Buttigieg, housing and homelessness? This Twitter thread by Luke Savage is a must-read.

Luke Savage writes for Jacobin.

"This week I did some research on Mayor Pete Buttigieg's administration and South Bend. There's a lot more work I need to do on his policies overall, but specifically I looked into his approaches to housing and homelessness - both of which I think both deserve sharp criticism."

Read the whole thread here. I was struck by this tweet.

Hmm, where have I heard the name of Barnes & Thornburg? Was it in a Marx Brothers movie?

Ed Clere proposes changes to Redevelopment Commission and Housing Authority appointments, so it's mute nostril agony for Jeff Gahan as his campaign-finance-loaded wagons are circled around the TIF encampment.

(Historical Update: This post is NAC's 11,000th, since October 2004)

Perhaps it's something about planetary alignment or the daily accuracy ratio of stopped clocks, but News and Tribune management finally mustered a good decision, sending reporter Elizabeth Beilman to Indianapolis to provide a day's coverage of items that actually impact our lives right, here at home.

Rest assured, readers: None of it will displace the ongoing breathless coverage of reality television shows, though it's a welcome albeit temporary change.

Let's begin with Beilman's bylines.

Redevelopment bill would give Indiana schools more voice

If passed, school boards would get appointment on commissions

House Bill 1131 authored by Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, takes one of the executive body's appointments to a redevelopment commission and gives it to a local school board, which would appoint one of its members. The other appointments will remain in control of the fiscal body.

And:

Southern Indiana schools support bill centering on tax increment financing money

INDIANAPOLIS — Representatives from every school corporation in Clark and Floyd counties testified Tuesday in favor of a state bill that would give them louder voices in economic development.

House Bill 1131, authored by State Rep. Ed Clere and co-authored by State Rep. Steve Stemler, replaces one of a municipal or county executive’s appointments on a redevelopment commission with a school board member appointment.

Obviously, HB 1131 is intended to make corrective adjustments to what amounts to mayoral abuse of appointment power, not just in New Albany, but everywhere in the state Indiana. Small wonder the statewide mayor's breakfast club is against it.

However, our own mayor is the veritable original source textbook for these abuses. Jeff Gahan's appointed Redevelopment Commission is packed with slobbering mayoral sycophants, meaning that numerous significant decisions are made offshore, away from elected bodies.

In addition, as with the New Albany Housing Authority commission, Gahan's refusal to appoint members to it in a timely fashion has revealed his naked intent to cripple the NAHA's operations, and eventually to dismantle it. I'm slowly amassing information on this story, and we'll get to it later.

Interestingly, the filing of Clere's bill forced Gahan to expedite the NAHA takeover plan, and so he duly made the appointments he'd been delaying -- and by the way, they're all being placed there for exactly the same reason that Donald Trump appoints department heads opposed to the mission of their agencies, to destroy and not build, so Gahan can queue the cattle cars for the short jaunt to Greenville.

Gahan is neither a Democrat nor democratic, but I digress. The digest of House Bill 1131 provides all the meat and taters.

DIGEST

Appointments to local boards and commissions. Provides that after June 30, 2017, one of the commissioners appointed to a redevelopment commission must be a member of the governing body of a school corporation that includes all or part of the territory served by the redevelopment commission. Provides for the appointment to be made by the appointing governing body as determined in the statute. Removes language providing for the appointment of nonvoting advisers to redevelopment commissions from the governing bodies of school corporations. Provides that nonvoting advisers serve until a member of the governing body of a school corporation is appointed to the redevelopment commission. Provides that if the executive or fiscal body of a municipality does not fill a vacancy in the municipal housing authority before the 61st day after the vacancy occurs, the remaining members of the housing authority shall fill the vacancy. Provides that the remaining members are authorized to fill the vacancy even if the number of remaining members is not sufficient for a quorum. Provides that an individual who is acting as a member of a housing authority 60 days after the expiration of the individual's term as a member of the housing authority may continue to act as a member for purposes of filling the vacancy.

Gahan and his conniving ilk are rattled.

A Southern Indiana state legislator is "optimistic" his bill targeting the balance of power on redevelopment commissions will advance out of committee to the Indiana House of Representatives.

Let's hope it does. This reform is sorely needed.

Mayor Gahan should add New Albany's name to Cities United for Immigration Action.

