I'm afraid I agree with this criticism:
Republican mayoral candidate Paula Hughes is trying to mislead voters by resurrecting concerns that Mayor Tom Henry wants to bring a casino to the city, according to Henry campaign officials.
The Henry “administration put forth a proposal for a casino to be located downtown,” Hughes told reporters Thursday, speaking of ideas on how to spend $75 million from the lease and sale of the old City Light utility to Indiana Michigan Power Co.
But the mayor's administration made no such proposal, said Henry's campaign manager, Justin Schall.
Granted, campaign rhetoric is almost always a little fast and loose, so we have to have different standards of evaluation than those we use to judge the honesty of nonpolitical speech. But this seems pretty clearly over the line. A committee appointed by the mayor to come up with suggerstions for spending our light-lease found money suggested a casino as one idea among many. That is a far, far cry from the mayor proposing a casino or even wanting one.
The thing is, though she was wrong in the proof she offered, Hughes was right on the substance. Henry lobbied the legislature hard (and spent good money doing it) to get a referendum on gambling for Fort Wayne, and it was the administration's worst-kept secret that he wanted the referendum because, well, he wanted a casino here. Even now, according to our story, "Henry campaign officials declined to say whether the mayor still supports the idea of a Fort Wayne casino."
So Hughes may have crossed the line of acceptable camapign speech, all things considered, it seems a little harsh for a Henry campaign staffer to say that she "lied to try to score cheap political points."
Comments
Why spend the Light leas money at all? What is it with elected government employees that they feel the need to spend money? I agree that Paula was not totally truthful. I would rather have the answer as to why spend the money on economic development (Fort Wayne has a zero track record on investment here) or on parts. We have declining revenues and should use the money to offset current government infrastructure maintenance.
We have a federal mandate to separate storm from sewage drains. This is a public utility. the light lease funds came from a public utility. Since the people who made the capital expenditure for city light are now gone, we have "inherited" money. The way to honor those who made the investment is not to spend it, but to do what they did. Invest the light lease utility funds in the city water utility so that future generations won't have to pay for the a project today's politicians don't want to pay for.