Category Archives: Local Government

Quick–More Lipstick!

As Mike Pence has doggedly pursued his “Look, Ma…I’m really a moderate!” remake, I’ve heard several people describe the effort with that old saying about putting lipstick on a pig.

Problem is, no matter how much Revlon you slather on that porker, it’s still a pig.

During a meeting attended by a variety of health agencies last week, when the subject of health outreach at Black Expo came up, attendees were told of a new directive issued by the Governor’s office. No agency receiving state funds may distribute condoms. That prohibition includes–but, as we lawyer-types like to say, is not limited to–Black Expo.

According to the Staff person delivering this news, this edict was justified by the fact that “only married people should have sex.” (And I guess they’ll have to buy their own condoms.) Evidently, no one in attendance suggested an obvious fix–that anyone receiving a condom be made to submit an affidavit to the effect that 1)he is married; and 2) he will use it only when having sex with his wife.

Pence is obviously unaware of a 1972 Supreme Court case (Eisenstadt v. Baird for my fellow nerds) directly on point. The Court said unmarried people have the same right to possess contraception as married ones. But then, our Governor is still insisting that Marbury v. Madison, the case that established judicial review, was wrongly decided.

Of course, Pence doesn’t look to the law for guidance anyway. He looks to his bible and like Micah Clark, he reads it literally.

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Ship to Shore

For the past week, I’ve been on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, mercifully isolated from local news—except for the few minutes in the morning when I allow myself to log on to the ship’s expensive internet. I check my email and post to my blog—then it’s off to read a good book, eat (and eat, and eat) and marvel at the advanced age of all the other passengers. (Seriously, the average age on board looks to be in the mid-80s. One fellow told us that all of his children are on Social Security. I’ve rarely felt so young….)

That said, several friends have forwarded articles about the FBI’s arrests in the City-County Building earlier this week. Others have forwarded Matt Tully’s acerbic column about Greg Ballard’s continued absence from those pesky executive responsibilities that are thought to accompany a mayor’s position. Still others have shared a post in which Paul Ogden pointed to the enabling effects of the Star’s lack of reporting—let alone investigative reporting—on matters at city hall.

I find all this depressing, but not surprising.

As many of the readers of this blog know, I served as Corporation Counsel and my husband served as Director of the Department of Metropolitan Development during the Hudnut Administration. No mayor is perfect, and Bill Hudnut certainly had his faults, but lack of oversight wasn’t one of them. Both he and my husband were well aware of DMD’s power, and the potential for its abuse, and both were vigilant overseers of the Department’s activities. (As were the four full time reporters who covered the City-Country Building at the time.)

But then, both of them were deeply immersed in municipal management issues; they were long-time students of urban politics and policy.

Then there’s Greg Ballard.

Ballard campaigned as an outsider who touted his lack of knowledge and experience as a virtue. His self-proclaimed “leadership” qualities (as set out in a self-published book on the subject) came from his experience as a Marine. He hadn’t even lived in Indianapolis during most of his career, and he certainly hadn’t been involved in municipal governance. His initial campaign website was replete with cringe-worthy statements that displayed a total lack of any background or knowledge that would make him fit to run a major city. A participant in his first interview with the Star editorial board told me he had been appalled by Ballard’s utter absence of depth or relevant knowledge.

The only thing worse than a chief executive who knows very little is a chief executive who knows very little but thinks he knows a lot.

We had a chance last year to replace Ballard with someone who actually knew what a city was, but for a variety of reasons (including but not limited to gender) we re-instated Mr. Clueless.

So we have a Mayor who is absent from the legislature when that body is debating issues of great importance to Indianapolis. We have a Mayor who sees no reason to communicate with the City-County Counsel (conveniently, his cronies in the General Assembly have now relieved him of that obligation).

We have a Mayor who relishes traveling with an outsized entourage but who can’t be bothered to supervise—or even understand—what city departments are doing.

We have a Mayor who hires people who are too young and inexperienced to know what they’re doing, or to recognize what their boss doesn’t understand.

We have a Mayor who insisted on controlling all public safety personnel, but then lost interest in the hard work of actually providing for the public’s safety–a child Mayor who has ignored a soaring crime rate while focusing on fanciful (and costly) projects like Cricket fields. (China Town didn’t pan out.)

We have a Mayor who is selling significant pieces of the City–making complicated deals with implications he clearly doesn’t understand—deals that benefit clients of cronies at the expense of taxpayers.

We have a Mayor who is not being held accountable for any of this, because local media is effectively AWOL.

So while Ballard sells the city off, unsupervised city employees are selling the city out.

Maybe I can just stay on this ship. At least I’m getting value for my dollar.

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Follow the Money

Many years ago, when I was practicing real estate law, I represented the developers of the Indianapolis Westin. I still remember a meeting with a mortgage broker from New Jersey; he asked me how long it took to pull a building permit, and I responded “About a day.” He looked at me as if I’d sprouted wings. In New Jersey, he informed me, it took about five years. And presumably—although he didn’t say this aloud—several bribes.

Whatever our problems in Indianapolis, we have historically been spared the sort of corruption that plagues other American cities. There have been exceptions, of course, but by and large, we’ve run an honest city government.

That may be changing.

There has been a lot of conversation, via media and especially the local blogs (see here and here), about SB 621, the “imperial Mayor” bill. The criticisms are all accurate enough—the outrage over the process, which entirely bypassed those who will be affected, the irony of Republicans giving increased power to the Mayor’s office given the probability that the increased authority will be exercised in the future by a Democratic Mayor, the gutlessness of the Governor’s signature on a bill that violates every principle he claims to support.

