City-County Council Member Michael-Paul Hart Joins

Nigel Jason Hammer (0:00)

Hammer and Nigel.

Hammer (0:01)

You believe these characters?

Michael-Paul Hart (0:02)

They're weirdos.

Nigel Jason Hammer (0:03)

So let's rock it! My name is Nigel Jason Hammer, right over there with a very special in-studio guest.

Hammer (0:11)

The best dressed man in the room from your city county council. Hell yeah. One of the few and proud that did not vote to raise your wheel tax by 400%. Michael-Paul Hart, how are you, sir?

Michael-Paul Hart (0:23)

Fantastic, always happy to be here, thank you guys.

Hammer (0:25)

So, we've had a lot of build up going on at the city county council meetings, because there are subcommittee meetings that sometimes warrants our attention. Let's go back a couple of weeks ago. There was this public safety committee hearing where the chair, Leroy Robinson, seemingly lost control of the meeting. And you had these protesters against IMPD barging in there, making a scene.

They had to be escorted out. Some of them were like cuffed and removed.

Some folks, and I kind of feel like maybe the FOP feels this way too, that it was a coordinated event. Walk me through what the hell that was.

Michael-Paul Hart (1:10)

Yeah. So, it was unique to all of us. We didn't know that it was going to happen that night. And basically, what happened, there was a group of, or multiple groups of individuals that came in to essentially protest a shooting between an officer, or two officers, and a citizen.

And that citizen died in the shootout. Well, that-

Hammer (1:31)

That was Dallas Jet, right?

Michael-Paul Hart (1:33)

That was exactly his name. And so, that night was the night the chief of police was introducing the budget. And the issue that was happening, every time she would try and speak, these folks would yell out something. They would laugh. They would just make noise and just continuously interrupt the process. And that went on for 15, 20 minutes. And Chairman Robinson never took control of the meeting, never said anything to these folks of, you need to have decorum in here, there's a process, you'll get your time to speak, there's public testimony, and there's all those things available, and it just built up, built up, built up. And then the chief gets to finish the budget. It just takes 45 minutes that we're going through this process, and then she gets to the piece of the Dallas Jet conversation.

And she gets to the part where she says, and he shot an officer.

And as soon as she said those words, the entire room just erupted. And then at that point, Chairman Robinson essentially said, look, if anybody's going to talk anymore, you're out of here. And then sheriffs take him out. And then as soon as they started doing that, he would pick them off, one, two. And then by the fifth or sixth person, they just started refusing. And then that's when it got, it turned violent because people just started to get pushed and shoved and all that.

Hammer (2:54)

And we spoke to the FOP president, I believe it was the day after that meeting, Rick Snyder. What he was upset with was the chairman, Leroy Robinson, was censoring the IMPD chief when in the past the chief had never been censored before. Like, why are you picking now to decide that the chief's voice doesn't need to be heard? I think that was the big sticking point with them.

Michael-Paul Hart (3:19)

It was really strange, you know, he kept on saying, you know, you can stop here if you want, chief, you can stop here if you want. And to be honest with you, if you went back to watch the video, you can't hear half the things she's saying because there's just so much noise going on in that room. But it was strange. He was telling her, basically cueing, stop talking, stop telling the story of what happened on your account.

Hammer (3:39)

Counselor Michael-Paul Hart with us. I want to get into like this recent budget hearing in just a moment, but on the way up, we were kind of having a conversation about the wheel tax. It was about a month ago where your counselors that were predominantly Democrats, not all of them, but most of them, decided to move forward with overruling Joe Hogsett's veto and jacking up the wheel tax in Marion County, in essence 400%.

What's been the feedback you've received? Have you talked to constituents? Have you received any sort of pushback or feedback about that decision?

Michael-Paul Hart (4:19)

Oh, a ton. I mean, it's all the fringe cases that are coming out now. You know, I get the emails regularly. What do you mean my trailer is going to be $240 a month? I mean, like a small trailer, right? I mean, just a small utility trailer or, well, hey, I've got like these three classic cars that I don't really ever drive. Maybe if I don't even take one out once a month, who am I going to go pay $100 a month for all these? Or it's just all these small fringe cases that are adding up. And I've got dozens of emails of people.