Indy Chamber's Anti-Business Agenda

It's a misnomer for the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce to continue using a name that implies it supports area businesses when nothing could be further from the truth. The organization's number one legislative agenda is to convince state lawmakers that all suburban taxpayers should start paying a share of their income taxes to Indianapolis where the money will be spent exclusively on a handful of businesses located within downtown's mile square. “We do support a tax on non-residents who live outside Marion County but work here,” Indy Chamber president Michael Huber told Fox 59 News. “But there never has existed a revenue stream to pay for the resources that are needed like public safety infrastructures and resources to support that.”

Au contraire, numerous tax increases supported by the Indy Chamber over the past several years have provided more than an ample revenue stream; it just keeps getting diverting to support the downtown mafia's agenda, which only benefits a handful of businesses. The Indy Chamber has other priorities it wants addressed, including its continued push to raise income taxes on both Indianapolis and suburban taxpayers to support an expanded metropolitan mass transit system, pre-K education and water management. Why any business owner outside downtown Indianapolis would pay money to be a member of an organization which is at war with the vast majority of Indianapolis' business owners and taxpayers is beyond me. The organization is effectively an extension of the mayor's office. Indeed, after its merger with other tax-supported organizations, it is an arm of city government more or less.

Meanwhile, Call 6's Kara Kenney learns the City of Indianapolis won't claw back any of the more than $10 million in tax abatements it provided to Rolls-Royce after it agreed to make certain investments and locate more of its workforce from other areas to downtown despite news that it has laid off hundreds of employees in its local workforce. At it turns out, the City's deal with Rolls-Royce allows the company to trim its local workforce without losing its tax abatement as long as it doesn't fall below a certain target figure. "[Mayoral spokesman Marc] Lotter explained Rolls-Royce, per the agreement, is maintaining 80 percent of their workforce on the date of enactment, which would be a minimum of approximately 3,300 jobs," Kenney reported. "It doesn’t appear that Rolls is anywhere close to dropping to a level that would impact their previous abatement agreements," said Lotter. Since when did the City start signing tax abatement agreements that actually permit businesses to reduce their workforce?