As Kevin Zurschmiede pointed out repeatedly during the mayoral campaign, New Albany is losing population. Given City Hall's perpetual silence and Jeff Gahan's idea-free career in politics, we've no idea whether he acknowledges this as a problem, although a case might be made that massive public subsidies for luxury apartments constitutes recognition.

A weak case, but still.

Amid the clamorous anti-immigrant idiocy fertilizing social media like so many native madrasas, and the perpetual conniving of Republican intellectual terror cells, there are American mayors speaking sensibly.

Cities United for Immigration Action

Let’s strengthen our cities by keeping families together, further growing our economies, and fostering additional community trust in law enforcement and government. Pledge your support as we work with cities nationwide to implement the president’s executive action.

Yes, most of the mayors and executives adding their names to this list hail from large cities. But Haledon, New Jersey (population 8,318) isn't.

They're not all located in "red" states, either; Salt Lake City and Travis County, Texas are represented.

The only Indiana city is Gary. There are none from Kentucky, although Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Louisville Catholic Charities are moving ahead with programs to assist refugees.  There are others, so please append them in the comments section.

I know: There is nothing in the city of New Albany's 200-year old stunted and underachieving genetic sequence to indicate interest in immigration-borne revitalization, and I can think of perhaps two elected officials here likely to be even remotely acquainted with the subject matter, although I'm sure Dan Coffey could speak at length about the voting patterns of dead Democrats.

Call me crazy, but Gahan should add his name to the list at Cities United for Immigration Action. He won't, because doing so would be like expecting one of my cats to perform trigonometry, and yet as a progressive citizen, I expect my mayor to have a pulse and do more than pander to money.

Perhaps a council resolution authored by John Gonder, who's already been kneecapped by Team Gahan. They can't hurt you any longer, John. Please allow us the pleasure of  watching as Caesar and Blair squirm in their nice suits and padded chairs.

Let it fly, and let's see who votes against it.

Governors Should Listen to Mayors on Syrian Refugees, by Kriston Capps (City Lab)

The deadly attacks in Paris may be shaping the debate over immigration in the U.S. Since Friday, a number of governors from across the U.S. have pledged to do what they can to stop Syrian immigrants from relocating within the borders of their states, despite the fact that Syrians are fleeing the same kind of violence that was visited upon Paris and Beirut last week.

Meanwhile, mayors from some of the largest U.S. cities are welcoming Syrian immigrants with open arms. It’s another example of the growing gulf between city and state leaders on civic priorities ranging from climate change to the minimum wage.

Speck in Carmel; meanwhile, in New Albany, we wait for ANY Democrat to "get all New Urban" about ANYTHING.

Jeff Speck tweeted this link (below).

By the way, the city of New Albany is spending $194,000 on a "toilet room" at Binford Park. Living and dead trees fall while too few are replanted. We flaunt strange suburban pride in housing demolition without plan one to replace the structures. Heavy trucks keep speeding through downtown residential areas on streets where they should not be. Parking rules are enforced only variously.

Is this the most tone-deaf mayoral term in the city's history?

Better stated, how many "leading" Democrats overall exist in Floyd County even capable of fathoming the following passage in terms of basic reading comprehension, much less actively working to implement the principles enunciated within it?

ROGUE ELEPHANT: What happened when the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, bucked his party and embraced sustainability? He got reelected—four times, by Kim Larsen (One Earth)

 ... Since first assuming office in 1995, Brainard has been steadily transforming his city into a model for how other small cities of the 21st century can use sustainable urban policy to court economic growth, increase populations, beautify public spaces, and greatly improve local quality of life—all while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

On this last point Brainard long ago established his bona fides. Since 2005, he has been cochairing the Energy Independence and Climate Protection Task Force for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which has been instrumental in convincing American cities to adopt goals toward lowering their carbon emissions. A year ago President Obama selected him to sit on the president’s State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. After four White House meetings, the 26-person panel is now winnowing a slew of recommendations to present to Obama in November.

Meanwhile, back in Carmel, the Brainard administration continues to find new ways of folding sustainability into the workaday business of city management. Municipal workers, for example, now drive hybrid and biofuel vehicles down roads newly planted with hundreds of trees as part of a citywide goal to achieve 50 percent tree-canopy coverage on all of Carmel’s streets. A new, interconnected system of pathways and sidewalks encourages cycling and walking. And when it came time to update the local wastewater treatment plant, the city opted for a technology that kills bacteria with ultraviolet light rather than chlorine. (Even trace amounts of residual chlorine in treated and discharged wastewater can be harmful to aquatic life.)

