Public Meeting on Parking Meter Proposal TONIGHT

Councillor At-Large, Ed Coleman, the sole Libertarian on the Council, has arranged what may be the only off-site, public meeting regarding the revised proposal to lease the City's parking meters for the next 50 years.

The meeting is tonight, November 4th, beginning at 6:00 pm in the Wilkey Blue Room of the Anthenaeum, 401 E. Michigan Street.

Evidently, Deputy Mayor Mike Huber and the (get this) "ParkIndy" team, will be present.

Rules Committee Reviews Prop 303 & 378

The Rules Committee of the Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council met last night with Prop 303 and 378 on its agenda. The whole meeting was 34 minutes long and can be viewed in the WCTY archives here - click on 'video' for November 4, 2009. The Rules committee is Chaired by Councillor Lutz and Councillors Malone, Pfisterer, Plowman, Cockrum, Mansfield, and Gray were members of the committee present last night. Also in attendance, but not members of this committee were Councillors Coleman and Oliver.

Prop 303 is Councillor Coleman's Proposal that would require the internet posting of all contracts involving the City or County government. This proposal was amended such that contracts must be posted within 14 days of being approved, there must be a search function for the postings, corporate counsel must review all contracts before posting and redact any information not considered public record by state law, all existing contracts going back to January 1, 2008 must be posted within 180 of the effective date of the ordinance, and the effective date of the ordinance will be January 1, 2010. The search feature should include searching by city department or agency, vendor name, and the like. Redactible information would include personal information such as social security numbers and is an action anticipated to be necessary very infrequently, given that contracts rarely contain non-public record information. It was made clear that this Proposal would not include contracts of the various Municipal Corporations. So the CIB, Airport, Library, and Health & Hospitals are not affected by Prop 303. The reason why escaped me, but I did gather that it was based on state law.

Public testimony included a comment by a fellow named Steven Hoback (as I heard his name) who suggested that interlocal agreements, which are not legally considered contracts, also be included in the ordinance. I presented McANA position of support. And last but not least, Keith Robinson of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government presented that organizations position of support. He also suggested that the Council take the ordinance one step further and post proposed contracts online so that the public can review them before the final decision is made to sign off on them. Councillor Coleman indicated he would be working on pulling both suggestions into the framework of Prop 303.

At the end of the discussion, Prop 303 was not voted on, but rather, postponed until the Rules Committee's November 17 meeting. This will give the Office of Finance and Management and the Office of Corporate Counsel time to finish their fiscal impact analysis.

Prop 378 was tabled. This Proposal for a Council Resolution asking Senators Lugar and Bayh to push for the removal of language in HR 915 (FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009) that would pull FedEx from unionizing rules under the Railway Labor Act and put them under the National Labor Relations Act. As discussed earlier, the inclusion of FedEx under RLA was a sweetheart deal to begin with and treated FedEx differently than UPS is treated. Council President Bob Cockrum stated that after the Committee acted on Prop 378 last time, he received phone calls from UPS representatives suggesting there was another side to the story. Cockrum then called for the Council to return the Proposal to the Committee for further consideration. He also invited representatives of FedEx and UPS to come present their viewpoint last night. Even though all had arrived, there were no statements made and the Proposal was tabled. Councillor Cockrum noted that HR 915 had moved out of the House and into two committees of the Senate - one of which had stripped the language in question and the other of which was not expected to consider it for a little while. So, saying it might end up being a moot point, the Committee voted to table the issue until such time as it seems warranted to raise it again. Good move to bring this one back to Committee and great move to table it.

Prop. 303 Gets Hearing Tonight

Tonight's meeting of the City-County Council's Rules and Public Policy Committee will hold a public hearing on Proposal 303. This Proposal, authored by Councillor Coleman, would require all City or County Government contracts be posted online within 7 days of being signed.

This is a breath of sunshine in public access. With technology today, it is entirely feasible and the access is in the best public interest.

The meeting begins at 5:30 pm in room 260 of the City-County Building. The committee is Chaired by Councillor Lutz who can be reached at rlutz@indygov.org

Notes From Budget Hearings - August 13

A reminder once again, that this is not a list of the important issues discussed at the Parks budget hearing. Rather these are some asides that I found interesting.

For consideration that night, in addition to the budget, was Prop. 293, authored by Councillor Coleman, the lone Libertarian on the Council. The Proposal originally would direct "the Director and Board of Parks and Recreation to consider the sale of city golf courses", but was changed by Coleman at the hearing to propose a feasibility study of the value of the properties which would be completed by February 1, 2010. Lone he was when he came into the room. And, lone he was when he left after no public testimony was taken and the Proposal was tabled to a time uncertain, although hell freezing over might be a rough estimate.

Also of interest was that notice of this meeting erroneously stated 5:30 pm as the start time, a half hour late. Those who double checked the time with a phone call arrived on time. Several stragglers, came in for the 5:30 meeting. Presumably they were mostly interested in speaking to Prop. 293, as they left when Councillor Gray mention it had already been discussed and tabled. I don't know what the Committee would have done, but the notice error, had it been called out by a member of the public, could have legally caused a delay in the meeting, as proper notice is required 48 hours in advance of any Committee or Council meeting.