.  I had thought about putting my name in for the job, but I figured Ballard would need a voice on the airwaves to act as a counterbalance to what I knew Amos and the Democrats were going to throw at him, so I decided to stay where I was.  I know, another ironic moment, it was Amos of all people who kept me on the air.

And for the next few years we would act as a counterbalance to each other.   We were not enemies, but more like each other’s foil.  Just to get you caught up on your literature, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of the other character.  And that is what we were.   Whether it was debating city or state politics, the Affordable Care Act or whatever the issue was we brought both sides to the table.

We even did a television program together (it only lasted a few episodes, but it was fun to do) and we did a radio program together on WTLC-AM  for year on Friday afternoons back in 2013.  And each program he came prepared to do battle. Amos had a statistical background and institutional memory so I knew when we sat down for the “Friday afternoon fights” I had to have my facts together.

And our rivalry wasn’t just good for ratings and getting an audience worked up, it also helped us do some good for charity.  Together we raised a few thousand dollars for charity for an organization that helps ex-offenders.  I’ll never forget him jokingly telling me to get my “rich Republican friends on the phone and make donations” and I jokingly told him “they’ll be happy to so they can show how individuals can do better than the government in getting things done.”

But that was our relationship, it was a rivalry that I like to think was rooted in respect.  And I think at the end of the day we actually liked each other as much as we couldn’t stand each other.  And I don’t think anyone would have wanted it any differently.

Godspeed, Mr. Brown.

omes all the responsibility.

Pardon my play on words from Peter Parker, but that is my sentiment now that Democrats have seized complete control of Indianapolis government for the first time nearly eight years.

With Joe Hogsett as Mayor and the Democrats controlling the Council 13-12, they now have the opportunity to put their vision into play and they also get the responsibility if things go south.

They get to be responsible for crime.

They get to be responsible for the budget.

They get to be responsible for the economic development.

They get to be responsible for potholes.

Unlike President Barack Obama who can point a finger at Republicans and label them as obstructionists for blocking his agenda, Democrats do not get that luxury.  They can only point the fingers at themselves.

However, as easy as it would be to start the early criticism, Democrats should be given an opportunity to prove they can govern.  Numerous times Council Democrats have said they can’t work with Mayor Greg Ballard.  Now the voters have given them Hogsett.   So now there’s no excuse.

They control both branches of government, so let’s see what they can do.

It’s all theirs.  Or if I may quote one of my other favorite films, “son, you’re on your own.”