9/18/2006
Media Contact:
Steve Campbell, [317] 327-3622
Justin Ohlemiller, [317] 327-3690 |
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Mayor applauds passage of 2007 budget focused on bolstering public safety, ending early releases from jail
INDIANAPOLIS – Mayor Bart Peterson tonight praised the Indianapolis City-County Council for passing the proposed 2007 city and county budget, which increases public safety and criminal justice spending by nearly 13 percent and commits more than $36 million to pay for new crime fighting initiatives, including major criminal justice reforms that will speed up the judicial process to end early releases from jail and add police officers to the street.
Many of these major enhancements to the courts have already been set in motion in the last several weeks after Peterson convened an emergency meeting of criminal justice officials and called for an immediate halt to early releases from the jail.
As a result, there have been no early releases from the jail since August 6. The Marion County Superior Courts responded with an 18-point plan costing just over $10.4 million to move cases through the criminal justice process quicker. The council took action by amending the 2007 budget to pay for the new court initiatives using a funding plan put forward by the Mayor earlier this month.
Overall, the 2007 budget -- of which 60 percent of local revenue is dedicated to public safety -- will fund various crime-fighting and criminal justice initiatives, including:
- Hiring more police officers and increasing overtime pay;
- Adding night court and creating three new felony courts;
- Adding 125 jail beds;
- Hiring more prosecutors & public defenders;
- Establishing a warrant strike team, to apprehend felony defendants for failing to appear in court;
- Eliminating the backlog of firearms/ballistics tests at the crime lab;
- Improving the county’s troubled juvenile detention center; and
- Adding commissioners to the Arrestee Processing Center.
“There’s no question that this budget was about public safety, and the councillors who approved these stepped-up crime-fighting efforts deserve a lot of credit for answering the call to make our neighborhoods safer,” Peterson said. “The new criminal justice resources funded in 2007 will help us maintain an end to early releases from jail and keep up our intensive crime fighting effort. I am convinced that there never again has to be another early release from the Marion County Jail.”
The mayor stressed that all of the enhancements in public safety have been funded without a property tax increase. In fact, the only property tax increase included in the 2007 budget is mandated by the State of Indiana to pay for the state-run child welfare program and juvenile incarceration – costs that are out of the city’s control.
The Mayor also made clear that this budget does not include any borrowing that would increase the city’s long-term debt obligation. Some short-term borrowing will take place as a city cash flow measure, but even that amount will be reduced by the agreement announced today with the State of Indiana to repay $13.1 million owed to the city from a decades old excise tax calculation error.
Long-term fix. Peterson acknowledged that the 2007 budget includes only short-term, stop gap measures to address skyrocketing costs in public safety, namely the $400 million police and firefighter pension liability that still looms over the city and county budgets and threatens public safety funding every year.
The Mayor earlier this month announced that he has begun work on a long-term plan to address the funding needs of public safety in Marion County. He said he would work with councillors, state legislators and others to craft a plan to address the comprehensive problems facing public safety and announce that plan later this year.
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