First and foremost, Joe wants to hear from you!

Joe wants to know precisely what is of utmost concern to you and what some of your ideas are to address those concerns.  Please use this website to communicate your thoughts.  We all have good ideas and, unlike some, Joe would actually like to use your ideas.

Partisan Politics and Special Interests:  One of the reasons I decided to run for office (and hopefully be your state representative for District 29) because is we need someone to represent people like you and address issues that are important to all of us. By observing and being involved (through community action groups) with state government, it became painfully clear that many of our state representatives have simply lost touch with people like us—common citizens.

It seems that there is only one thing both parties always agree on:  if the Democrats are for it then the Republicans are against it and if the Republicans are for it then the Democrats are against it.  It doesn’t seem to matter much what you or I need or what’s right or what’s in the best interest of the state.  It’s almost a miracle that any laws get passed and many of those that do are so full of partisan amendments and loopholes as to be almost worthless.

All one has to do is look at the paper on any given day the legislature is in session to see the squabble of the day.  And it’s not just honest differences of opinion, but threatened boycotts and walk-outs and name-calling and hurt feelings.  One expects better behavior from their children, and grandchildren.

I believe it’s time for a government for the people and by the people.  I believe it’s time to replace most of those who have been in the legislature just too long and are too beholding to special interest groups and those who have granted political favors.

It’s difficult to streamline government and reduce the bureaucracy when political favoritism abounds.  But, not doing so only increases the cost of government while decreasing efficiency.

It’s difficult to do the right thing when one is beholding to special interest groups or is looking to become a high paid lobbyist.  It’s time to replace those so beholding and it’s time to get rid of the career politicians if we want state government to be truly responsive to the people.  It’s time to open the closed doors.

Real Tax Reform:  Shifting some of the tax burden from one place to another does not help. Reducing property tax and coming up with hidden taxes such as a cable tax, or a storm water fee as in Fishers, is a game being played and not real tax reform. Its a way of talking out of both sides of your mouth.

The only way to really reduce (or at least hold) taxes is to reduce costs.  The only way to reduce costs is to streamline government and the services it provides.  One way not to reduce costs is to steadfastly hold onto a form of government that was designed to address the needs of Indiana in the 19th century.

A good example is health care, each state gets money to reduce the number of people smoking, to help them to prevent teens from starting, Indiana has been reducing this funding and ignores the long term costs of medical care. Those in government should take a long term view and not just what is going on this week.

This has to include school funding and tax allocation formulas.

We need to revise the way we allocate taxes to municipalities and county governments so they are both fairly funded and given incentives to streamline themselves.  Current funding mechanisms actually penalize municipalities for not growing (building a bigger tax base), but when they do grow the counties lose tax revenue, but are still required to provide the same services (making them think about higher county taxes).

School funding across the state needs to be fair and equitable and not subject to local citizens ability to pay (particularly if property taxes are to go down).  If we want first class education we need to find a way to fund schools so that have the resources they need without taxing the local school district to death; but, likewise are not given incentives to over-spend.

The property tax changes made this year—at the 11th hour as usual—will certainly help, but I believe this is only one more band-aid on a huge wound.  Key items in the original legislation were “negotiated” away because one side of the aisle couldn’t let the other side have everything it wanted, even when quite a few of those items made sense (e.g., streamline government).  The only reason that we actually got some relief is that the current office holders are up for re-election.

Problem is, property taxes are still inherently unfair, even if capped.  The determination of the current “value” of your home is arbitrary.  And, even with a cap in place you can bet that your tax bill still will go up hand-in-hand with inflation.  So, 10 years from now your property taxes will be considerably higher even if your income has not increased as the same pace.

We need to give strong and bi-partisan consideration to other forms of taxation that are inherently fair to all tax payers and will not simply shift to problem to a decade or two down the road.  For example, we need to strongly consider a consumption tax vs. a property tax.

Going Green/Reducing Oil Dependency:  We need a common sense approach to reducing our energy usage and oil dependency.  Despite the sound-bites, there is no simple solution or silver bullet to these problem.  And, as we are beginning to learn, bio-fuels may help but are not the answer since they too contribute to greenhouse gases and other pollutions.

