Parking Meter Deal - How They Voted

I've been off on vacation and now I'm playing catch-up. Here's how the vote came down Monday night on Prop 229 - the 50 year lease of the parking meter system to politically connected ACS.

Voting in favor : Democrat Councillor Bateman joined all but one Republican to generate the 15 votes needed for passage. Those Republicans voting in favor were Councillors Vaughn (who declined to recuse himself even though he is chin deep in conflicts of interest in this matter), Cain, Cardwell, Cockrum, Day, Freeman, Hunter, Lutz, Malone, McHenry, McQuillen, Pfisterer, Rivera, and newly appointed Sandlin (who replaces Speedy on the Council).

Voting against : One Republican, Councillor Scales, joined lone Libertarian Councillor Coleman and all but one Democrat. Those Democrats voting against the proposal were Councillors Brown, Evans, Gray, Lewis, both Maherns, Mansfield, Minton-McNeill, Moriarty-Adams, Nytes, Oliver, and Sanders.

Council Meets Tonight - Parking Meter Lease Up

The City-County Council will meet tonight, beginning at 7:00 pm. On the agenda is the 50 year lease of the parking meter system to politically connected ACS.

This effort to privatize a publicly owned monopoly is far from being in the best interest of the citizens of Indianapolis. The City can easily take $8 million from the downtown consolidate TIF district, where there will be nearly $100 million in excess cash by year's end, and pay for the meter upgrade themselves. We would then be able to collect twice the amount of money we would get under this deal - even after spending $10 million every ten years for newer technology.

There is nobody who can predict what new advances will come along that the City could turn to advantage by retaining our parking meter system and adding the new features.

If you are just now tuning into this matter, I would recommend you read my blog entries here and here, some from Ogden on Politics (here, and here), a couple from Advance Indiana (here and here ), as well as a couple from IndyStudent (here and here). As well as urban experts, Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile, and Dr. Phineas Baxandall, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Hopefully the Republican caucus will vote as individuals and in the best interest of the community -- and not as a rubberstamping caucus who just do what they are told.

Your Signs Are Still Waiting to Be Removed

To all of those candidates for office on the November 2nd ballot - if you haven't done so already, please get your signs out of the rights of way. They were placed there illegally by your campaigns before the election. Please do not make taxpayers pay to have your refuse removed.

Thank you.

Vaughn Hammers His Caucus

Council President, Ryan Vaughn, sold his soul to the devil, and has been busy hammering the daylights out of his Council Republican caucus to get them to sell theirs as well.

You know, I used to think the driving force was to place Party interests over the welfare of the community. But, now I am inclined to think that Vaughn puts the interests of Barnes & Thornburg, his employer, over the interests of the Party -- and the interests of the community doesn't have one neuron associated with it in his brain. The distinction is slight, I grant you, as B&T owns the Marion County Republican Party, the Mayor's office, the Controller's office, and Vaughn.

Just Tuesday night, the Council Committee on Committees, chaired and unilaterally run by Vaughn, unceremoniously dumped Councillor Christine Scales from the Public Safety Committee. This was a) to punish Scales for not getting in line and casting the same Stepford vote all the other Republican Councillors have been casting, and b) to send a strong signal to all the other Rs that they best stay in line.

Meanwhile, Vaughn has doing backroom deals to ensure that the pork runs to his district first and, if there is any left over, to downtown. And while working the system behind the scenes and out of sight of the public, he refuses to recuse himself in matters where he has a clear conflict of interest.

If any of the other Republican Councillors have any glint of high standards left, they will remember why ran for office in the first place. In doing so, they just might see their old selves in Christine Scales. If they still have any fire for right and wrong, they would stand with Scales and tell Ryan Vaughn that they elected him to his position, and they can unelect him. They can say, that the game doesn't need to be played this way. They can say it is dead wrong to put the community dead last. They can declare that every Councillor should vote in the best interest of the community - not for the best intests of the Party, not for the best intests of B&T, and not in the best interests of Ryan Vaughn.

I'll Speak Slowly - Let's Pay For The Parking Meters Ourselves

Deputy Mayor Mike Huber continues to bring forward ONLY information that he thinks helps his cause of privatizing a City monopoly and public asset to a politically connected firm, ACS, for 50 years.

Let me speak slowly - or type slowly in this case - The City of Indianapolis has $8 million on hand, which it can use to buy technology-enhanced meters. THE CITY DOES NOT HAVE TO BOND $25 MILLION to pay for $8 million in new meters.

