Local Government – Page 60

An Unhealthy Partisanship

As Hoosiers proved again last November, we’re a Red, Red State. And evidently, that partisan identity–and a deep desire to thwart that Kenyan interloper who inexplicably occupies the White House–is motivating a costly and immoral decision on healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act–aka “Obamacare”–provides incentives for states to expand Medicaid coverage. That expansion is not mandatory, however. (The Supreme Court’s decision upheld the Act, but not provisions making Medicaid expansion obligatory.)

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about Medicaid and who it covers. Currently, Indiana’s Medicaid program provides health care to about one in seven Hoosiers–mostly children, pregnant women, the disabled, seniors in long-term care and very low income families. The word “families” is key here, because non-disabled childless adults under the age of 65 are not eligible for Medicaid, no matter how poor they are. And the “eligibility” of families with children is mostly illusory: a family of three (mother, father, child) with income over $4582 a year makes too much to qualify.

The new health reform law gives Indiana the option of expanding Medicaid to provide care to Hoosiers who are currently uninsured–by increasing eligibility to low-income working adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Last year, that would have been $15,415 for an adult, and would have allowed that family of three to make the princely sum of $26,344.

If Indiana opts to participate, an estimated 450,000 Hoosiers would benefit. And here’s the kicker: if Indiana does participate, the federal government will pay all the costs for the first three years. The state’s portion would then phase in gradually, topping out at 10% in 2020.

And if we don’t participate? Well, poor people have this pesky habit of getting sick anyway. And we already pay to treat them–frequently, in the least cost-effective way, when they appear at hospital emergency rooms. When uninsured folks are treated there, the costs of their un-reimbursed care drives up the premiums of those with insurance. If the hospital is public, our taxes go up. If the hospitals still can’t recover their costs, they cut healthcare workers or reduce services. The 10% Indiana would eventually have to pay to cover far more people is unlikely to be more than we are actually paying now in a variety of ways–it would just be more visible and much more cost-effective.

The arguments against participating mainly boil down to two: the feds might change the formula sometime in the future, and we don’t like the government or the President.

Let’s see: on the one hand, the federal government will pay to cover nearly half a million Hoosiers whose lack of insurance is currently costing all of us money and jobs. On the other hand, we can show that socialist Barack Obama how much we hate him.

Even Ohio Governor John Kasich–a man without a “blue” bone in his body–has concluded that cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face is rarely a sane public policy option.

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Send In the Clowns….

Don’t bother. They’re here. In fact, they’re apparently everywhere.

Yesterday, a student sent me a link to a story about a Montana lawmaker who is proposing to give people convicted of a crime a choice between prison time and “infliction of pain.” According to the report, Republican Rep. Jerry O’Neil is drafting a bill that would allow those convicted of misdemeanors or felonies to negotiate corporal punishment rather than a more conventional sentence, because he thinks long prison sentences are inhumane, and thinks many offenders would prefer something like “20 lashes.”

This is the same lawmaker who made headlines earlier in the legislative session when he asked to get paid in gold and silver coins because he is skeptical about the future of the dollar.

Not to be outdone, however, our Hoosier legislators are weighing in with some pretty impressive entries in the OMG sweepstakes. Some pending bills are just terrible policy, of course. We’re used to those here in Indiana. Others are head-scratchers. For example, Senate Bill 0462 designates the fourth Saturday of July as the National Day of the Cowboy and Cowgirl in Indiana, and designates the third weekend of May as the First People’s Celebration Weekend in Indiana in observance of the Corn Planting Moon Ceremony.

The Corn Planting Moon Ceremony? SB 0462 is definitely a contender. But my current favorite is Senate Bill o230, which proposes to “nullify” federal laws our Indiana policymakers don’t like.

SB 0230 provides that “any federal act, order, law, rule, regulation, or statute found by the general assembly to be inconsistent with the power granted to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States is void in Indiana. Provides that a resident of Indiana has a cause of action to enjoin the enforcement or implementation or the attempted enforcement or implementation of a federal act, order, law, rule, regulation, or statute declared void by the general assembly. Provides that a plaintiff who prevails in such an action is entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. Provides that a person who knowingly or intentionally implements or enforces, or attempts to implement or enforce, a federal law that is declared void by the general assembly commits a Class D felony. Finds that the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the federal Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 are inconsistent with the power granted to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States.”

Presumably, the genius who sponsored this one missed that pesky little provision in the U.S. Constitution known as the Supremacy Clause. (Didn’t some of this guy’s forebears try that “states rights” gambit during the civil rights movement? Didn’t work then, either.)

It’s pretty clear what’s pissed off the sponsor of SB 0230, and pretty obvious what his bill–however embarrassing–is all about. SB 0163, on the other hand, is mystifying.

