Category Archives: Local Government

Not a Mentsch

In the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Orlando, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick tweeted out–you guessed it–a biblical phrase:  “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” –Galatians 6-7

In the wake of a tragedy that took 50 lives, this poor excuse for a human being decided to blame the victims for not living in accordance with his warped version of Christianity.

Yesterday, I posted about just this sort of use of “Christianity” (note quotation marks) in the service of hate. It isn’t just Christianity, of course; any religion can be pressed into that service, and all of them have been and continue to be so used.

There is something so smarmy, so distasteful, about people like Dan Patrick. Their willingness to use tragedy as an occasion for moral posturing is small and mean and utterly despicable.

This sort of offensive faux piety from deeply flawed public officials drives me nuts. And Patrick is far from alone. Texas politicians are currently among the worst, but Indiana is hardly in a position to point fingers.

Hoosiers who read this blog have probably seen the bright blue and gold yard signs proclaiming “Pence Must Go.” They are the brainchild of Kevin Warren, a local realtor, and his husband Neil Bagadiong, who established pencemustgo.org  as a political action committee in reaction to the Indiana Governor’s RFRA debacle.

RFRA was an effort to legitimize the sort of attitude displayed by Dan Patrick–to create a culture in which LGBT persons would be legally “less.”  Given the number of “Pence Must Go” signs I see, it seems a lot of Hoosiers understand where the attitudes such measures foster can lead.

The original signs have been joined by a number of others: Women’s Health Matters, Separation of Church and State, and Indiana Needs Leadership, among others. (Hoosiers can also buy anti-Pence hats, mugs and bumper stickers on the political action organization’s website.)

One of the newer yard signs that particularly appeals to me is “Pence is Not a Mensch.”

Mensch is a yiddish word that literally translates into “a real human being.” In usage, it is intended to refer to upstanding, worthy, honorable people–people who exhibit compassion and loving-kindness, who are not judgmental or–to use the biblical phrase–“stiff-necked.”

When my children were very young, I used to tell them that I didn’t care what professions they chose, what interests they pursued, what beliefs they embraced or who they chose to love….but I did want them to grow up to be mentsches.

Self-satisfied public officials who use the power of the state to marginalize and stigmatize people who are different, who ignore the Constitutional separation of church and state in order to privilege their particular belief systems, who ignore the needs of those in need–those officials are not mentsches. Not even close.

When people in leadership positions signal that bigotry is acceptable, when they contribute to an environment that diminishes and marginalizes people who do not fit within the narrow categories they deem biblically appropriate, that sends a signal to unstable and troubled individuals.

The message is: these people are unworthy, sinful, expendable. Attacks on them are “God’s work.”

It’s a gross oversimplification, but at some level, the world is divided between two groups of humans: mensches and assholes.

Pence, Patrick and their ilk are definitely not mensches.

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Penny Wise, Pound Foolish…Again

Here’s a great example of what happens when a fixation on keeping taxes low no matter what (yes, Governor Pence, I’m looking at you) ends up preventing authorities from engaging in oversight that would actually save taxpayers money.

The IBJ has reported that 

Local governments will see fewer audits due to a recent change in Indiana state law.

The State Board of Accounts used to audit cities and counties every year, and audit school corporations every two years. Now those audits will be conducted every four years unless there are red flags.

And why is the frequency of audits declining? Budget constraints.

But budget limitations and the sheer number of entities that require auditing means there’s too much work and not enough people to do it, Caldwell told The Muncie Star Press….

Local officials confirmed this week that Delaware County and the city of Muncie haven’t been audited for three years.

State audits are important because they can uncover costly financial mistakes, wrongdoing by officials and other issues that local governments can correct–ideally, before the error or wrongdoing has cost significant amounts of money.

In the not-so-distant past, audits by the State Board of Accounts have found problems with the Muncie Sanitary District’s finances and then-Delaware County Treasurer John Dorer, who resigned in February 2015 after pleading guilty to a charge over the mishandling of funds. It would seem prudent to continue supervision of Delaware County to insure that these problems are not continuing, rather than taking a three-year hiatus.

There’s an axiom from the criminal law literature that is relevant here; it is the certainty of punishment, rather than the severity, that deters criminal behavior. (In other words, if you are considering a burglary, and the punishment is 20 years, but the likelihood of getting caught is 5%, the deterrent effect is negligible. If, however, the punishment is 5 years, but the likelihood of getting caught is 95%, the deterrent effect is considerable.)

