State revenue projects fall short again…ACLU Indiana is suing to allow people to make comments to municipal Facebook pages…
STATE REVENUE
State revenues are still falling short of projections, three months into the fiscal year.
Revenue numbers released Friday show Indiana earned nearly $26 million dollars less in sales tax than it expected in September. Those revenues have fallen short of expectations for 19 of the past 21 months.
Corporate tax revenue was also lower than expected in September, but individual income taxes and gambling revenues were higher than estimates — putting Indiana just under $25 million below its total mark for monthly revenues.
That’s a little better than the difference in August. But still, the state is around $58 million short of where it estimated it’d be by now, back in December of 2015.
Revenues were far higher last month than in September of 2015 — but officials say that’s largely due to a processing error that filed some money in October instead of September of last year.
ACLU SUIT
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed two lawsuits Friday on behalf of two people who have been censored and blocked from posting comments on Facebook pages that are operated by government entities. They say such censorship of speech based on viewpoint violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Indiana ACLU says that Richard Wolf, an Elkhart, Ind. resident and advocate for people with disabilities, was completely blocked from posting on the City of Elkhart’s Facebook page in 2015 after he used the forum to express concern about various violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act including the lack of accessible parking at a theatre. His comments were removed from the site without notice and he remains blocked from posting on the site.
Carol Bare, a former resident of Martinsville, Ind., who now lives in Sullivan, Ind., was blocked from the Martinsville Police Department’s Facebook page approximately a year ago, after she posted criticism of the police. The police department immediately removed her post, and she remains exiled from posting comments to the site.
The lawsuits, filed in two different federal courts, seek declarations that the actions of the City of Elkhart and the Martinsville Police Department violate the plaintiffs’ First Amendment Rights. The suits also seek to stop these government entities from blocking Facebook users from posting comments.
BOOK DEAL RULING
The Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission has asked the state’s high court to suspend Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson over findings that he acted unethically in a triple-murder case.
The News and Tribune reports that commission hearing officer David L. Pippen recommended in August that the Indiana Supreme Court publicly reprimand Henderson, saying he violated ethics in pursuing a deal to write a book about the David Camm case between the second and third trials.
The commission’s attorney says Pippen’s findings lacked sufficient detail and context and that the evidence warrants Henderson’s suspension.
The disciplinary commission had previously accused Henderson of lying about the book deal and then being deceitful in seeking taxpayer funds to pay for his ethics defense.
Henderson’s attorney says a public reprimand is unnecessary because his client didn’t violate rules of ethics.
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