News Section

Source: Indianapolis Star

Date: Sunday, January 22, 2012

Author: Michelle Pemberton

Making an end run around Mayor Greg Ballard to pass a stronger smoking ban covering bars was at the heart of an offer last week from an unlikely source.

City-County Councilman Robert Lutz is a staunch opponent of smoking bans covering private businesses. But he sees the exemptions added at Ballard's request -- including for private clubs and cigar and hookah bars -- as likely to create an uneven playing field for all other bars. So he'd rather see the council pass a comprehensive ban, with an exemption only for the state-licensed Downtown off-track betting parlor.

Lutz offered an amendment that would do just that. He even pledged his vote to override an inevitable veto from Ballard, a fellow Republican, if the rest of the council took up his offer.

"I don't support (a full ban)," he told other members of the Rules and Public Policy Committee, which considered the smoking ban proposal Tuesday. "But that being said, if we do it, then I think we need to do it all the way."

Some Indianapolis bar owners who oppose the measure have grudgingly made the same argument.

But tantalizing as Lutz's offer was to Democrats on the committee, they scuttled his amendment.

The biggest reason: It would be a tall order. A veto override takes 20 votes on the 29-member council. Democrats have a 16-13 edge in seats. While the current proposal has support from several Republicans, racking up 20 votes for a more robust measure may be out of reach.

And even if sponsors corralled enough votes, Republican supporters might not find it so easy as Lutz does to buck a mayoral veto. And then it'd be back to the drawing board -- negotiating with a mayor who isn't very keen on the issue to begin with.

Republican smoking ban co-sponsor Ben Hunter called Lutz's offer "a good way to make sure it fails altogether."

Still, before the committee voted 5-3 to sent the compromise version to the full council on Jan. 30, Democrat Angela Mansfield, another co-sponsor, said of Lutz's offer: "If we have 20 votes, let's do it."

Don't hold your breath.

Meanwhile, it's still not clear Ballard will sign off on the current version of the proposal, which would expand Indianapolis' 2005 smoking ban.

He's tangling with the council on the terms of the exemption for nonprofit private clubs and fraternal organizations, whose members would have to vote to retain smoking. As written, those that opt to allow smoking could no longer allow children on premises, a stipulation Ballard wants to change.

On the sidelines

Ballard spent much of last week at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting in Washington, D.C. One item of news out of the gathering: By Friday, 100 mayors from across the country had signed on to the new group Mayors for the Freedom to Marry.

But don't expect Ballard to join the group in publicly taking sides in the same-sex marriage debate.

It's led by the mayors of New York City, Boston, Houston, San Diego and Los Angeles. A statement issued Friday described members as "a broad-based and nonpartisan group of mayors who believe that all people should be able to share in the love and commitment of marriage."

The only mayor from Indiana to sign on was Democrat Mark Kruzan of Bloomington.

Ballard spokesman Marc Lotter said Friday that Ballard has long avoided lending his name to such lists. Last year, Democratic challenger Melina Kennedy criticized Ballard for declining to sign on to another group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

"When you sign onto these national petitions," Lotter said, "it usually cuts out the debate on one side."

The one list that Lotter said Ballard has signed: the U.S. Conference of Mayors Civility Accord, issued following the shooting that severely injured U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords a year ago in Arizona.

So far, Ballard isn't alone among big-city mayors in declining to join the Freedom to Marry group. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings also withheld his name.

Ballard did chime in on the same-sex marriage debate last year. He said the Indiana General Assembly's effort to put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex unions on the ballot was a distraction from more important issues.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

The word you're most likely to hear during President Barack Obama's State of the Union address and Gov. Mitch Daniels' GOP response Tuesday night is "jobs."

More than six in 10 people surveyed in a USA Today/Gallup Poll said that jobs and the economy are the most important issue for the president to address. The federal budget deficit, which Daniels has called the "new red menace," was the top issue for only 17 percent of respondents. Health care was chosen by 11 percent.

And speaking of health care: Advocacy group Protect Your Care said Daniels is an odd choice to give the GOP response to Obama's address since Indiana has accepted federal money to help implement the new health-care law that Republicans oppose.

Indiana has received nearly $8 million in grants to prepare for a state-based health insurance exchange. But Daniels hasn't decided whether Indiana will operate an exchange or leave that up to the federal government. He has said that decision won't be made until after the Supreme Court's ruling on the law's constitutionality and until the federal government releases more rules on how the exchanges must be run.

The exchanges are regulated marketplaces to help people buy insurance if they don't get it through an employer or government program. Enrollment is supposed to open in the fall of 2013. If states choose not to run their own, the federal government will step in.

No, he's not entering race

Conservative commentator William Kristol got hearts racing Thursday when he posted a fictitious -- we think? -- draft speech in which Gov. Daniels announces a renewed willingness to run for president.

Daniels has been tapped to give the Republican response Tuesday to the president's State of the Union address. Kristol, a Daniels fan, posted the purported draft of the end of Daniels' speech online at "The Weekly Standard." You might call it an expression of Kristol's wishful thinking.

He even borrowed a few lines from Daniels' own State of the State address about the duel between lawmakers Mr. Heffern and Mr. Moody in 1861.

Here's the part that turned heads:

"None of the candidates currently running has received more than a total of 300,000 votes in the three contests so far," Kristol -- er, Daniels -- wrote. "So here's a test of my viability: If in the next few days I receive more than 300,000 emails . . . asking me to run -- then I will take that as a sign that, despite my previous reluctance, I should enter the contest."

But. Daniels supporters, don't get your hopes up -- or your laptops and smartphones out. It was all in jest. At least, we think.

Those pesky commissions

A year ago, Carmel City Council members asked the Indiana General Assembly to reform state law, saying Mayor Jim Brainard circumvented them to take the city $90 million deeper into debt to finish construction at the extravagant Center for the Performing Arts.

The answer was no. Now, Carmel council members are trying again, only their city is another $50 million deeper into it. At least, that's how much council members think their commission spent in 2011.

"It is, as near as we can tell -- and I think that phrase is important -- as near as we can tell, somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million," council President Rick Sharp told the Senate Committee on Local Government on Wednesday.

Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, has filed a bill that would stop redevelopment commissions from spending large amounts of money without city council approval. Mayors appoint the majority of members to redevelopment commissions, which can spend commercial property tax dollars on redevelopment projects.

Sharp explained it's not just the amount of money the commission has spent that's in question. The commission took out $15 million in letters of credit and awarded it as grants to various organizations. But the grants listed code names rather than specific recipients. Sharp said the council is still waiting for the names of those recipients.

The bill would solve Sharp's problem, as it would require commissions to report their annual budgets to city councils, and it would clarify that commissions -- like other governmental entities -- are subject to audit by the State Board of Accounts and are covered by public meetings and open records laws.

Kenley said the bill likely will go before the full Senate this week. But that might not be where the battle occurs. The Senate passed a similar measure last year, but it died in the Indiana House.

Sharp said he's back to warn lawmakers that without action, other city councils could face the same issues as Carmel.

"We do pride ourselves in Carmel in trying to lead in the state," Sharp said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. "We are leading the way for other redevelopment commissions to get as creative as Carmel has gotten financially."