Bennett says he rather see vaccine mandates come from the statehouse and not the White House, masks in public places should be up to individuals, and says state tax cuts are fine if legislators replace those funds to cities with other revenue streams.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more on a Zoom interview. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: A state daily count last week broke COVID case records of over 15,000. Hospitalizations we're hearing at least in our area, the most they've ever seen. What's going on over there in Vigo County?
Bennett: Well, hospitalizations are up, but not necessarily because they're in there because they have COVID. Some of those people are being tested while they're in the hospital. So I think those statistics are always a little... it all depends, if they can break it down for you.
Here locally, there are some people on ventilators not a big number. So it's clear that this is much more contagious than the Delta variant or the original version of this coronavirus. And so a lot more people are getting it right now. I've got quite a few people out in the city, but nobody's getting really overly sick with it. So I'm happy for them. And we're very fortunate.
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But the hospitals - the whole system is just kind of being pushed to the limit, just because of regular kind of medical crisis's that are going on out there. And then you throw the COVID on top of it. And they are just overwhelmed with staffing capacity and space. And so, you know, I guess it can be worse.
So we continue to tell people get vaccinated and talk to your doctor. But we're also seeing the vaccinated people are getting COVID. And they're also spreading it. So it's hard to keep that message going when you kind of got both dynamics going on that we've never seen before.
Hren: I believe Monroe is the only county in the state that has a mask mandate in place. What's your take on mask mandates, especially now when these numbers and hospitalizations are so high?
Bennett: We expect people to wear them in court. Here's an example in our building. When you're indoors in a large crowd, it's suggested it's not mandatory in any way and I don't ever see us going back to that mandatory thing. The commissioners don't want to do that. And I support that.
I think you just need to use your good common judgment. If you're going to be somewhere indoors where there's people, you should wear a mask to help with that. Once again, there's no guarantee that the mask is going to solve the problem but it can help at least with your particular situation. This COVID is very contagious.
READ MORE: Community Use of Masks to Control the Spread of SARS-CoV-2
Hren: The state house is in full swing as a vaccine mandate bill moves forward. It bans private companies from enforcing COVID vaccine mandates. It's going through some changes as bills do. But do you think our legislators are on the right track with this bill during a pandemic?
Bennett: I think the concept is okay. I understand wanting to have some ground rules about this. But I think it really boils down to what the Supreme Court is going to do with the vaccine mandate. And supposedly, we're going to hear something here by the end of this week.
I don't like mandates. That's just my personal opinion. I think people need to make choices themselves and go that route, we need to encourage people get vaccinated, but I don't like the mandate component. And I definitely don't like the part where some cities and states are terminating employees for not getting vaccinated. I can't afford to do that.
I think we should be responsible for that. If the governor says there's a vaccine mandate, we'll deal with that. I just don't like it coming down one size fits all for the federal government. I haven't read that bill to be specific, Joe. I've heard about it. I guess I don't know right this minute if I fully support or I don't and understand why they're doing it.
Weekly Statehouse update: Vaccine mandate ban, curriculum and classroom transparency
Hren: There are efforts to cut $1 billion in taxes. The governor is worried about revenue stability, future spending needs. Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop is worried about the business personal property tax cuts. He says there are direct line items in his budget, is that something you're looking at too?
Bennett: Yeah, I have been for quite a while now. A few years ago, I got to sit on the Summer Study Committee representing AIM, Association of Cities and Towns then and now Accelerating In Municipalities. We talked about this business personal property tax - talked about the pros and cons.
There were a few groups out there that were really pushing that hard to eliminate it. I didn't want to eliminate it completely without replacement revenue. And that's still our take today. Because the property tax caps are still affecting us. We're losing $13 million this year that we can't collect, because of tax caps. We've all found a way to deal with that. If you bring in this piece, from a few years ago, it was about a five or $6 million hit to the city budget.
But that money needs to come from somewhere. So we don't have to turn around and raise taxes locally, the local option income tax, which we can't do anyway, as the city, the county is responsible for that. And they don't have the same issues with loss of revenue that we do.
Hren: Are you pleased with the READI grant allocations?
Bennett: I was a little bit disappointed in the amount, we felt like we were entitled to the $50 million amount. And I'll say that over and over again, we prepared ourselves for that, but thankful that we got $20 million.
I'm going to continue to talk to the IEC and the governor and others about funding the program again, in the future. Some of the highest priorities were the most expensive things that was in our proposal. And so that makes it difficult to do.
Is the state going to go through the list with us and say, These are the things that we feel like we'll fund? Or do we get to pick that? I don't even know the answer to that question today.
Hren: Have there been any updates or meetings requests from Churchill Downs on the the progress of the new casino?
Bennett: No, not yet. I think the holiday slowed things down a little bit. And then when Full House dropped their lawsuit, I think it caught everybody off guard that first they bottled it and then they dropped it fairly quickly. And so I talked with Churchill Downs last week, and they're ramping up to begin formalizing things now.
We're working on scheduling a conference call with commissioners to have a bigger conversation about the specifics very soon. And I would suspect by the end of the month, we're probably going to know a lot about their formal plan... such as location and the local development agreement.
We're going to be working with our golf course to give them access to Hulman Links out on the east side, our premier golf course. And so there's just a few little pieces there, we have to work out.
Hren: And you have a State of the Chamber coming up January 27?
Bennett: It'll be out at the MCL Banquet Center at The Meadows. We have a full house that's usually sold out. So I'm looking forward to that. We'll be sharing a lot of information about what's most recently happened, but what's in front of us and kind of what the next few years look like. We've got some challenges, but we have a lot of opportunities. And so it's a very exciting time.
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