I don’t disagree with those criticisms, but my focus is on one part of the bill that has received far too little scrutiny: the provision giving the Mayor effective control of the Development Commission.

Another story may be instructive.  A former member of the City-County Council recently told me about a contentious zoning decision made by the Commission —a denial of a zoning change that would have increased the value of a particular parcel of land by several million dollars. The denial was appealed to the Council, and the developer who owned the land called upon the Councilor. During the visit, he explained that the Council member could expect continued financial and political support—if the Commission’s denial was reversed.

Before SB 621, the Mayor controlled four of the nine seats on the Development Commission. After January, he will control five.

It will be interesting to see who profits from decisions made by the Commission during the remainder of Ballard’s term, and how “connected” they are.

Administration defenders of the indefensible imperial Mayor bill are claiming—presumably with a straight face—that SB 621 is all about “accountability.” That’s rich, given the utter lack of accountability for a number of highly questionable spending decisions made by this mayor. (Perhaps if we had local newspaper reporters….but we don’t.) Case in point: barely a month ago, Ballard made what seemed to be an offhand remark about a cricket field during a trip to India. Last week, construction contracts were awarded. Contractors cannot bid without plans and specifications—they can’t price work in the abstract. Clearly, the cricket plans had been in the works for a long enough period to allow for the necessary documentation to be prepared. The Administration didn’t see fit to include the City-County Council or the public in the planning process—probably anticipating the criticism that is now being leveled at a fail accompli.

 Thanks to SB 621, the Mayor will no longer have any accountability to the Council or to voters. Thanks also to the provisions of SB 621 and the general lack of understanding of the power exercised by the Development Commission, the administration will have the remainder of Ballard’s term to enrich “connected” folks.

And if a Democrat wins the Mayor’s office next time, the Indiana legislature can simply change the rules again.

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Will He or Won’t He?

I believe today is the last day Governor Pence can veto the “Imperial Mayor” bill.  (If he fails to either sign or veto it, it becomes law without his signature.)

Leaving aside the numerous problems with the bill itself (the provisions eliminating the At-Large Councilors have gotten most of the attention, but they are the least of it–as I’ve written previously, the provisions shifting powers to the Mayor are an invitation to serious corruption), the political calculus is interesting.

Pence has taken a lot of criticism for his less-than-vigorous performance in office thus far. In a number of situations, he’s done a pretty credible imitation of a potted plant. A veto of a bill sponsored and passed by his own party, accompanied by a defense of home rule and/or good-government principles, would begin to change the perception of indecision and floundering, and would look principled.

A veto would also take a potent issue off the table before the next Mayoral race. Indianapolis residents of both parties have expressed outrage over the legislature’s “we know better than you what’s good for you” attitude. The General Assembly’s refusal to let us decide for ourselves whether we want transit was bad enough, but most Indianapolis people I know–Republican or Democrat–see the Imperial Mayor bill as a giant “fuck you.” Paul Ogden has written what is probably the best analysis of why the bill is bad politically for the GOP. Indianapolis is getting bluer by the year, but resentment over this bill is likely to accelerate that process.

So a veto would make the Governor look statesmanlike, and would actually do his party a favor.

The question is: does he understand that? We’ll see today.

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Travel Tales, or Civilization’s Discontents

Monday I participated in the final round of judging for this year’s We the People—an all-day exercise that left me and most of the other judges exhausted, but so impressed by the depth of knowledge and poised delivery of these high-school students from all over the country. Tuesday—yesterday—it was time to come home.

My husband makes fun of my obsessive-compulsive need to be at the airport well before flight time. Yesterday proved how wrong he is.

The Mason Inn, where we were staying, is on the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, just outside Washington, D.C.  When I arrived, the trip there by cab from Washington National airport took about 45 minutes. Ever the cautious sort, I scheduled a taxi for 8:45 for my 11:00 flight, and was gratified when it arrived about five minutes early. Plenty of time to get to the airport—or so I thought.

The cab driver told me it was still rush hour, so it would probably take an hour to get there. What happened next was absolutely surreal: the traffic on the (badly misnamed) expressway was stop and start nearly the entire way. I’ve seen gridlock, but nothing comparable to this; I kept looking for a reason—a wreck, a stalled car, merging lanes—anything that would explain the bumper-to-bumper traffic. I saw nothing.

It took us an hour and forty minutes to get to the U.S. Air terminal. I had thirty stressful minutes to get through Reagan’s always-long security lines (staffed, I might note, with people who took an incredibly laid-back and leisurely approach to their duties), and my flight was almost through boarding when I made it to the gate.

Other than confirming my belief that when you are flying, you should always allow more time than you think you will need, the slowed-to-a-stop traffic was a sobering cautionary tale. The moral?  Automobile travel is ultimately unsustainable. We cannot build enough highways, pave enough municipal landscape, to ease the congestion. If humans are to get from point A to point B, a substantial number of us will need access to public transportation.

A train from the Mason Inn to the airport would take perhaps thirty minutes. Furthermore, it would take a reliable thirty minutes that one could schedule and depend on.  (I might note that a train—or even express buses—would also emit far fewer pollutants into our atmosphere.)

If I had to drive in traffic like that I saw yesterday, I’d have an ulcer–or persistent road rage.

When you consider how much it costs to buy, operate, insure and maintain a car, and the hours of productive time wasted in lengthy and unpredictable commutes, you start to understand the insanity of America’s car culture and its negative impact on our quality of life.

I didn’t think I could get any angrier at the Indiana legislature for once again derailing mass transit for Indianapolis, but yesterday proved I was wrong–I can get angrier, especially when I wonder how long it will take for Indianapolis’ highways to look like those I traveled yesterday.

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