Local Government – Page 39

That Urban/Rural Divide

There are lots of ways to “slice and dice” human populations (and unfortunately, we humans excel in exploiting and magnifying those differences). One dividing line that has not gotten the attention it deserves is the one between inhabitants of rural and urban America.

As the authors of a famous rant–The Urban Archipelago—pointed out some years back, America’s cities are big blue dots, many of which are swimming in red seas. For many reasons, people who live in more densely populated areas tend to be more supportive of the institution of government, and less likely to respond to political attacks on its legitimacy. (To take just one example, people who regularly pick up a rifle and go hunting look at gun control issues differently than people worrying that their children will be victims of a drive-by shooting or be on the wrong end of a Saturday-night special.)

That these differences lead to different behaviors at the polls is no surprise; the political problem, however, is that our current method of drawing electoral districts significantly advantages rural areas–at the same time that those areas are rapidly losing population to urban America.

Take Indiana. As Michael Hicks recently reported

In last month’s population report, the number of shrinking counties rose to 54, and those growing faster than the nation as a whole rose to 14. That left 24 counties in relative decline. All the growth is happening in urban places, and all the decline is in rural or small town Indiana. It has been this way for half a century, but the pace is accelerating. This population redistribution matters deeply for Indiana’s health through the 21st century.

Cities grow for simple reasons that cannot be duplicated in rural areas no matter how wishful the thinking. Through the forces of agglomeration, each 5.0 percent growth in population causes GDP per worker to rise by roughly 1.0 percent. This leads to higher wages that in turn attract more educated workers to urban areas, which further boost productivity. In cities, workers combine to be more productive overall than the sum of their individual skills. Economists call this phenomenon ‘increasing returns.’

The phenomenon Hicks reports on is being replicated all over the world, and if the social science research is to be believed, the flow of population from farm to metropolitan area is unlikely to reverse any time soon.

This population distribution creates a real problem for a political system ostensibly based on “one person, one vote.” I have posted previously about gerrymandering, but even when the process of creating districts is fair, our human tendency to move to areas where people are like-minded results in “packed” districts that generate so-called “wasted votes”–a migratory process that Bill Bishop has called The Big Sort.

It isn’t only that the urban dweller’s vote counts less, troubling as that is.

Municipal areas are the drivers of state economies, but in states like Indiana, the urban economy is still in thrall to decisions made by a predominantly rural legislature. Unsurprisingly, tax policies and distribution formulas favor rural areas with diminishing populations over growing urban and suburban communities, and culture war bills like the recent anti-gay measures in North Carolina and Mississippi typically pass with the votes of rural representatives unconcerned that such measures trigger boycotts that hurt urban enterprises owned by people who generally opposed them.

People living in a downtown high-rise deserve to have their votes matter as much as the votes of people living on a farm. Even more importantly, they deserve to have their laws made by people who understand the needs and realities of city life.

We need to do something to level the playing field, but I’m not sure what that something is.

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Baseball and Politics

Thursday night, my husband went with several other family members to the opening of the Indianapolis Indians’ baseball season. As he–and several media outlets–subsequently reported, Governor Pence also attended, and the announcement of his presence generated loud and emphatic boos from the assembled crowd.

That booing underlines a political lesson we might sum up as: live by social issues, die by social issues. (I may be “over-analyzing” this; if so, chalk it up to twenty years of teaching public administration.)

Here’s what I mean: When we elect people to administrative offices–mayor, governor, President–we rarely base our subsequent evaluations of their job performance on the efficiency or effectiveness of the agencies controlled by those offices. Ideally, of course, we would, but most of the time, we aren’t in a position to know whether the city issued improper drainage permits, or the state failed to enforce environmental standards, spent limited resources on frivolous lawsuits, etc.

Unless we are members of a constituency that is directly aware of or affected by administrative incompetence, we are unlikely to recognize it, so we generally don’t base our opinions or cast our votes on the basis of perceived management skills. We don’t even base our votes on candidates’ policy preferences–unless those policies implicate so-called “hot button” issues.

This dichotomy between the mundane, albeit important, administrative skills needed for effective governance and the passions that characterize disputes over social issues poses an under-appreciated danger for culture warriors like Indiana’s Governor.

Run-of-the-mill administrative incompetence is unlikely to motivate widespread passionate opposition, no matter how damaging and/or costly poor governance may be.Over-the-top forays into the culture wars, however–especially when those highly-visible and clearly unconstitutional efforts can be shown to do real damage to the reputation and economy of the state–can generate significant public hostility, as we have recently seen in North Carolina, Mississippi and–of course–Indiana.

Voters and baseball fans don’t boo someone for poor management skills (even though that would warm the cockles of a public management professor’s heart). Voters do, however, feel strongly about arrogant ideologues who feel entitled to tell them how they should conduct their lives.

There’s a reason for all those “Pence Must Go” signs.

And for “boos” at the baseball game.

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Surely You Jest….

Evidently, the Indiana GOP has announced that Governor Mike Pence will be running for re-election on his record. Jeff Cardwell, Indiana’s Republican Party Chair, is quoted as saying (presumably with a straight face) “He has a very strong record.”

Well, it certainly smells strong…

The Democrats’ response has been pretty predictable. A media release pointed to several documented aspects of the Governor’s “strong” record: Indiana’s per capita income is 38th in the U.S., thanks in part to repeal of the Common Construction Wage; the damage done by RFRA; Indiana’s rank of 46th in quality of life; Pence’s decisions to decline an 80 million dollar grant for pre-kindergarten, to cut funding for public schools and to wage unremitting war on the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction; his responsibility for Indiana’s infrastructure woes, including poor supervision of contractors that facilitated acceptance of substandard asphalt; his understaffing of DCS that nearly crippled that department while putting vulnerable children at risk; the damage he has done and continues to do to the state’s reputation by rejecting Syrian refugees and signing an insane and punitive anti-abortion bill…

And of course, the Democrats couldn’t resist another mention of JustIN, Pence’s tone-deaf proposal to establish a “news bureau.”

