Local Government – Page 54

Indiana’s Train to Nowhere

The past several years have not been kind to Indiana.

National indicators show the state at or near the bottom of numerous categories: education, personal income, transportation, entrepreneurship…In their zeal for low taxes, our elected officials have proudly handed us a state where we get what we pay for–which is to say, not much.

Now, this “good enough for Hoosiers” mindset is threatening the Hoosier State, one of the last trains serving Indiana.

The Hoosier State is certainly not state of the art, but it does run every day from Indianapolis to Chicago. That’s a far cry from the 10 trains a day in each direction that ran on that corridor until the late 1950s, it’s an even farther cry from the multiple 110 mph trains being built in Illinois and Michigan, but it is at least something.

The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 requires states with passenger rail service of less than 750 miles to take financial responsibility for those routes by October 1, 2013, or lose them. Fifteen states were thus required to invest in their short haul routes; Indiana is the only state that has not agreed to do so. Once again, we are the only holdout.

Keeping the Hoosier State will cost just under 3 million dollars a year. (To put this in context, Indiana subsidizes a non-stop flight to San Francisco with a 1.5 million revenue guarantee.)

So what do we get for that money? What will we lose if we lose the Hoosier State?

Amtrak boards over 35,000 passengers a year at Union Station. (That number would increase dramatically if the quality of the service increased, but that isn’t “on the table.”)
Sixty percent of our convention visitors come from Chicago, and passengers can walk to most downtown hotels from Union Station. That gives us a strategic advantage over places like Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, etc. when we are pitching convention business (or Super Bowls).
The 539 jobs at the Amtrak Beech Grove facility are important to our local economy; losing the Hoosier State probably means losing those jobs.

The transportation committee of the Indiana Legislature will have a hearing at 10:00 tomorrow, and there will also be a rally at 4:00 outside the Statehouse. But time is running short, and few lawmakers have shown a recognition of what is truly at stake.

Economics are one thing. Quality of life is another. But trumping both is the less tangible issue of self-image.

How long do we want to keep being the backward state–the “middle finger of the South”? How long will “good enough” be good enough?

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The Rest of the Story

There used to be a radio show hosted by Paul Harvey called “The Rest of the Story.” It would begin with a “story,” be interrupted by a commercial, and then conclude with a recitation of facts that made you realize that what you’d been hearing was a different take on a familiar biography or event.

I’ve thought about the rest of the story several times in the past couple of days–and especially about the obligation of journalists to share with their readers those facts that constitute the “rest of the story.” Reporting is supposed to be about digging beneath surface recitations–giving readers all of the facts relevant to a situation, whether they confirm a partisan’s preferred telling or not.

The first example was a glowing, puff piece in the Star about the successes of the Tindley Academy, a charter school operating in the Meadows neighborhood. The rigor of the school was credited with stabilizing the neighborhood–attracting and retaining the right kind of parents. The Mayor was quoted as saying he planned to use similar charters to help revitalize other neighborhoods.

A friend sent me a link to Department of Education statistics showing that, year after year, the school has enrolled 100 students and graduated 20. As he noted, charter schools can and do dismiss students for numerous reasons, including academic non-performance that might drag down their averages.

Once I knew “the rest of the story,” Tindley didn’t look quite like the panacea for revitalization that the Mayor suggested.

The second example was a column by Matt Tully, supporting the Broad Ripple development that would include Whole Foods. The arguments he made were reasonable ones; however, as my husband–and subsequently Paul Ogden–both pointed out, the way in which Tully framed the debate was less than accurate.

Tully focused upon whether the reuse of the parcel was appropriate, and whether a Whole Foods is compatible with Broad Ripple’s character. As he framed it, such a redevelopment would be a welcome detour from the over-reliance on bars in the Village. Hard to argue with that.

Except that isn’t what the argument is about.

The question is not: would a Whole Foods be nice on that corner? The questions actually being debated are: should the city be subsidizing (to the tune of some $6,000,000) a development that will include a grocery that will compete with the existing (unsubsidized) Broad Ripple grocery? And is the design of the proposed development–which includes apartments and other elements in addition to the Whole Foods–consistent with the character of the neighborhood?