Here are a few ideas and I’d love to hear from you, both your ideas and those of mine you think might be a bit too far out there (or, perhaps, not far enough out there):

• Lower excise taxes for higher MPG vehicles.  We all pay a lot in excise taxes to plate our vehicles and the more expensive the vehicle the higher the tax rate.  As you know, hybrid cars are more expensive than their regular engine counterparts.  But, if we reduced the tax rate commensurate with higher MPG ratings (the higher the rating the lower the tax rate) we would give people an incentive to buy more fuel efficient vehicles.  This is better than the gas-guzzler tax since most of the people who could afford the gas-guzzlers could afford the extra tax.

• Require all state, county, and local governments and schools to switch to “green” light bulbs now (and not wait until a similar federal law takes effect).  This will require an initial budget spike since these bulbs cost more, but long term operating and replacement costs will be significantly reduced.

• In some state’s tax credits are in place for adding certain energy savings features to your house.  Not so in Indiana. This should be examined and expanded to give people a strong incentive to acquire energy savings appliances, HVAC, additional insulation, and for building energy efficient houses.  Water usage efficiency should be included.  Wouldn’t it be cool that if you built an energy and water efficient house (meeting certain standards) you might forgo paying property taxes for two or three years?  Of course, credits/incentives should apply to both residential and commercial construction.

• E-85 incentives. Some states do not tax E-85 fuel to encourage its use. The use of E-85 would provide income to the farming community because it is a home-grown fuel, and also encourages the use of vehicles that are E-85 compliant, many of which are manufactured in our state. It also would provide Hoosiers with a lower cost fuel. We should remove state tax from E-85 fuel.

• Other ideas include building wind farms through credits to power companies, looking at solar panel technologies as they might be applied to individual homes (e.g., providing guidance to home owners associations on solar panels that don’t look like solar panels so they don’t detract from the neighborhood and any covenants against their use may be set aside), and outlawing the sale and new use of highly inefficient appliances, HVAC, etc.

• Of course, mass transit needs to be really explored and not just given lip service—see the Transportation topic.

Transportation:

• A lot of people in District 29 use the I-69 north corridor to I-465 and it is jammed up each morning and afternoon.  You have to wonder when they will get to figuring out this is a major roadway.

This is an important issue for many of the people living in this district.  I would certainly do everything I could to help the state understand the need to raise the priority of the expansion project—it needs to be done sooner than later, not only from a convenience and safety factor, but also from an energy factor:  the longer the commute time the more fuel consumed and the more exhaust released into the atmosphere.

• Of course, mass transit needs to be really explored and not just given lip service.  Indiana and its cities are not that unique in the world.  Even Los Angeles—where people drive across the street to visit their neighbors—has a mass transit system (subway, light rail, bus).  How about high speed trains between major cities?  How about funneling some of the toll road lease money into light rail programs?  We just need to put some real thought to this and set aside political yammering to come up with some real solutions.

For example, is anyone looking at an integrated transportation system?  Indianapolis has a new airport, it has a bus system, and it has a train station—none of which connect.  What if you went to the airport, but instead of getting on a plane to fly to Chicago you took a high speed train instead (lower costs all around)?  What if you drove to a central connector near Castleton (or somewhere north) and caught a bio-bus to the airport to catch that train or plane (cheaper and more convenient parking, less commute time and cost, etc.)?

Privatization:  As a general rule, I am not usually in favor of turning over public properties or vital public services to private contractors.  The downstream risks are simply not well understood.  For example, what if 10, 20 or 30 years from now the company running the toll road decides to sue for higher toll rates claiming the contract agreed to many years ago is now too restrictive (particularly since everyone is now taking the high speed train to Chicago and not using the toll road)?

Some people say, using the toll road as an example, that if a private contractor can make money on the deal, why can’t the state?  That’s a good question.  The apparent answer is that it would seem the state, in fact, can’t.  Therein lies the real issue and the real question:  is state government so inefficient that a contractor can do the same job, more efficiently, with the same or higher quality, for the same or lower cost, and make money?  Evidently, Yes!

Perhaps the solution is not to farm out key assets and vital services, but to first look to identify and eliminate those barriers that prevent the government from doing its own job much more efficiently.  That’s how I would first try to address this issue.

Education: To teach, to inspire, and to develop the minds of our children, to provide a world-class educational system or to teach to pass a test. That is what has become the real question. Whenever we have a metric to gauge any system we can ruin that system to meet the objective of the metric. Our educational system is in trouble, we are no longer teaching to be creative and to think, but rather to pass a test, our teachers are not graded on how effective they are, but rather on the test scores of their students.

