June 5: Indy’s City-County Council votes on a $625 million bond issue to finish & run a hotel. A group started it, but (apparently) could not find a bank to loan on a bad risk. In our “free market” economy, businesses, increasingly not local, squeeze every penny out of States & cities. 1/4

Their threat is to build in a different city to which all those tax revenues & jobs will go. There’s no magic. Cost-benefit analysis tells businesses, including banks, a project’s odds for success and the likely profits. Banks refused to loan money to build another hotel in Indy. So: 2/4

(1) Why would any business, in the future, accept subsidies from Indy to build here if the City might build its own thing right across the street? (2) Overall that pours kidney effluent on tax revenues and jobs on deals Indy’s already done. Even the notion, after rounds of drinks at 3/4

the Indianapolis Athletic Club, had to sound ridiculous to City-County Council members, even if they didn’t realize the IAC has been gone for years. Or maybe people have started to sound an alarm about TIFs, that Magic Municipal Finance tool that guarantees “no taxes.” 4/4