Big Surprise! IndyGo Does Want More Tax Money

To no surprise whatsoever, the bus system that requires some 80+ of its funding to come from taxpayers, now wants even more. From the Indy Star:

IndyGo, another agency dependent on property taxes, also adopted a 2011 budget Monday, and it, too, will pursue a shortfall appeal as expected.

If approved by the City-County Council, the appeals would bring in $1.8 million for the library and $1.5 million for IndyGo. But for most homeowners, the increase combined would be only a couple of bucks.

The one-time levy, which would not increase the actual tax rate, would increase taxes by $1.21 for a $100,000 property, said library Chief Financial Officer Becky Dixon. The IndyGo increase would be roughly $1 per $100,000.

And just as typical is the Republican response:

Angel Rivera, a Republican who initially expressed opposition to the move, said because the increase was small, he "would give it a lot more consideration," though the council is still exploring other options.

"I don't like tax raises," Rivera said. "But if it's $2.50 per parcel, I think we'd have to seriously consider it."

Republicans are against tax hikes, until they are for them.

There are too many other things the Library and IndyGo can still do to generate revenue. They can charge their users for the services they use. Hike the fares, charge more for overdue videos, and charge to use the internet. Is this so hard to figure out?

I suppose it's easier to simply claw at the community as a whole.

IndyGo "Could" Nick The Taxpayer?

Way to go Indy Star headline writer! You gave me the chuckle that will carry me through this Monday! It read, "Action by IndyGo and library could nick taxpayers".

No kidding! Could nick the taxpayer? Bwaaahahahaha! That's about the only thing IndyGo does with any consistency!

As pointed out many, many times on this blog, IndyGo is heavily subsidized, with taxpayers making up a minimum of 80% of the bus service's funding. Fares, on the other hand, make up less than 20%.

As pointed out many times before, this represents a transfer of wealth from those who don't ride to those who do. What's that old saw about the sum of good government being not picking my pocket or breaking my leg? How's that go? Not IndyGo, that's for sure.

So here's the trick, per the Indy Star:

Municipal corporations that receive less tax money than expected can file what's called a shortfall appeal with the Department of Local Government Finance. If approved, that will raise how much the corporations receive the next year, but it also will raise property taxes for those who are not paying the maximum under the tax cap.

It's time to scale back our empire building. No, I'm not talking foreign policy in this case. I'm talking the empire of government. The money is not there. When the property tax reassessments happened a few years back, we were not in the midst of a down economy. Hit people now, with a 10% unemployment rate? For buses people don't ride?

Here's an idea: Raise the fares. Let the people who use the services pay for the services. Either that, or scale them back just as surely as families have scaled back on eating out or grilling t-bone steaks.

Indiana To Put A Tax Hike On The Table?

Well, my conservative friends, what do you think about this? From Indy Star:

"If we don't see a really significant improvement from anything I see right now, it'll be extraordinarily difficult next year," Daniels said. "In the 10 months between now and the beginning of the next legislature, our number one priority is going to be to try to maintain Indiana's solvency, Indiana's AAA credit rating, Indiana's position as one of the handful of states that only nicked, as opposed to gouged, education and didn't raise taxes.

"That's going to be a tough thing to bring off."

Tough? Really? Only elected officials committed to large government, and people who take out loans to pay for snacks can talk this way.

In the Kole house, when the income slows, the spending slows. Sure we dip into the savings if it comes to that, but we will cut everything but the essentials if and when it gets desperate.

Essentials carries a strict definition here. Food, mortgage, utilities, gasoline, insurance. By utility, I mean water and electricity. Cable TV? Well, we don't have cable TV. That's a 100% cut. We don't go out to eat when it gets desperate. We don't go out for entertainment in such times. State government?

Since forecasters released new economic projections in December, state revenues have fallen short of projections by $160 million in the past two months. In fact, revenue has missed projections for 17 consecutive months, leading Gov. Mitch Daniels to order 20 percent in cuts to state agencies, a $150 million -- or 6 percent -- cut to state universities, and a $300 million -- or 3 percent -- trim to K-12 schools.

How did this man get the nickname, "The Blade". Call him "The Penknife", or "The Fingernail File". These are more appropriate.

If the objective is to maintain solvency, then get to some serious cutting. I haven't seen any departments closed. Some items have been merged, but I am unaware of anything eliminated. At the very least, if the money isn't there, departments that survive can be cut to 50%, and schools can be cut at least 10%.

Our state government is made up of a bunch of babies. If Daniels and state legislators lack the fortitude, they should get out of the way and let those who have it step in.

"After five years of building a $1.3 billion reserve, it's been shrunk by half in the past eight months, and that's after cutting $800 million of spending," said Ryan Kitchell, director of the state's Office of Management and Budget.

"With revenue continuing to decline at unprecedented double-digit rates, our toughest decisions are still ahead of us."

Bollocks. Libertarians in the statehouse would have maintained the entire reserve. Cutting is not a tough decision, especially when economic forces make it such that explaining the cuts is child's play.

Budgets and Relative Belt Tightening

When the budget gets tight at the Kole house, the vacation budget is eliminated. It's a 100% budget cut, until such time as we can afford it. We eat out 75% less. Entertainment is little more than a trip to the library. New clothing purchases are halted. Etc. In sum, the cuts are pretty harsh.

