Back in the fall of 2010, with repulsive bridge tolling on the front burner, the topic was One Southern Indiana's annual visit to the city council to seek alms. Earnestly the delegation asked for cadre-improvement bucks to train another generation of Stemleresque "leaders" while fluffing the River Ridge oligarchs' stiffies. CM CeeSaw was all hero worshipful of the big kids at the besuited table, but I needed to do some housekeeping first. It was so long ago that the newspaper hadn't dumped me yet.
Imagine that.
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All this and Clyde Tolson, too.
September 16, 2010
By ROGER BAYLOR, Local Columnist
Thank you all: Natives and tourists, drinkers and teetotalers, buffet grazers and jerky gnawers, hard-core blackjackites and soft-core slots voyeurs, and fans of faded pop stars on the concert circuit.
By patronizing Horseshoe Southern Indiana, and Caesar’s before it, you have enabled a delightfully socialistic process that often makes American politicians cringe and decry, especially if they’re of the elephantine persuasion.
It’s called the redistribution of wealth, and it’s the governmentally-mandated price that Horseshoe Southern Indiana and its brethren must pay to operate. Hereabouts, the Horseshoe Foundation transforms casino profits into grants and awards for worthiness, and even an atheistic cynic like me applauds the $20 million duly redistributed during the past decade.
I mention the largesse for the same reason that I wear a bicycle helmet – in the preventative tense. With a third New Albany city council reading due for One Southern Indiana’s (1Si’s) $70,000 handout request, which I oppose, it’s my guess that someone who doesn’t appreciate the questions I publicly ask is going to launch a few brickbat-cum-queries in my general direction.
Dear reader, excuse me for deeply yawning as I answer now, saving valuable public speaking time for the more important task of battling bridge tolls directed against working Hoosiers.
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Q. Is it hypocritical of me to criticize 1Si’s council handout request, given that in 2009, my New Albanian Brewing Company received a $50,000 loan from the Horseshoe Foundation’s Small Business Revolving Loan Fund?
A. No, because it isn’t 1Si’s money. Here’s the first paragraph of the press release. Italics are mine.
“NEW ALBANY, In. – (March 20, 2009) – The Horseshoe Foundation of Floyd County (HFFC) has named PTG Silicones and The New Albanian Brewing Company as the first recipients of the Small Business Revolving Loan Fund program, which was launched in December 2007. The fund was created to assist emerging private business enterprises based in Floyd County with expanding operations and increasing or retaining employees. It is capitalized by a $250,000 grant made by HFFC and administered by One Southern Indiana.”
I’d have rather gone directly to the Horseshoe Foundation’s office and collected the loan as bundles of unmarked hundreds in a Big Lots plastic bag, but the terms of the application process specified an intermediary, and that’s where 1Si comes into the story. The amount of clerical time expended to expedite the loan application is a matter of varying opinion, but what isn’t contested is that NABC borrowed money from the casino’s good works arm, not the unelected regional development authority.
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Q. But didn’t your company become a member of 1Si at roughly the same time, and hasn’t 1Si expended numerous staff hours helping you?
A. To paraphrase President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s famous comment about J. Edgar Hoover, I thought it might be enlightening for once to stand inside the tent and spit out, rather than the other way around, and so yes, NABC became a member of 1Si. What I’ve learned since is that when it comes to 1Si and NABC, our respective tents are located so far apart that neither spitting nor any other form of bodily excretion is a truly effective means of communication.
1Si advocates a carefully scrubbed, well-tailored “evangelism as networking” vision that perfectly reflects itself in the mirror of its core support: Suburban, exurban, conservative, and committed to economic “development” as the perpetual resource drain of anti-green sprawl.
Not every member marches in lock step, and probably few pay attention to the details of 1Si’s public policy positions, as calculated by an autonomous star chamber operating outside the checks and balances of the ballot box – with the implied consent of local government, which seemingly tolerates 1Si’s periodic public policy outrages (support for closing neighborhood schools in New Albany and intimacy with religious advocacy groups like ROCK, to name just two) in exchange for economic “progress” unmeasurable by objective yardsticks, currently billed to New Albany at a rate of 70K.
NABC has evolved in a different place, and in a different way. We’re interested in small business issues, New Urbanism, downtown revitalization, sustainability, locavore living and thinking, and many other related topics covered in this column during the past two years. It was a novel idea to join 1Si. We won’t be repeating it.
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In two previous readings of the 1Si handout, Councilman Bob Caesar voted in favor both times. I view this as a conflict of interest.
“Conflicts of interest can be defined as any situation in which an individual or corporation (either private or governmental) is in a position to exploit a professional or official capacity in some way for their personal or corporate benefit.”
-- (Wikipedia)
CM Caesar’s “corporate benefit” is his business (and 1Si member), JO Endris & Sons. I must assume that he joined 1Si because he believes the web site spiel:
Through government and workforce advocacy to quality connections and business training, One Southern Indiana is taking care of business – yours.
But if 1Si is “taking care” of JO Endris & Sons, isn’t it an obvious “corporate benefit,” and accordingly, isn’t it a conflict of interest for Caesar to participate in the vote to fund 1Si?
If Caesar argues the converse, that there’s no conflict of interest because membership in 1Si is of no benefit to his business, shouldn’t we be asking why 1Si exists in the first place … and what it says about a councilman’s fiscal acumen to pay dues for no benefit?
Seriously: It isn’t too late for Caesar to do the ethical thing and remove himself from the discussion and vote.
You have no idea how long Roger’s been waiting to use the word “excretion.” In the past, it has appeared periodically at the NA Confidential blog: www.cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com
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