Ballard Administration Refuses To Enforce Fuel Surcharge Ordinance On Take Home Cars

The administration of Mayor Greg Ballard is thumbing its nose at an ordinance adopted by the Indianapolis City-County Council intended to partially recoup some of the fuel costs incurred by city employees with take home vehicles. The badly-worded ordinance left it to a Fuel Board chaired by DPW Director David Sherman to impose a $25 per paycheck surcharge deducted from the paychecks of city employees with take home cars when the price of gas exceeded $3 a gallon. The board has not bothered to meet for the past two years after the ordinance was adopted in 2008. WTHR's Sandra Chapman learns the administration dropped the plan to implement the surcharge when gas prices dropped below $3 but failed to revisit the issue when prices spiked again. She estimates the city has so far failed to recoup at least $150,000 since the beginning of this year alone.

A tax break designed for you is not working, and it's costing all of us more in gas bills.


City workers who take home city cars agreed to pay a share for rising prices at the pump. When prices spiked well above $3 a gallon in 2008, the City-County Council came together to lessen the burn. They passed a fuel surcharge ordinance allowing the city to recoup $25 per paycheck from emergency services employees with take home vehicles, but only after prices reach a certain threshold.

City Councilman Brian Mahern considered it a win-win.

"This proposal was approved in a bipartisan way, common sense, cost-savings measure," said Mahern (D-City-County Council).

Now, three years after it was supposed to go into effect, 13 Investigates has learned the city has yet to collect one dime. But don't blame police and firefighters.

Bill Owensby, FOP President, tells Chapman his organization has had no discussions with the administration asking that the ordinance not be enforced. Chapman said she spoke to many police officers off the record who said the $25 surcharge was only fair and they had no problem paying it. So why won't the Ballard administration collect it given the tough budgetary times the city faces? Chapman tried to track down City Controller Jeff Spalding, but he ran from her when she tried to talk to him, telling her he had a meeting to attend.