Elected officials are therefore hilarious in comparison. They whine and moan about 3% or 4% budget cuts. Boo-friggin'-hoo!

Here's an interesting bit from Cato's David Boaz:

Time to stop spending, eh? That would be most people’s response to an unprecedented deficit. And they do mention “irresponsible spending” later in the piece. But somehow, it appears that the governors thought that was a good lead for an article in the Washington Post demanding more federal spending to subsidize state governments.

They lamented the the plight of the state budgets; New York, for instance, asked state agencies “to slash their state budgets by 3.35 percent.” Now, if I had to cut my budget for a new sofa, say, from $1,000 to $966.50, I don’t think I’d call that a “slash”; it’s more like margin of error.

Hilarious. And there are some who make it out that Grover Norquist has won the day, that fiscal conservatism has triumphed, with taxes almost nil, and the federal government shrunk to the size of that of the Polk Administration.

Reason has picked up on this willful ignorance, also, noting how some fans of larger government are tying the downward slide of the Republican Party to the idea that said slide is proof of the failure of fiscal conservatism. I took Balloon Juice to task on this just last week. From Reason's Matt Welch:

"...a strain of curious left-of-center analysis I'm seeing more and more this election: That the Republicans are losing because limited-government ideas don't work, and are no longer popular.

This critique requires a significant leap of logic − that George W. Bush, and his would-be GOP successor John McCain, practice and/or believe in limited government principles."

Fiscal conservatism wasn't even tried out by the Republicans. Tax cut, borrow and spend simply isn't a fiscally conservative ideal. McCain thinks cutting earmarks is a slash, just as NY's governor thinks a 3% nick is a draconian reversion to primitive barbarism.

At the Kole house, and I'm quite sure at many others across the land, when the money isn't there, we radically cut our spending, by as much as 40%. We don't take out loans so that we can keep spending. We don't commandeer from our neighbors under the premise of 'the common good'. We cut spending.

Intellectual Dishonesty

I can't stand it when libertarians are linked with George W. Bush, lumped together as fiscal conservatives. George W. Bush is not a fiscal conservative. He is a borrow & spend fiscal liberal. No president has increased spending at a faster rate than George W. Bush- not FDR, not LBJ, no one.

So the post on the blog Balloon Juice, "Fiscal Conservatism, Part Two" made me go to the garage to hammer the heavy bag for a few minutes.

The Bush economic record is a disaster, for taking a surplus and turning into a monstrous deficit. It was due to spending into a tax cut.

That's where the intellectual dishonesty comes in- blaming the tax cut while putting the blinders on for the increased spending Bush signed into law.

Libertarians, who are fiscal conservatives, have been beating up Republicans for their out-of-control spending for the better part of the 8-year Bush Administration. He didn't use his veto pen for a single appropriations bill while the Republicans had control of Congress. I must have had 20 posts on the subject by myself.

I thought people on the right were suckers for accepting this batch of Republicans as fiscal conservatives. But that people on the left apparently also accept them as such indicates to me that nobody really has a grasp of what a fiscal conservative stands for. Either that, or there is widespread engagement in intellectual dishonesty.

So, allow me to fill the breach.

Fiscal conservative: lower taxes, lower spending
Fiscal liberal, tax & spend variety: higher taxes, higher spending
Fiscal liberal, borrow & spend variety: lower taxes, higher spending, higher borrowing, higher taxes tomorrow

George W. Bush, the Republican leadership of the 108th and 109th Congress- all are of the latter stripe. Libertarians having nothing to do with that.

By the way, now that the 110th Congress is in power, and writes the law, including the budget, it could aggressively attack the deficit by cutting spending. But that's something it is unwilling to consider. To Democrats, the only way to balance a budget bloated by spending is to tax more.

More than one way to skin a cat, folks. Cutting spending balances the budget, too.

If Democrats don't know where to start, allow this Libertarian to give you some hints:

Iraq
Iraq
Iraq

and, Iraq. At least live up to your rhetoric- even if Bush didn't live up to his on fiscal conservatism.

Old Kole posts on Republican spending, at various levels of government:

1-14-2006
9-29-2005
7-10-2005
6-29-2005
3-22-2005
1-18-2005

And, last but not least, here is my post from November 28, 2004. It was printed as a column in a few Indiana newspapers. It was a post-election analysis, on the Republican sweep, both nationally and here in Indiana. I warned fiscal conservatives that they would not be happy with the result of electing Republicans, hoping for spending cuts.

But, behind some of the grins, there is a group within the broad spectrum of conservatives that is gritting its clenched teeth behind a half-hearted smile. While excited for the possibilities Republican majorities bring, this group shares a great deal of the anxiety liberals have in anticipation of the first wave of new policy that will soon greet us. This group is the fiscal conservatives.

It was not a series of referendums on capping budgetary growth that swept George W. Bush to re-election. It was a series of referendums on gay marriage.

snip

If Republicans won't do the job of reducing spending this year, with their majorities at home and in Washington, fiscal conservatives will know that it is time to look for a new political home. They will have no choice but to conclude that if spending won't be cut this year, it never will so long as Republicans are in charge.

Republicans didn't cut a thing. Grover Norquist got nothing. I got nothing... except a bigger share of a deficit, for money spent on things I generally don't approve of. And, I have liberals calling George Bush a fiscal conservative, sullying the good name of fiscal conservatism?

You want to come over and kick my dog, too?