Now, reasonable people can certainly come to different conclusions about those questions, but knowing what the dispute is actually about would seem to be a pretty important “rest of the story.”

Where’s Paul Harvey when you need him?

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Longing for a Little Competence

Back in “the day,” Bill Hudnut used to make speeches about the importance of being a city that worked. The basic message was simple: we can’t do the big things if we can’t get the day-to-day mechanics right. The first order of business for any public manager is to ensure that public services are being delivered properly and the public’s business is being handled prudently.

If Bill was right–and I believe he was–then all I can say is “Houston, We Have a Problem.”

According to news reports, Mayor Ballard and 100 “city leaders” are leaving on a trade mission to Germany. And the City is putting together another SuperBowl bid. (Let’s just ignore that 6 million dollar cricket field…) Big things, check.

But how are we doing with the humdrum everyday stuff? How is that “city that works” thing going?

Is the public’s business being handled properly? Paul Ogden has the truly jaw-dropping details of a lease between the City and a campaign contributor for an uninhabitable Regional Operations Center that wouldn’t pass the smell test of a first-year law student. I spent 17 years practicing real estate law, and I have never seen anything remotely that egregious. Either the lease was the result of corruption, or it was negotiated by the most incompetent lawyer in central Indiana. Either way, it represented a colossal waste of ever-more-scarce tax dollars.

How about those public services? My commute from my home in downtown Indianapolis to IUPUI is about a mile and a half. Usually, it takes 5-8 minutes, depending upon the time of day. But for the past several weeks, it has taken nearly half an hour. Traffic has been bumper to bumper, thanks to poorly managed street repair projects and (evidently unregulated and unsupervised) private construction that has brought traffic on some of our busiest downtown streets to a virtual standstill. Some congestion is obviously inescapable, but it is clear that much of it is a result of poor–or nonexistent–management. The resulting mess increases drive time, air pollution and frayed nerves.

The city isn’t the only inept manager of local construction projects, of course. The state has closed I65 and the downtown split, in order to raise bridges that keep getting damaged because trucks keep hitting them. Barely ten years ago, the much-ballyhood “Hyperfix” shut down those same portions of the interstates, so that multiple repairs could be made. For reasons that have never been explained, the Hyperfix project didn’t include work to raise the bridges–and this isn’t a new problem.

What’s the old saying? There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over?

Managing curb and sidewalk construction, ensuring that highways are safe, vetting contracts to ensure that taxpayers aren’t getting ripped off–these and many other municipal tasks aren’t glamorous. But they’re necessary and important. They are essential elements of a city that works.

You’ve gotta drive to the airport if you’re going to fly to exotic places on that junket. The fifteen people in Indy who play cricket need to drive to the game.

And eventually, if you keep flushing tax dollars down friends’ toilets, there won’t be any left.

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When Elected Officials Don’t Get It, We All Pay the Price

Indiana Governor Mike Pence is adamantly opposed to the expansion of Medicaid in Indiana, despite the fact that his opposition will cost Hoosiers a lot of money–not to mention lives.

I have previously explained why our stubborn refusal to participate in this particular aspect of the Affordable Care Act is irresponsible, inhumane and costly.

When Pence announced his negotiated one-year “deal” with the federal government to continue “Healthy Indiana” in lieu of expanding Medicare (a “deal” that leaves some 400,000 Hoosiers without healthcare), he insisted that “Consumer driven healthcare is the path to the future.”

Sorry, Mike–but if that’s the case, the future is pretty damn bleak.

Here’s the problem: markets work incredibly well when buyers and sellers operate on a level playing field. They work especially well when consumers are looking for widely-available goods and services, and can compare prices and quality and shop around for the best deal. Economists define a market transaction as one involving a willing buyer and willing seller, both of whom are in possession of all relevant information.

That description does not remotely apply to medical care.

The “consumer” who needs a hernia operation is highly unlikely to be in a position to shop around. He’s much more likely to need immediate care, and be locked into using a particular provider by his insurance company. And he is highly unlikely to know as much about the procedure as his doctor.