Maybe we need tests that you can’t teach to. For example, you can’t teach for the SAT’s, it’s designed to test cumulative knowledge and skills (preparatory courses notwithstanding). We have some very smart people in this state working in education, maybe its time to listen to them instead of taking the easy way out with a test.

Environment: I am an Eagle Scout and through Scouting I gained a very strong appreciation for the natural resources we have been blessed with. I firmly believe we need to protect our environment and not allow partisan politics and special interests get in the way of doing what’s right for the generations to come.

We need to be sure we are taking effective measures to protect our waterways, our land, and the air that we breathe.  It’s all too easy and too short-sighted to say we can’t have strong pollution controls, for example, because we won’t be able to attract any businesses to our state.  But, do we really want to attract the types of businesses that are more concerned with short-term profit than long-term environmental damage?  Aren’t these the same type of guys who would close a plant tomorrow if they could build their stuff elsewhere (say China) at a lower cost?  Don’t we really want employers who are great corporate citizens, who want a clean environment, and want to do long term business in this state?

Within this district we have two major bodies of water. Yet, summer after summer, they became out of bounds due to toxic algae. So far I haven’t see any concern from the state about what to do to protect these very important watersheds. We need to move forward quickly to not only protect these sources of water for this area. but also to protect other water sheds  statewide.

Heath Care and Insurance: Indiana privatized its Medicaid program, which, earlier this year, was ranked one of the four worst out of all 50 states. In the report card titled “Making the Grade for Women’s Health” released by the National Women’s Law Center and Oregon Health and Science University, Indiana ranked 40th among the 50 states and was one of 12 states assigned an “F” grade for falling far short of national standards for women’s health care. Overall Indiana was ranked 32nd in 2007 by the United Heath Foundation. To me this is unacceptable.

Privatization does not fix a broken system.  All too often we have read in the paper about people in real need not getting the help they deserve because the bureaucracy gets in the way.  We need to carefully examine this system and design real fixes to help real people—including the un- and under-insured—and do so at a reasonable cost not inflated by excess administrative procedures.  But, like other government streamlining, this can only be done if we get partisan and special interest politics out of the way.

Veterans: What are we doing for the brave men and women who are coming home from the war on terror and will be leaving military service over the next few years? Are we going to treat them the way we treated Vietnam veterans. We need to understand that this war is different and will have different problems for years to come and to take care of Hoosier Veterans. Joe is a Vietnam Veteran and a member of the Hamilton County Veterans Group. He was recently honored by the 10th Special Forces Group with a Battle Flag that flew in Iraq on September 11, 2009 for his support to the Special Forces.

Property Rights: Having moved to Indiana, one of my first letters in my new mailbox was a notice that my property was to be annexed. The government in the town next to my home was going to annex my home and raise my taxes substantially. I started to look into what was going on and found out many things I did not like. A government that I did not elect was now going to take over my area as a pure tax grab, they were making claims that were false and as it turned out – out and out lies, yet the law protected them. It is wrong when a law favors the few in elected positions to impose they will on those who did not elect them.  They claimed I was getting services form their town for free, investigation found all of these claims to be false. They threaten to prevent the use of police and fire protection and to me this is one of the lowest forms of behavior I have ever seen. You do not threaten citizens with the loss of public safety. Indiana is one of six states that still allow local governments to forcibly annex their neighbors’ property—neighbors who did not elect nor are represented by those local governments.  This has two issues:  (1) This is a clear usurpation of the rights of homeowners and a continuation of out-of-date laws and procedures that most states have done away with; (2) the antiquated and special-interest designed tax system in this state rewards cities and towns for taking people’s property and penalizes them for not doing so—they only way a city or town can increase its tax revenue is to increase its tax base, which is another solid reason for eliminating property taxes as a means of funding local government. So I became actively involved in fighting this injustice.

Several lawmakers tried to change the state law but special interest groups were successful in preventing any change. I will continue to fight and work for our property rights.

Ethics: State employees have to meet ethical standards but your elected officials do not. What is wrong with this picture? A lot. It appears that if you have money you can influence your elected official, if you are a citizen who elected them, sorry you lose. I will listen and work with the people who elect me.