Most reasonable people would not reduce police patrols in a previously lawless neighborhood and expect crime to go down. Same principle.

The Pence Administration is “saving” us money by keeping taxes (and revenues) low. In the process, it is issuing an unintended invitation to embezzlement and mismanagement. I’d be willing to wager that taxpayers will end up losing much more money than the administration is saving by reducing the mechanics of oversight.

But then, as a former student of mine who was working for the administration until he quit in disgust puts it, this Governor’s office has zero interest in actually governing.

That’s becoming more obvious with every passing day.

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Creating A City That Works

The Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce–like most such entities–is concerned with the economic future of our city, and the region it inhabits.  Recently, it engaged in a planning exercise–engaging a consultant to survey a wide variety of stakeholders and to analyze efforts of “peer cities” to see what strategies work.

Among the conclusions reached in this exercise was one I feel was particularly important, and I quote: “economic success wasn’t dictated by the most generous tax breaks. Prosperous regions focused on the bigger picture.”

Your immediate reaction to this insight–gained from “thousands” of survey results, no less–was probably something like “duh.” But that doesn’t make it any less important, doesn’t lessen the impact. Bear with me.

For at least the past quarter-century, Americans have been sold a bill of goods: if taxes are kept sufficiently low, all will be well. Nothing else really matters. That’s all it takes.

Are your parks overrun with dandelions and weeds?  Are you closing libraries? Do you have too few police to patrol dangerous neighborhoods? Does the paving on your streets look like battle zones in Syria? Do you lack decent public transportation? Are teachers decamping for places that support public education?

Not a problem! Our taxes are low!

The Chamber’s strategic plan discloses the utter cluelessness of this mantra.

Think about it: if you were getting ready to move (for example, if–God forbid–Donald Trump won the Presidency and you were frantic to leave the good old USA) where would you choose to go?  Would you choose a third-world country with expensive healthcare, iffy public safety, no reliable public transportation, decaying infrastructure and low taxes? Or would you choose a low-crime country with excellent national healthcare, great infrastructure (both digital and physical), superior education, and higher taxes?

Here’s the deal: the existence of a superior infrastructure–roads, bridges, electrical grid, wifi, public education, public transportation, etc.–saves citizens a lot of money. Good public safety and a robust safety net provide citizens with a sense of security that adds immeasurably to social stability.

I don’t know how to “monetize” the value of public parks, libraries, museums and similar amenities, but not knowing how to value them is not the same thing as saying they have no value.

The question isn’t: how much are we paying in taxes? The tax question is: are we getting our money’s worth?

Like  the Chamber, we need to look to see who is moving where….and not just what the inhabitants of those cities are paying in taxes, but what they are getting for their money.

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I Told You So

There’s nothing more annoying than people who say “I told you so”–especially when they told you so.

But, dammit, I told you so. Not that I was the only naysayer–not even close–but I posted several arguments against the privatization of Indianapolis’ parking meters.

So I’m going to be obnoxious, and share the lede of a recent report from the Indianapolis Star

In the five years since Indianapolis leased its parking meter operations to a private company, rates have skyrocketed, hours have expanded and the number of paid spaces has increased.

But the city is reaping only about a quarter of the dollars ParkIndy projected when it paid $20 million to the city to operate the meters until 2061.

Those of us who opposed this “deal” (a word that is beginning to take on Trumpian implications for me) raised several issues:

The fifty-year length of the contract. Even if the deal had been less one-sided fiscally, decisions about where to place meters, how to price them, what lengths of time to allow and so on have an enormous impact on local businesses and residential neighborhoods. They are decisions requiring flexibility in the face of changing circumstances; they are most definitely not decisions that should be held hostage to contracting provisions aimed at protecting a vendor’s profits.

Added costs to downtown development and civic events. More often than not, new  construction interrupts adjacent parking. If the city is managing its own meters, it can choose to ignore that loss of parking revenue, or decide to charge the developer, based upon the City’s best interests. Street festivals and other civic celebrations also require  that meters be bagged, and usually there are good reasons not to charge the not-for-profit or civic organization running the event. The ParkIndy contract requires the City to pay ACS whenever such interruptions disrupt its projected revenue from those meters.

