Ballard Gambles $32 Million With Electric Car Fleet Operator With No Track Record

The City of Indianapolis is the guinea pig, so to speak, to determine whether Michael Brylawski's latest electric car venture will be anymore successful than his last. Mayor Greg Ballard announced the City has inked a 7-year, $32 million contract with Brylawski's brand new company company, Vision Fleet, to lease 425 plug-in hybrid and pure electric cars by 2016. Vision Fleet plans to buy cars from local automobile dealers and then lease them back to the City's Department of Public Works. Vision Fleet will be responsible for maintaining and managing the fleet. Supposedly, the deal will save taxpayers money, although we would be remiss if we didn't point out that every taxpayer savings promised by Ballard during his two terms as mayor has turned out to be untrue.

According to a city press release, each gasoline-powered sedan in Indy’s fleet would have cost taxpayers about $9,000 per year over the next decade, including purchase, fuel, maintenance and insurance. The Vision Fleet vehicles will cost about $7,400 per year over that period, saving taxpayers about $1,600 annually per vehicle.

Lotter said the city will pay its annual fees to Vision Fleet through the savings on fuel and other vehicle costs. He said the city's total fleet costs, including payments to Vision Fleet, will be "nominally less" this year, and will decline by 2016. City officials couldn't immediately specify total fleet costs.

So they don't even know what total fleet costs are, but they're sure there's a cost savings in their somewhere. According to the IBJ's report, the administration put out an RFI to find financing for a fleet conversion, and the respondents were traditional vehicle-financing companies. Vision Fleet did not respond to the RFI. I'm not sure why the leasing of these vehicles wasn't publicly bid, but it seems that none of the state's procurement laws apply to this corrupt administration and nobody really gives a damn. DPW says it would have cost $12 to $13 million to buy the cars outright. Really? Who pays for all of the electrical charging stations that will need to be installed? What's the tab for that?

Brylawski's last electric car venture, Bright Automotive, went belly up after he blew through $15 million. He blamed the federal government for not providing his company with a $450 million low-interest loan as the reason for his business' failure. The City of Indianapolis is Vision Fleet's only customer. I repeat, we are the company's first and only customer. It looks like the Boulder, Colorado-based company slapped up a website just in time for today's announcement. I feel for Ballard's successor already. He or she is going to be spending most of their first term figuring out how to undo all of the bad deals this mayor has done that will cost this city dearly for decades to come.

UPDATE: Fellow blogger Pat Andrews mentions these dates that are noteworthy:

• Vision Fleet Funding and Indy Vision Funding were formally incorporated to do business in Indiana on March 19, 2014. Vision Fleet Funding was originally incorporated on August 6, 2013 in the state of Delaware.
• The company's contract with DPW was signed by Brylawski and DPW Director Loris Miser on February 8, 2014. The company should not have been allowed to sign a contract with the City until it had been incorporated to do business in this state.

But check this out. The registered business address for Indy Vision Funding is Indy Partnership's offices in Suite #1800 of the Chase Tower. So now we have a government-funded nonprofit acting as agent for an out-of-state company with no track record being awarded a sweetheart deal with the city. I can only guess how many crimes have been committed with this deal, but Ballard need fear not. We don't have either a federal or county prosecutor capable of prosecuting public corruption. Yet another reason for all of your dirty Chicago pols to relocate to Indianapolis where you can steal public dollars all you want with impunity. Andrews also points out that the supposed savings could only be realized by buying more than 100 fewer cars than are in the current fleet of city cars. Once again, the local media just prints press releases for the administration rather than doing actual reporting that seems to be left to volunteer bloggers these days.