The digest begins “Provides that an individual may not be registered as a lobbyist for more than ten years.” The bill also provides that “an individual may not be a candidate for election to the general assembly if, at the expiration of the term to which the individual would be elected, the individual would have served more than 16 years as a member of the general assembly” and “provides that an individual may not be employed by or provide personal services under contract to any Indiana government body for more than ten years during the individual’s lifetime.” It also prohibits anyone from receiving more than $1,000,000 in compensation from government during his lifetime.

I understand trying to term limit legislators (although it really isn’t a very good idea, no matter how tempting it may seem)–but lobbyists and government employees?

Maybe we could just give those guys a choice between term limits and 25 lashes?

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Law and Sausage

There’s an old saying that you should never watch either of two things being made: sausage or laws. A report in the Indianapolis Star’s “Behind Closed Doors” section this morning is a good example of the sort of game-playing and disregard of the public interest that is the counterpart to sweeping up the floor to plump up the sausage.

As I’ve posted previously, Mike Young has authored a bill that would divest the Indianapolis City-County Council of its fiscal authority. His bill–and a couple of other iterations also pending–would create an “imperial” Mayor no longer answerable to Councilors for spending, hiring and other important decisions that are now part of the democratic checks and balances. It’s terrible policy.

In response, Democratic County Chair Ed Treacy has an equally bad idea. He wants the Democrats in the Legislature to hold the mass transit referendum hostage. Since it will take actual bipartisanship–i.e., votes from both Republicans and Democrats–to pass the bill allowing Marion County voters to decide for ourselves whether we want decent mass transit enough to pay for it, Treacy proposes that Democrats withhold those votes until and unless the Mayor-as-King bill is defeated.

The only people who get forgotten in this unsavory game of political chicken are the citizens of central Indiana. But hey–watch those politicians play that inside baseball game! Watch them give as good as they get! Tit for tat….and screw the public interest.

Pass the sausage.

A Lesson in the Need for Home Rule

Here’s what I don’t understand.

The City of Indianapolis and surrounding counties want to vote on whether to tax ourselves in order to support a minimally-decent public transportation system. It is widely acknowledged that we do not have such a system now.

I am strongly in support of this much-needed upgrade to our current, inadequate bus system, but I do understand that some people–for whatever reason–either do not support expanded transit or do not agree with the current approach to constructing such a system. Fine. Those are matters for debate and an eventual vote to determine whose view is more persuasive.

What I do not understand is the disinclination of some Indiana legislators to allow us to make that decision and hold that vote. I am offended–and I think Indianapolis residents should all be offended, whatever our position on mass transit–by the reluctance expressed by members of the General Assembly to allowing us to decide this issue for ourselves.

This is a prime example of the problems Indiana cities and towns face because we lack meaningful home rule. In other states, local units of government have the authority to decide such matters without having to beg legislators for permission.

Think about how ridiculous this situation is. The citizens of Indianapolis are asking the legislature to allow us to make a democratic decision on a matter that will affect only us. Self-important legislators who represent parts of the state that will be entirely unaffected by whatever decision we make are stroking their chins and taking the matter “under advisement.”

I’d love to ask them who the hell they think they are, but I know the answer. They are petty dictators who think that their exalted positions would somehow be diminished if we were allowed some measure of local decision-making authority–and who have the legal power to say “f#*k you” to the residents of Central Indiana.

Against mass transit? Fine. Against the current proposal for expansion? Okay.

Against self-determination and home rule? Despicable and unacceptable.

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They’re Back….

Lock up the silver and hide the children’s eyes–the Indiana General Assembly is back in session.

The motley crew we citizens elect to what the late Harrison Ullmann used to call The World’s Worst Legislature is already hard at work on measures ranging from treatment of wild hogs to mandating the teaching of cursive writing. I’m sure their attention to these world-shattering issues reassures us all.

Most of the trivial, unwise and the just plain wacky proposals will eventually die in committee. I just hope that one bill in particular lands in that graveyard: the proposal to allow students to carry guns on campus.

This is the second time this proposal has surfaced, and it mystifies me. What problem, exactly, is this misguided measure intended to correct? What is the purpose of encouraging an armed student body? Has anyone considered the consequences of adding firearms to venues occupied by large groups of stressed-out college students, many still adolescent and hormonal?

I once was sued in Small Claims Court by a student to whom I had given a grade of B-. When he had exhausted the (extensive) campus appeal process without convincing anyone of the great indignity of that assessment, he brought suit. (In light of the stupidity thus displayed, I am convinced that the B- was a gift–but I digress.) Arm this unhinged young man, or others not unlike him, and he might well have skipped the lawsuit and just blown me away.

I’m one of those who would like to see some reasonable limits placed on access to guns. Like most people who advocate for more control, I have no illusions that we can rid American society of the millions of guns already out there, and frankly I have no great passion to confiscate them. But I get impatient, to say the least, with the utter paranoia of the gun fringe, with the NRA’s ridiculous belief–rebutted by all credible research–that the way to ensure public safety is to arm everyone.

I’ll tell you one thing that will happen if students are allowed to pack heat on campus. There will be a lot fewer professors willing to teach. Maybe that’s the real motive?

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