OPINION

Joe Hogsett: Indy shouldn’t raise taxes for preschool

Joe Hogsett

There’s a serious conversation underway in Indianapolis about the violent crime epidemic in our city and what we can do to ease the fear that has gripped our neighborhoods and garnered the kind of national publicity that no community wants. This conversation is long overdue and all options must be put on the table. As federal prosecutor, I was and remain keenly aware that we will never arrest our way out of these problems – just as I was and am concerned about the lack of cohesive action to address the root causes of violence.

The number of Indianapolis residents in poverty has doubled over the last decade, a number that now includes one in three children. An unacceptably large number of these children lack high-quality educational opportunities at every level of schooling. That is why I support finding a fiscally responsible way to provide families access to high-quality early childhood education.

Recently, Mayor Greg Ballard proposed a permanent increase in property taxes, a portion of which would pay for a five-year pilot program aimed at providing 1,300 low-income residents with pre-kindergarten programming. While I respect Mayor Ballard’s attempt to address this long-standing problem, I have a number of concerns with his tax increase proposal.

Simply put, I do not support the mayor’s plan to levy a permanent tax increase on homeowners to pay for a small pilot program with a five-year timeline. Is there anyone who believes that city government will give us back this money once the program has ended? Such short-term fixes to long-term problems are how budgets get bloated and out-of-control spending becomes the status quo.

But just as important, no city-funded pre-K program should be viewed as the ultimate solution to the problems in our current educational system. At the end of the day, providing adequate funding for pre-K is an obligation of state government. While other states have acted, our legislature has sat silent.

Indianapolis needs to get into the game and fight for a long-term solution funded by the Indiana General Assembly. We don’t need a permanent tax increase for a short-term program – we need a permanent solution backed by state investment.

If it is truly a priority to fund expanded pre-K before the state can take action, I believe interim local funding should be found within Mayor Ballard’s proposed $1 billion budget. Surely, $5 million in annual funding can be found without taking resources away from local schools and libraries, as Mayor Ballard’s tax increase proposal would do.

As a community, we face a choice: one year from now, pre-K students in Indianapolis will either enter a classroom or begin falling behind. Although the mayor and I disagree on how we get there financially, I hope that he will work constructively with the City-County Council to find a funding source that does not raise yet another tax.

In a city where tens of millions of dollars are set aside to study building new jails, I have to believe we can find a fraction of that to keep our children from ending up there.

Hogsett, a former U.S. attorney, is a potential Democratic candidate for mayor of Indianapolis next year.