Category Archives: Local Government

The Kids Are Definitely NOT All Right….

I recently attended a briefing that left me physically sick to my stomach.

Consider the following statistics from DCS: between July 2011 and June 2012, there were 3,214 cases of substantiated sexual abuse of Indiana children. There were another 1,992 cases of substantiated physical abuse, and 14,802 cases of substantiated neglect.

These are just the cases that were reported, investigated and substantiated. The CDC estimates that fewer than half of rape and sexual assault crimes ever get reported, and it can be very difficult to substantiate those that do get reported. Even when we are counting only substantiated cases, however, in 2009, Indiana females in grades 9-12 had the second highest rate of forced sexual intercourse in the nation. (Indiana’s rate is 17.3% as opposed to the national rate of 10.5. Both rates are scandalous.)

Welcome to Indiana, where our elected officials talk a lot about our low taxes and not at all about our abysmal social health indicators.

Most of the abuse that occurs is what the reports delicately label “partner” or “intimate” violence–meaning that these young girls are being exploited by boyfriends, fathers, stepfathers, “funny” uncles and others within their homes and communities. In some of our more rural precincts, these behaviors are tacitly accepted or shrugged off. “Boys will be boys.” (I should note here that young boys are by no means safe from sexual assault, although fewer males experience it, and we should be no less outraged by their exploitation.)

The consequences of this behavior are costly for both the victims and society. Research suggests that victims of sexual violence are likely to suffer mental and physical ailments in later life: anxiety, post-traumatic-stress disorder, fear, depression…They are also more likely to attempt suicide.

Nationally, health costs attributable to rape and sexual assault have been estimated at $4.1 billion.

The familial environments within which these assaults occur makes this an incredibly difficult behavior to prevent. But there is at least one thing Indiana lawmakers can and should do pronto: commit the state to the crime data collection program certified by the FBI. Currently, Indiana has no state legislation requiring the collection of crime data. Approximately 30% of Indiana law enforcement agencies voluntarily report their statistics for inclusion in the UCR (Uniform Crime Report), but Indiana is one of only three states that lacks a centralized crime reporting program.

It’s bad enough that only a small percentage of rapes are ever reported; the least we could do is keep track of those that are.

Here’s a thought: how about we ask our lawmakers to divert some of the time and energy they are spending trying to marginalize GLBT citizens to efforts that might actually protect Indiana children?

Here’s another: Governor Pence has certainly been willing to name new “commissions” and “panels” to take over duties that were previously the responsibility of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Perhaps he could take a rest from trying to undermine the election results, and appoint a commission to address the ongoing, scandalous exploitation of Indiana children?

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In Praise of (Certain) Republicans

If there is hope for the re-emergence of the Republican Party to which I gave a significant chunk of my adult life, it lies in the actions of seven GOP members of the Indianapolis City-County Council on Monday night.

Republicans Will Gooden, Ben Hunter, Robert Lutz, Janice McHenry, Michael McQuillen, Jeff Miller and Jefferson Shreve joined all of the Democratic council members in support of a resolution urging the Indiana General Assembly to reject HJR6. (For anyone who has spent the last couple of years on Mars, HJR6 would place Indiana’s current statutory ban on same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution, and would add gratuitous language outlawing civil unions and official recognition of anything else creative minds might consider “equivalent” to marriage.)

Six Republicans voted against the resolution, but the future of the GOP–if it has one–lies with the seven who refused to be bullied by activists from the far right fringes.

The capture of one of America’s major political parties by extremists has made governing–and civil discourse– virtually impossible.  It has already made GOP candidates unelectable in urban areas, and caused wholesale defections elsewhere.

Those seven Republicans understand something that too many of those remaining in the Grand Old Party seem to have forgotten: politics isn’t–or shouldn’t be–religion. When every vote becomes a test of moral purity, when every issue is a contest between Good and Evil, when any deviation from Approved Doctrine is blasphemy and anything less than ardent affirmation is evidence that the errant member has gone over to the dark side, what you have isn’t a political party.

It’s a cult.

Kudos to the seven who refused to drink the Kool-aid. May their numbers increase.

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Governing Isn’t a Game!

I wouldn’t know Glenda Ritz if I fell over her. I have no idea whether she is doing a competent job as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, or–more accurately, whether she would be doing a competent job if the Governor and his cronies allowed her to do that job.

Here’s what I do know: she was elected with a lot more votes than Governor Pence received. And I am not the only person increasingly pissed by the games the Governor and legislature have been playing to keep her from doing the job she was elected to do–all in order to strip her office of its usual authority and make it incredibly difficult for her to do her job.

