Response to IBJ Editorial: It's time to crash incentive party

The subtitle to your editorials says it all - "Many deals would happen anyway." I have been saying that for years and no one listens. Real economic development results from attention to details like infrastructure improvements (police, fire, roads, schools, residential, commercial and industrial building stock) as well as a fair, even-handed regulatory environment. But that nuts and bolts stuff requires real work. Wouldn't it be much better if no abatements were granted, and the city focused on the tasks of encouraging real development instead of propping up downtown with a pyramid scheme of abatements and TIF's, with each abated project requiring a subsequent abated project to succeed. Or wouldn't it be better if an existing business didn't have to compete against a similar business that garners abatements only because it is new to the neighborhood? And it always seems that everyone forgets that development requires services and if taxes are abated, less money is available to provide those needed services.

Government perpetuates itself by always solving problems with solutions that are not really solutions. So, of course, either the problems persist or the "solutions" create new problems, which government proposes to solve with more half-baked solutions.

Government officials never want to concede that there are some problems that they can not solve.

So, in the downtown area, they have created a pyramid scheme that can only be maintained by successive subsidized projects designed to prop up, support and maintain the previous (and many times extended) subsidized businesses (Hoosier Dome, Convention Center, hotels, expanded convention center, hotels, mall, expanded convention center, hotels, new arena, hotels, new stadium, hotels, expanded convention center, hotels, etc.). It is all a house of cards that would eventually collapse without further subsidy. They know it, but won't admit it.

Of course, when government largess is made available, someone will always be available to take it, but willingness to participate in a pyramid scheme does not validate it as a viable or appropriate method of development.

Most pyramid schemes collapse. Unfortunately, government can levy additional taxes, borrow money and use all sort of financial voodoo to maintain the pyramid regardless of its long-term impact on the city's core mission or viability.

My question is whether you are going to just write one editorial or are you going to continually press this issue to the government officials in this region as well as with the state and federal government? They have no intention of changing their ways. There needs to be a revolution in the conduct and operation of government and not just a continuation of tired sound-bites about public-private partnerships.