Why privatize at all? This isn’t rocket science. There was never a satisfactory response to the obvious question “why can’t we do this ourselves, and keep all the money?” Why couldn’t Indianapolis retain control of its infrastructure, and issue revenue bonds to cover the costs of the necessary improvements? Interest rates were at a historic low at the time, making it even more advantageous to do so. If the Ballard administration was too inept to manage parking, it could have created a Municipal Parking Authority, as Councilor Jackie Nytes  suggested at the time.

There really was no compelling reason to enrich private contractors and reduce (desperately needed) City revenues.

Why ACS? ACS is the primary partner of ParkIndy. There was extensive publicity about ACS’ performance problems in Chicago; there was also troubling information about the company’s track record in Washington, D.C., where an audit documented mismanagement, overcharging, over-counting of meters, and the issuance of bogus tickets (ACS got all the revenue for tickets). Washington lost $8,823,447 in revenue and experienced a twenty-fold increase in complaints from the public.

As I noted at the time, one of the problems with privatization in general is that it leads to speculation about cronyism and political back-scratching. In this case, the Mayor’s “personal advisor” was a registered lobbyist for ACS through the same law firm that employed the then-President of the City-County Council (who did not recuse himself, and whose affirmative vote was what allowed the contract to be approved by a narrow 15-14 margin.)

All of these criticisms were brushed aside as mean-spirited and uninformed. We were told that ACS/ParkIndy’s “expertise” would generate more revenue than would be realized under city management.

So, according to the Star, how’s that working out?

ParkIndy has collected $40.5 million in parking fees and fines since converting the first meter March 3, 2011. Projected over 50 years that amounts to about $426 million. The city’s take in a profit-sharing agreement has been $15 million, which would total about $158 million in 50 years.

ParkIndy estimated the city would earn $620 million over the 50-year life of the contract. To achieve that, ParkIndy would need receipts of about $1.5 billion, or more than three times its current pace.

Told you so.

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Why Am I Not Surprised?

The Governor steps in it again.

Gov. Mike Pence is using a recent Indiana Supreme Court decision to argue that he should not be required to release documents that have been deemed by law to be public records.

The Indiana Supreme Court ruled April 19 that it won’t compel lawmakers to release their emails to the public, even though it said the Access to Public Records Act applies to the General Assembly. The court said the separation of powers in the Indiana Constitution means the courts should not tread on lawmakers’ turf.

Now, Pence wants that same logic applied to him.

Of course he does. He also wanted to operate his very own “news bureau,” so that “news” would portray him in a favorable light.

The Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in the recent Koch case dismayed the legal community, for a number of reasons. The Court cited separation of powers–saying that it lacked the authority to overrule the legislature’s own interpretation of the law requiring disclosure.

In the Koch case, Citizens Action Coalition and two other groups the tried to get access to emails between utility companies and Rep. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, who is chairman of the House Energy Committee. The Supreme Court found that determining whether those documents counted under the APRA as legislative work is a “non-justiciable question,” meaning a matter it cannot adjudicate.

In the immigration case, Groth requested the contract the governor entered into with Barnes & Thornburg, who sued for the state instead of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller, as well as copies of firm’s invoices. He also sought emails between the Texas Attorney General, who led the suit, and Pence’s office.

But the documents Groth received back were “heavily redacted,” he said, so he complained to the Public Access Counselor and ultimately filed the suit.

What is at stake here is a basic tenet of good government: are citizens entitled to information about contracts that their elected officials have entered into? Information about the expenses involved? The usual answer is: yes. That’s what is meant by transparency–an important aspect of democratic governance.

If voters cannot access information about the way their government works, they lack important information on which to base their votes. We call that sort of information “accountability.”

Public access advocates say their fears about the recent Indiana Supreme Court decision are already coming true.

Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Citizens Action Coalition, said he was worried the Supreme Court case would have negative, far-reaching implications, and this appears to be one of them.

“The Pence administration is already citing Koch as an additional authority to deny releasing government documents,” Olson said. “it’s quite astonishing and troubling. It further shuts the door to accountability and transparency in government when we should be going the opposite direction.”

The Indiana Supreme Court’s ruling is troubling, and not just because it is an open invitation to Mike Pence and the legislature to shield their actions from the voters. As Steve Key, executive director of the Hoosier State Press Association, noted

“If the judiciary takes this position, it would eviscerate the Access to Public Records Act because every agency would argue that a judge shouldn’t judge whether a document should be released under an APRA request if the agency’s position is that the record is part of its internal operations,” Key said. “The public’s ability to hold government officials accountable would be greatly hamstrung by such a policy.”

Ya think?

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