But if you are really interested in seeing the “record” that Mike Pence plans to run on, in all of its fulsome “glory,” you should revisit a recent post from this very blog. I began by listing all the reasons Hoosiers should not re-elect our Pastor-in-Chief, and then I challenged readers to fill in the blanks, to tell me what I had missed.

Forty-two of them did.

Together with the list in my post, the comments provide a pretty comprehensive picture of what Mike Pence has done to Indiana. (Much more comprehensive than the Democrats’ press release but to be fair, no one would read it if it had been that long.)

This post would also be too long if I included everything listed in the prior post and its comments, but here are just a few that the Democrat’s media advisory left out…

He’s made war on Planned Parenthood, denying poor women life-saving health services and facilitating the HIV outbreak in Scott County. Meanwhile, he diverted money from medically-appropriate clinics to “pro life” organizations.
He has enthusiastically supported privatized prisons. (Couldn’t have anything to do with campaign contributions, could it?)
He refused to expand Medicaid even though the feds were paying for it.
He refused to apply for the SNAP time limit waiver, for which Indiana qualified, resulting in benefit cuts to an estimated 65,000 individuals.
Vastly increased logging in state forests, among other assaults on the environment….

There’s a lot more in the original, but you get the idea.

Yessiree–a strong record to run on!

Surely, they jest.

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A Very Good Step

I get positively giddy when I actually get to blog about something positive, and these days, those opportunities are rare. But what do you know–Indianapolis’ new Mayor, Joe Hogsett, has provided me with that opportunity!

According to the Indianapolis Star, the Mayor is moving aggressively to close the gaping loopholes in the City’s ethics ordinance.

Today when a lobbyist wines and dines a City-County Council member, he or she has to disclose the cost of the meal, but not who ate it.

This is among a number of loopholes in the city ethics code that Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett is attempting to close with a package of reforms introduced at this week’s council meeting.

Co-sponsored by Democratic Councilmen Blake Johnson and Leroy Robinson, the ordinance would strengthen reporting requirements, impose stronger penalties for violations and create a web portal for easier public access to ethics disclosures. It would also establish a cooling-off period similar to that for state employees.

Many of the provisions contained in the ethics overhaul were introduced last year by then-Councilor Kip Tew. For reasons I have never understood, the Council declined to pass Tew’s version, which was very similar to the one introduced on behalf of Mayor Hogsett. Now, they will have another chance.

Under the pending proposal, lobbyists who repeatedly break the rules could find themselves and their firms subjected to lifetime bans. Contractors who violate the ordinance could be banned for a single offense.

These changes are long overdue. In the six years the current ordinance has been in effect, there has not been a single effort to enforce it, despite multiple accusations of “cozy” relationships between elected officials and those doing business with the city.

Giving the rules real teeth, making them clearer, and making access to documentation easier, will go a long way toward restoring trust in local government.

Now if we could just do something about ethical standards at the General Assembly….

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Pence’s ‘Rap Sheet’

Yesterday’s quiz was evidently a big hit, so I thought I’d try another one. For this one, however, Hoosiers will have a big advantage.

The fact that I am no fan of Indiana Governor Mike Pence will hardly come as a surprise to readers of this blog. (I have this old-fashioned notion that people running for political office should have an interest in governing and an acquaintance with the Constitution….).

If my Facebook feed is any indication, I have a lot of company. The other day, I came across several posts identifying the various reasons Pence does not deserve re-election, and I thought it might be interesting to compile them into what I will call the Governor’s “rap sheet.”

Here, in no particular order, are the grievances I noted:

In 2012, Glenda Ritz was elected Superintendent of Public Instruction with more votes than Pence received. Subsequently, the Governor has done everything in his power to obstruct Ritz, to eviscerate her authority, and (not so incidentally), to make war on public education in Indiana, by–among other things–diverting desperately needed resources to the most extensive voucher program in the country.
When citizens posted objections to the Governor’s priorities to his Facebook site, the negative comments mysteriously disappeared.
RFRA (need I elaborate?) This bit of homophobia has cost the Indiana economy millions and has made “Hoosier Hospitality” a punch line.
Pence and his legislative super-majority have waged a sustained attack on women’s right to choose, and on Planned Parenthood. Tax dollars have been diverted to “pro-life” organizations, and Indiana recently passed the most draconian and offensive anti-abortion bill in the country.
There was the ill-fated effort to create Indiana’s very own Pravda.
The Pence administration has been an enthusiastic supporter of “privatized prisons.”
The Governor ignored the drug and HIV/AIDS epidemic in Scott County until it was a full-blown crisis, and even then was unwilling to respond with a comprehensive approach.
He refused to apply for a federal grant that would have supported pre-school expansion for low-income children.
He refused to expand Medicaid under the terms of the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that the federal government would have paid the entire cost for 3 years and 90% thereafter; his substitute program–which became effective after a significant delay–provides more limited healthcare to fewer Hoosiers than would otherwise have been the case.
He has directed Indiana’s Attorney General to spend time and money on a number of lost-cause cases: anti-LGBT efforts, resistance to environmental regulations; to rejecting refugees.

So here’s the quiz question: What have I missed?

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