For Immediate Release Thursday, April 2, 2009
INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana Senator Luke Kenley (R) and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard (R) presented the State’s plan to bail out the Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board (CIB) today. Instead of asking the users of CIB properties in Indianapolis to step up and pay their fair share first, lawmakers will be considering a statewide increase of alcohol taxes, ticket taxes, food and beverage taxes, and the Innkeepers tax.
Timothy Maguire, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Marion County, criticized the move to attach this bailout to the state budget. “There is no excuse to force those who don’t directly use the stadiums to pay for the short-sightedness of the CIB first.”
“The appropriate step should be a direct tax on the immediate users of the CIB facilities,” said Maguire. “These Republican-sponsored increases will give us the highest hospitality taxes in the nation, which will only serve to drive off the convention business the City leadership claims to protect. Hurting a $3 billion industry with unwise taxes will only put more Hoosiers out of work.”
“It was an increase in taxes that outraged the voters of 2007 that swept the Republicans into office,” commented Ed Coleman, Indianapolis City-County Councilor At-Large. “It is a shame that the Mayor and other City Leadership, after only a year and a half, have forgotten the will of the voters. If the Statehouse and the Mayor look to raise taxes on the hard working owners of hotels, bars, restaurants and our City’s guests first, then they truly do not understand the forgotten man in all of this.”
Coleman is asking everyone to contact their state legislators immediately to voice their opposition to high taxes. “The voters of Indianapolis need to remind their officials of their outrage from 2007, and that they won’t forget a move like this come election time. Ask them to put the average taxpayer first, and the owners of the Colts and Pacers second.”
Press release from the Libertarian Party of Marion County, Ind.
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