Michael-Paul Hart Joins!

**Nigel** (0:04)
My name is Nigel, Jason Hammer, right over there with a very special in-studio guest.

**Jason Hammer** (0:09)
From the City-County Council, one of the few Republicans on that council, Michael-Paul Hart joins us.

**Nigel** (0:16)
MPH.

**Jason Hammer** (0:17)
Michael, I'm walking a little funny today because I got the business by your colleagues last night at the council. I got a good old-fashioned screw job from the council last night being a Marion County resident, so let's go down the checklist. And please correct me if I'm wrong here.
Last night, the council voted to raise my taxes, weaken the curfew, and ignore the Office of Public Health and Safeties and Competence. Do I have that right?

**Michael-Paul Hart** (0:45)
You're spot on. You're exactly right.

**Jason Hammer** (0:46)
Get a little closer to that.

**Michael-Paul Hart** (0:48)
You're spot on. That's exactly what happened last night.

**Jason Hammer** (0:51)
So let's go one by one here, because that's what we did earlier in the show, and I want to make sure everybody's on the same page here. Let's start with the wheel tax, as it's being called. It's going from 20 for a basic car SUV to $100. And if you've got something big, whether it's a semi or a piece of commercial equipment, something like that, that goes from $40 to $240.
This is to get the match coming in from the state of Indiana for five years. But this isn't just a five year tax. This bad boy is locked in, right?

**Michael-Paul Hart** (1:26)
Oh, you're spot on and things to include in that $40 to $240 are utility trailers and RVs. So, you know, if you're a resident and you have a vehicle, you're going from that, you're going to get hit with a hundred bucks, but then you're going to get hit with the other ones if you've got a utility trailer, an RV or something like that. And you're right, it's not going to stop. It's going to keep going forever and forever.

**Jason Hammer** (1:48)
So when the state match comes to an end in five years, this tax will continue. Like the whole reason they're doing it is to get the match from the state. But there's no end date. It's like the gas tax, right?

**Michael-Paul Hart** (1:59)
Exactly. So it doesn't end. And they didn't try and what I call index it, right? Because it's 50 million the first year, then 70, 80, 90, 100 that the city has to put up. And so they just went for the max they could get right out of the gate and then kept it there. They didn't try and take just as much as they would need. They just wanted as much as they could get at the beginning and keep it forever.

**Nigel** (2:19)
Back up for a second. Who's paying, say you're a lower income individual that has a car that needs, you need to get from point A to point B and you were struggling to make ends meet. What does this do for you every year now? Does this tax increase do to or maybe I should say, what does this tax increase do to you?

**Michael-Paul Hart** (2:40)
Yeah, it's going to. So depending on the amount of vehicles you have, right? On average, it was about 20 bucks a car. It's going to go up to 100

**Nigel** (2:48)
That's a significant increase.

**Michael-Paul Hart** (2:50)
And what's weird about it is it's a flat tax. So if you're driving a Toyota Corolla and Hammer's driving a Ferrari, it's the same for both of you.

**Jason Hammer** (3:00)
So it feels like for a group of council Democrats who are all about tax the rich, it's kind of their mantra, right? I'm old enough to remember AOC wearing the dress, tax the rich. This protects them pretty nicely.

**Michael-Paul Hart** (3:14)
It does. And so those big vehicles that we're talking about, semis, trailers and those things, a lot of them drive through Marion County. That doesn't mean they're registering their plates in Marion County or their vehicles in Marion County. And so we had information coming to us from legal teams that represent these logistics companies that are saying, we're getting out of Marion County. We're going to go where it's cheaper. I mean, it's just a logical business case. So it will all get put back on the person.

**Jason Hammer** (3:41)
Michael-Paul Hart with us. Last night had the big council meeting, the City County Council voting to raise our taxes with the vehicle tax. Now, were any cuts tried, were any cuts looked for at any point? Was raising our taxes like the last resort or did anybody even look for things to cut?