Tax The Rich

Friends and Constituents,

I hope you’re well. Personally, I’m fairly frustrated for a few different reasons.

1) I worked on social media to crowdsource a proposal to overhaul the Council’s ethics rules. That proposal was supposed to be introduced tomorrow, but it won’t be, for reasons I’m still working with Council leadership to understand.

2) Our Council attorney is refusing to work with me or answer any questions from me, apparently because I have joined the Martindale-Brightwood neighbors in suing to prevent the approval of Metrobloks’ data center rezoning request from becoming law.

3) I find myself in a difficult position where both options are bad.

I’m focusing this newsletter and video on frustration number 3: road funding.

Watch the video, then keep reading.

The Indiana General Assembly has set up a system where our state taxes are extremely regressive. That means that the rich do not pay their fair share, and the poor are overly burdened by taxes. This tax policy exacerbates inequality and hurts families.

The Statehouse also robs Indianapolis in a number of different ways: Sales taxes are only applied based on county of residence, which causes many employees of Indianapolis-based companies to live outside Indianapolis and not share tax revenue with the city. Road funding is calculated by the state and still predominantly treats all roads as the same, no matter how many lanes in each direction they have. Public transportation is also forced to run inefficiently by Statehouse mandates.

You have one action item this week:

Write me back to let me know what you think about the proposed new tax! I co-sponsored this proposal to ensure it received public debate, and because as of right now I think it’s the right thing to do in light of the hostage situation we find ourselves in with the Statehouse. But as always, I work for you, and I want to know what you think I should do.

Or come talk to me in person tonight (Monday, June 1st) at the full Council meeting. As usual, while the other Councilors are meeting behind closed doors to strategize, I’ll be in the Public Assembly Room starting at about 6 pm, ready to share printed annotated agendas and talk about anything you want. That’s the People’s Caucus, and you’re always invited.

Here’s the link to the annotated agenda I prepared for the meeting.  

Here’s the link to where the full Council packet of information will be when I receive it from Council staff later this afternoon.

As a reminder, the wheel tax proposal is only being introduced tomorrow, which means it won’t be discussed or debated by Councilors or the general public. There are three opportunities for public comment and debate about the wheel tax proposal coming up this month, though: starting at 5:30 pm on June 9th, 11th, and 16th, there will be three different committee meetings where you can share your opinion. Locations for these meetings are still TBD - I’ll update you all in next week’s newsletter.

Thanks as always for reading. This week, my research, video, and newsletter took me about 12 hours to complete. If you think this level of service is valuable within Indianapolis politics, please chip in what you can to help me keep fighting, and tell your friends to follow me on social media and subscribe to this email newsletter.

In love and solidarity,
Jesse