Huber refuses to show the income stream to the City, if we pay up front and keep the asset under public domain. Instead, he does a bait and switch, only referring to bonding - and for $25 million, to boot. In his latest presentation (see slide 13), he even omits the $25 million bond revenue as cash flow to the City under a bonding scenario. Curiously enough, boost that curve up by the omitted $25 million and it becomes highly competitive with the revised proposed deal with ACS, and outshines the original deal. Also, please note the difference in cash flow in slide 13 (amounting to less than $400 million in 50 years) and the 'increased income' shown in slide 5 (topping $600 million in 50 years). These guys refuse to stick to just one story, they are so eager to slant whatever information they think will sell this deal to the public.

But, that is not the point.

If we do the fiscally responsible thing, which seems to run counter to anything the Ballard Administration fancies, and pay $8 million for our own upgrade, the City would keep an asset that the next generation would find useful to have.

I asked for the spreadsheet used to generate the curves on slide 13 - but have received no reply, much less the spreadsheets. So, I analysed the predicted cash flow for the current proposal as follows:
I noted the year in which the curve crossed a $50 million line.
I divided the increase in cash flow between these years by the number of intervening years, to get the average cash flow per year.
I estimated that the average cash flow below $2.1 m was 30% of the $7 m threshold, and any amount over that $2.1 m represented 60% of the total revenue above the $7 m threshold.
I subtracted $10 million for the initial upgrade and an upgrade every 10 years.

Here is the comparison you get if you pay as you go:

	Cumulative Cash Flow ($ Millions)
Year	Proposed 50 Year Lease	Pay Up-Front
1	20	-10
11*	50	65
21*	100	173
29*	150	275
35	200	379
40*	250	470
44	300	567
48*	350	655

The years with an asterisk (*), denote years where an additional $10 million upgrade of the system was calculated.

If the City took a pay as you go approach, we would see a net improvement in revenue over the proposed ACS deal by year 11, even with having paid for two system upgrades in that time.

By year 48, the City would see a net cumulative cash flow of $655 million, $305 million MORE than if we pursue this ACS deal. That is 87% HIGHER revenue.

If the slide 5 prediction of over $600 million in revenue to the City under the ACS deal were more accurate than the slide 13 prediction, then the City might actually generate $1.125 Billion, even after subtracting $50 million for periodic upgrades. That's a whopping $525 million more.

We don't need to craft a deal that makes ACS rich. We should keep this monopoly asset and pay the modest upgrade costs and let the cash flow to the owners of the rights of way and the meter system - the public.

Rules Committee to Take Up Parking Meter Deal - Again

The Rules committee of the City-County Council meets tonight, beginning at 5:30 pm, in room 260 of the City-County Building. On the agenda is consideration of the revised 50 year lease of the parking meter system (a monopoly) to ACS.

This committee is purposely stacked with Republicans, and all controversial proposals that might not eke out every last Republican vote, seems to find its way to this committee.

Bob Lutz serves as Chair. The other Republicans on that committee are Bob Cockrum, Mike McQuillen, Angel Rivera, and Ryan Vaughn. Vaughn, you will recall from posts on OgdenOnPolitics and AdvanceIndiana, was listed with the State of Indiana as a lobbyist for ACS for a full year, until he claimed it was an error and had that information removed from the State's website. He also works at Barnes & Thornburg, where a Partner, Joe Loftus, serves both as a lobbyist for ACS and Counsel for Mayor Greg Ballard. Vaughn has refused to recuse himself from voting on this matter, saying that only if his law firm become partners with a client in a deal, not merely representing that client, then and only then would it become a conflict of interest requiring his recusal. That logic sets the ethics rules on its ear. Democrats on this committee are Monroe Gray, Angela Mansfield, and Joanne Sanders.

Paul Ogden Hits a Home Run

Paul Ogden, author of OgdenOnPolitics, has hit a home run with today's blog entry "Cancelling the ACS Contract, What the Ballard Administration Doesn't Want You to Know; And About That ACS Jobs Promise...It's Not Legally Enforceable". I recommend you read it in its entirety.

Here are the CliffNotes:

1) While Deputy Mayor Mike Huber is touting the cancellation feature of the newly revised deal to privatize the parking meter system (a monopoly) through a 50 year lease with politically connected ACS, the contract has some nasty penalties should the City actually go through with cancellation.
2) If the City chooses to turn the cancelled contract over to another firm to operate, neither that firm nor the City can MAKE ANY MONEY from the meters FOR TWO YEARS. Unless, the City forks over an additional $5 million penalty to ACS.
3) If the City chooses to cancel the contract it is PROHIBITED from floating a bond to pay the cancellation penalty.
4) The promised movement of 200 ACS jobs to Indianapolis is totally unenforceable because a) it is not included in the contract and b) only Huber signed the letter of agreement and he is not legally authorized to commit the City to anything.

This proposal to privatize a monopoly that is owned by the citizens of Indianapolis, to benefit a few politically connected people, is short sighted and totally in keeping with Mayor Ballard's apparent effort to spend every last cent this City has before he is booted out of office.