For that matter, this “consumer transaction” isn’t going to be negotiated by the patient and his doctor. The real parties to this transaction are the doctor and the health insurance company–and as recent news reports have reminded us, the needs of the patient are rarely front and center. (The Star recently reported on a lawsuit brought by the widow of a man who needed a pacemaker–despite the urging of his own doctor and another doctor who was consulted for a required “second opinion,” the insurer delayed its approval, and the man died. The doctor insists that, had his patient had a timely procedure, he’d be alive today.)

There is no market in health care. There never will be. Hernias and heart attacks aren’t widgets and mousetraps; there is not and cannot be a level playing field where consumers have as much information and power as their providers–or where their providers have as much power as the insurers. Other countries have figured that out. And in those other countries, amazing as it may seem, big bad evil government has turned out to be more protective of patient needs than for-profit insurance companies beholden to their shareholders.

To suggest that “consumer-driven” healthcare is the future is to display profound ignorance of market economics.

I think it’s interesting how many “free market” ideologues like our governor have no idea how markets really work.

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I’m as Ethical as Scalia is NOT a Persuasive Argument

A couple of days ago, the Sierra Club, Citizens Action Coalition, Spencer County Citizens for Quality of Life and Save the Valley [update: the organization was Valley Watch, not Save the Valley] filed a petition asking Indiana Supreme Court Justice Mark Massa to recuse himself from hearing a case that will determine the viability of the controversial Rockport coal gasification facility. (I’ve written before about this boondoggle, birthed by political insiders and totally contrary to the free market principles to which the Daniels Administration paid so much verbal homage.)

Not even 20 hours after the petition was filed, Massa issued a ruling denying it. Clearly, the ruling had been written well beforehand–the lawyers who crafted the brief could have saved their (written) breath.

The argument for recusal rested on the long and intimate relationship between Massa and Mark Lubbers, whose personal fortunes are closely tied to the results of the lawsuit, and upon Massa’s friendship with and service to then-governor Mitch Daniels, who rammed the deal through over the qualms of both Republican and Democratic legislators. As columnist Charles Pierce wrote yesterday in his Esquire blog, “Massa couldn’t be more tied into the people who want to build the plant if he came to work every morning in one of those NASCAR firesuits festooned with logos.”

Massa’s ruling relied heavily on Cheney v. United States District Court, the infamous case in which Justice Scalia refused to recuse himself from a pending case despite the fact that he had gone duck hunting with the Vice-President–a named party— while the case was pending. Massa neglected to note that the Indiana Supreme Court, unlike the US Supreme Court, is governed by one of those pesky codes of ethics. (Can we spell “appearance of impropriety”?)

At least he didn’t defend himself by pointing out that Clarence Thomas sits on cases in which his wife has an interest, while he and Lubbers are just best buds. (Actually, relying on Scalia or Thomas for ethical guidance makes me think of that old adage about fish rotting from the head. But I digress.)

In a particularly disingenuous passage, Judge Massa wrote:

“I have a friend who works for General Motors; must I recuse if GM is a party to a case before our court?” he wrote. “All of us on this Court have many friends who are lawyers, some of whom appear before us, including several to whom I am closer and see more regularly than Mr. Lubbers. If mere friendship with these lawyers were enough to trigger disqualification, my colleagues and I would rarely sit as an intact court of five.”

Well Judge, if you had a friend who worked for General Motors, that would be a lot different than having a friend whose continued, highly lucrative employment depends upon a favorable verdict– a friend who got you your first political job 30 years ago, a friend with whom you have subsequently shared many meals and social occasions, a friend who was one of the very few invitees asked to speak at the robing ceremony when you were sworn in as Judge.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised. This is the man who, as a candidate for Marion County Prosecutor, ran an ad asserting that his opponent was unfit for the office because in his private practice he had represented a criminal defendant. (I know several Republican lawyers who had supported Massa until that ad ran, but based on its intellectual dishonesty, instead voted for Terry Curry.)

Massa evidently couldn’t see an appearance of impropriety if it bit him.

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