I wish City-County Council Democrats would get their act together and start acting like the loyal opposition as opposed to the Keystone Cops of the Council.

With tonight’s budget vote pending, Democrats held a news conference complaining, once again, about the Ballard administration failing to hire 100 police officers and wondering where the money went.  In addition they introduced an ordinance tonight that would hire 25 police officers which would be funded mostly by taking money out of public safety’s contractual services budget.  Someone apparently didn’t do their homework because the money the Democrats wanted to hire officers would have come from contracts used to maintain the hiring and promotional process, legal settlements and other services.  Of course all this could have been avoided if Democrats wrote the original public safety ordinance to say money “shall” be used to hire 100 additional police officers as opposed to simply “authorizing the hiring” of 100 police officers.

Also at their news conference, they  “wondered” where the $5 million in anti-violence funds went for youth programs, community outreach and crime prevention.  The answer is nowhere because today was the deadline for groups to apply for the funds.  By the way, at last count the number was 85 and growing.  But you see what I mean?

This is not the first time in this process my Democratic friends have fallen short.  They complained about the Council using the Administration and Finance Committee to reconcile a number of city agency fund balances when they did the same thing a few years ago.

In addition if you are also planning to complain about the budget when it comes before a final vote it would help if your members didn’t vote for it in committee.  A quick check of documents shows out of the 86 budget votes cast by the Council members in separate committees, there were only 6 “no” votes.  Bill Oliver cast two “no”votes; one of which was to cut the arts budget by more than $500,000.   Joanne Sanders, Vern Brown and Mary Moriarty Adams cast one “no” vote each in committee and Bob Lutz was the lone Republican “no” vote on the Airport Authority’s budget.

I hope my friends on the left side of the aisle (my left, facing them) will learn from this experience that being the loyal opposition means having your facts and your act together.  This city needs a healthy two-party system to function.  Three, if you count the Libertarians.  Council Democrats have done enough messing around and it’s time for them Dems to get their act together.

I have some follow-up to a few items from yesterday. I hope you find them interesting…

Local Stadium Bailout?

• If anyone is looking for the state to help bailout the new Lucas Oil Stadium and its operation costs, forget about it for now. Governor Mitch Daniels says it unlikely the state will get involved. City officials however say they are confident that if they have to have discussions with the Indianapolis Colts, the Colts will be “good corporate citizens.”

Poll Watching

• Although he says he doesn’t put too much faith in polls, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels Saturday questioned the Indy Star poll which put him just four points ahead of Jill Long Thompson. Speaking to a gathering of Hamilton County Republicans Daniels said several other independent polls show him with at least a 15-point lead. He used the analogy, “if you have five thermometers and four of them say it’s 85 and one says it’s 35, the odds are there is something wrong with that one thermometer.”

Budget Delay Denied

• City of Indianapolis budget officials say there’s no reason to delay passing a budget. Council Democrats have introduced an ordinance postponing passing the budget until November 17. They argue the Mayor should wait until he has a better idea of what the city’s finances will be from the Department of Local Government and Finance. However City Controller Dave Reynolds says they have accounted for possible changes in the levy, so there’s no reason to delay passing the budget.

Ranker and File

• Barack Obama may like JLT, but that affection doesn’t seem to be trickling down to the rank and file in Indiana.  The word is that Obama’s foot soldiers aren’t promoting JLT’s candidacy as they go door to door.  As one reportedly said, “we don’t want her to be a drag on our efforts.”  This isn’t good news because JLT scaled back a lot of her operations, in part, because she said they were being duplicated by the Obama campaign.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Marion County Sheriff Frank Anderson have reached a budget agreement that both sides say will fund public safety and allow the city to live within its means.

The Sheriff originally asked for $111 million, but later reduced that request to $92 million.  Under the agreement the Sheriff  will receive about $86 million, which was Ballard’s original budget request.  However, it will no longer have to directly pay for emergency dispatch and for a net gain of about $8 million, since the department won’t have its budget reduced to pay for the services.

According to City Comptroller Dave Reynolds, dispatch will be paid directly out of the the Marion County Emergency Agency’s budget.    To cover part of that costs city officials say they will use about $3.3 million in additional tax revenue that was discovered due to a clerical error.

At the end of the day, the city will only have about $600,000 left in its overall fund balance.  That number was originally just over $4 million, but the additional MECA costs as well as the additional $2.6 million for the townships assessors reduced that amount.

So while the city is still managing to live within its means, it won’t have much of a life.