That doesn’t mean I approve of everything Ritz has done in return, but it is certainly clear who started this “tit for tat” that is consuming public resources and diverting time and energy from performance of the tasks We the People have a right to expect our elected officials to perform.

This unseemly effort to “cheat” when the “game” isn’t going your way is one more bit of evidence that our current crop of political actors are uninterested in actually governing. They run for office not because they want to do something, but because they want to be something.

Here’s the deal, Governor: you ran for office. Glenda Ritz ran for office. You were both elected. You don’t get to change the rules in order to ensure that she can’t do her job. She gets to fulfill the duties of her office, and if she doesn’t do that satisfactorily–something We the People will decide–we get to vote her out.

That works for you, too.

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When Ideology Trumps Competence

The Star reports that Indiana will lose in excess of sixty million dollars in tobacco settlement money, because the state neglected to enforce provisions of the original settlement.

Who is responsible for enforcing the terms of a legal settlement to which a state is party?

While all affected agencies have an obligation to comply with laws and other legal obligations that affect them, those in charge of those agencies necessarily rely upon their lawyers to inform and instruct them. In this case, it is the office of Attorney General. The original settlement was negotiated when Steve Carter was AG, and–unless there is a lot more to this story– the responsibility for monitoring compliance would continue to rest with the office of Attorney General and his staff.

That means that the current AG, Greg Zoeller, is responsible for ensuring compliance with this and other settlements, contracts and agreements to which the state is party. He can discharge that responsibility through subordinates, but–as Harry Truman used to say–the buck stops with him.

Having an office charged with ensuring compliance with prior agreements and settlements is particularly important in government, where agency personnel turn over frequently. (When I was Corporation Counsel for Indianapolis, a roughly analogous position, my office had similar responsibilities for municipal compliance.)

Judging from his eager pursuit of hot-button national issues, Zoeller has ample time and resources at his disposal. He was “lead counsel” for other AGs in the recent Windsor case on same-sex marriage, and he has participated in other “culture war” cases which affected Indiana tangentially, if at all. In addition to these entirely voluntary activities, he has spent time pursuing appeals and cases which his office was highly unlikely to win. (Just a couple of weeks ago, he brought a suit against the Affordable Care Act–aka “Obamacare”–a suit widely derided by local attorneys who have described the theory advanced by Zoeller as “fanciful” and worse.)

So–Zoeller evidently has plenty of time and tax money to volunteer in cases implicating his religious and ideological beliefs. But somehow, he hasn’t found the time or resources to ensure that Indiana was in compliance with its legal obligations under the tobacco settlement.

He didn’t have time to ensure that the state wouldn’t lose sixty million dollars.

Too busy trying to keep those gay people from marrying…..

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Not According to Plan…

A colleague informs me that the military has a saying: Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.

Well, batten down the hatches. If you think Indianapolis government hasn’t been performing very well lately, we’re about to see how bad it can get. Not that we’ll see piss-poor results immediately– we won’t. And that’s part of the problem.

The City of Indianapolis has just fired more than half of its planning staff–a staff that was already a bare-bones remnant of what it has been in the past. (And let’s be honest, even in its most robust past it was barely adequate.)

Most citizens don’t see the need for planning. They understand the need for public safety, they appreciate garbage collection and street paving. They know they need sewers.  Planning, on the other hand, seems vaguely bureaucratic and arcane.

Modern urban planning began in the early decades of the 20th Century; it was a response to appalling sanitary, social and economic conditions in the rapidly-growing industrial cities of the time. Today, it can be described as a technical and political process that uses extensive public input to guide land use, transportation, urban design and protect the environment.

Planning is what allows us to use our ever-more-limited public resources efficiently to achieve goals that the public has identified as important.

Knowing where growth is occurring tells us where to put new roads. Planning and zoning decisions protect the value of property (you aren’t likely to spend money improving your home if a gas station can be built next door). Planning projections allow us to avoid unnecessary congestion, provide urban amenities like parks where those are most needed, focus renewal efforts on deteriorating neighborhoods, and deploy public safety officers strategically. Planning allows us to ameliorate or avoid things like urban asthma and lead poisoning, ensure that water supplies will continue to be adequate….in short, it helps us  ensure that our physical and social infrastructure is serving us properly.

Planning allows city administrators to base the decisions they have to make every day on data rather than hunches.  And the public availability of that data allows citizens to hold their government accountable for those decisions–to ensure that they are based on relevant criteria rather than on cronyism or responsiveness to special interests. 

The thing is, planners aren’t “front and center.” They work behind the scenes, and their concerns tend to be long-term. So an administration that wants to save money can get rid of planners, knowing that the negative effects won’t be obvious until he or she is safely out of office.

Next time you drive around Castleton Square–if you are hardy enough, or just unlucky enough to have to do so–consider it the face of the future.

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