Espich, through whose hands all taxing and spending questions before the Indiana General Assembly have to pass, authored a bill that would help make that happen. But he threatened not to give it a vote.
“Everyone is afraid of the tax increase,” Espich said in a story written by Krista Chittum. “I’m the only one who’s supportive of the tax increase and I haven’t found anybody else that is.”
But Republicans’ favorite weapon also has brought the GOP into a kind of political cul-de-sac. At a time when Republicans are in power in many states where the infrastructure is crumbling or opportunities go glimmering without new investments of resources, tax increases might make sense.
The issue was the mass transit system many people in central Indiana want. The system has a big price tag — $1.3 billion — but many of the movers and shakers in Indianapolis and the eight counties surrounding Marion County see it as essential to the region’s growth.
That argument is circular: Part of the reason government can’t improve services is because Republicans won’t vote to improve them. And, in many ways, their arguments have cut against the grain of the claims Republicans such as Daniels and Ballard make to leadership.
They both pride themselves on being good managers who understand opportunity, yet they both said this was an opportunity they had to pass up because they couldn’t manage the challenge. If it was possible to streamline either the toll road or the parking meters, wouldn’t it have been better to have government do it so the taxpayers could have reaped the rewards?