It’s significant that Brainard is doing all this as a Republican (one of only four on Obama’s Local Leaders team). He shrugs off any suggestion that his sustainability ethic somehow represents a break with Republican tradition, citing such conservation-minded GOP forerunners as Teddy Roosevelt, who vastly expanded the National Parks system; Dwight D. Eisenhower, who created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and Richard Nixon, who signed the papers to establish the Environmental Protection Agency. But more to the point, he maintains, no daylight exists between the Brainard administration’s approach to city management and the Republican Party mandate to generate and maintain stable, prosperous communities unburdened by high taxes.

Brainard, loyal Republican that he is, is doing all that. But he’s also doing a lot more—which is apparent to anyone who spends a day or two, as I did, walking around the city he leads. Carmel is being reconfigured according to planning principles that, for many centuries, organically guided the way cities developed—but that, in the era of the automobile, required a renaissance. This renaissance began to take shape in the 1980s in the form of New Urbanism ...

Best guess: You can count 'em on the fingers of one hand, all the while sadly and safely assuming that the absurdly low number is twice or three times that of the total of Republicans hereabouts who've so much as heard of Theodore Roosevelt.

And that, dear readers, is why we're going to screw up this opportunity. In Geico horror movies and New Albany, we make bad decisions.

That's what we do.

Robert Pastrick gives back to East Chicago. What a role model ...

$108 million, $108 thousand ... it's astonishingly numerical, this mentoring.

Pastrick pays back portion of money owed to EC, by Teresa Auch Schultz (Post-Tribune)

After more than a decade of corruption, voter fraud, numerous legal battles and the downfall of a long-serving mayor, East Chicago finally saw on Thursday a small portion of the $24 million Robert Pastrick and his cronies took from taxpayers.

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller joined with East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland to announce the state was returning $331,000 to the city, $145,417 of which came directly from Pastrick, the former mayor.

The amount is just a small portion of the $108 million judgment that a federal judge ruled several years ago that Pastrick must pay, but Zoeller praised its return as giving citizens something concrete.

“It’s more than just a verbal pat on the back,” Zoeller said.

Human rights on the down-Iow: If not for New Albany's city council opposition to the HJRs, we'd already be constructing the gulag.

As we await the GOP's inevitable legislative hijinks with regard to HJR-3 (formerly HJR-6), otherwise known as the Hoosier Stain  ...

HJR 3 vote delayed NUVO (NUVO)

Analyst breaks down details of HJR-3 (WANE.com)

 ... let's look back to December 3, and those 12 mayors in Indiana who took a bipartisan approach in speaking out against the brown shirts.

Indiana Mayors Stand with Freedom Indiana, Speak Out against HJR-6

Today, Mayors from across the state of Indiana stood with Freedom Indiana and spoke out against HJR-6, the proposed amendment to the Indiana Constitution that would permanently define marriage and would remove existing protections under law for same-sex and unmarried couples and families.

Let's see. I don't see the mayors of New Albany and Jeffersonville on that list. But I probably just missed them. Maybe they used invisible ink.

The Indiana Democratic Party seems solidly and publicly against HJR-3. That's fitting and proper. Meanwhile, glancing at the Floyd County Democratic Party's web site and Facebook page, I find several references (on FB only) to HJR-3, including a link to a Democratic legislator's sound viewpoint, but no actual statement opposing the Hoosier Stain's spread.

But hey -- I probably just missed it.

Of course, here in Floyd County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans, and Republican presidential candidates win the vote in landslides, there's a good deal of getting down with the down-low. Apparently the Dixiecrat contingent is easily offended ... eh, Adam?

Elsewhere in Southern Indiana, we've seen moral cowardice rise to the top as Jeff CM, Tech educator, River Ridge flunky and One Southern Indiana chief all ducked and covered on HJR-6, HJR-3 immediate predecessor.

However, in November, the New Albany city council stood tall: A "principled" Blair votes no, but council approves resolution condemning HJR-6.

Afterward, I wrote CM Blair, asking him to explain his non-vote.

I'm still waiting for the reply. That's how we do it, down here, on the down-low, where the headlights of speed-crazed oncoming one-way arterial traffic aren't the only phenomenon freezing politicians dead in their tracks.