Local Government – Page 62

Ballard Catches Mourdock-itis

The generally-held impression of Mayor Greg Ballard has been that he’s a nice guy who’s just in over his head–way over in many respects. Lately, however, he’s been doing things to change that impression–he’s evidently learning fast how not to be a nice guy. Some of this newly-found petulance and partisanship has emerged since Ryan Vaughn–he of the parking meter fiasco–became Chief of Staff, but the buck–as Harry Truman used to say–stops at the Mayor’s own desk.

When the Democrats won control of the Council, new Council President Maggie Lewis was quick to reach out and invite co-operation. When Councilor Brian Mahern held up the Mayor’s TIF proposal, Democrats Vop Osili and Joe Simpson worked to end the impasse. Given the parties’ inevitable differences in priorities, these early signs of conciliation pointed to emergence of an occasionally tense but generally workable accommodation.

Then came the budget. As the Indianapolis Star reported

Facing a deadline to approve or veto the nearly $1.1 billion city/county budget for 2013, Ballard signed it. But his changes, without further negotiations and a quick agreement with the council, would withhold nearly $32 million in income-tax money from Marion County offices and agencies.

That money helps pay to run the courts, keep the jails open, run elections, prosecute or defend criminals, process crime scenes, investigate deaths and provide other public services such as surveying land and collecting property taxes.

The common denominator of the cuts: they affected only the agencies held by Democrats. The Mayor’s own operation, the city offices that he controls, weren’t cut.

The Mayor justified his use of the line-item veto to cripple Democratic offices with language about fiscal responsibility. But genuine fiscal responsibility would involve shared sacrifices across public agencies. (Sort of reminds me of a husband who tells his wife “we can’t afford that new coat you need because my cable TV bill has to be paid.”) He also voiced disagreement with a proposed assessment of the CIB. If he had a genuine problem with that assessment, however, he could have negotiated an equitable resolution with the Council.

Instead, Ballard presented the Council with a fait accompli. He waited until the last minute to deliver a budget that will cripple a number of critical services–for no reason other than those services are being delivered by the opposing party. In Ballard’s cynical budget, public safety takes a back seat to partisanship. It’s his way or the highway.

Shades of Richard Mourdock.

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Questions and Answers

Since Halloween is fast approaching, it seems appropriate to write about something scary. And for scary, little can compare to the Indiana Family Institute’s candidate questionnaire.

It was bad enough looking at the Right to Life questions and Pence and Mourdock’s answers. Both would outlaw abortion with an exception ONLY for the life of the mother. Both support “personhood” legislation that would outlaw most birth control methods.

I thought Right to Life’s questions were scary, but the Indiana Family Institute–which has long supported Pence and which supports him for Governor–has a questionnaire that lays bare a truly terrifying agenda.

Let’s look at their positions on education–if you could still call it “education” after adopting those positions. They want educational choice–defined as “vouchers to send children to any public, private, religious or home school.” (Just ignore that pesky constitution!) They want parents who choose to home school to do so without any new regulations. They want to “redefine” bullying, in order to protect “students who express opposition to the promotion of homosexuality.” (Wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of those little gay-tormenters they’re raising!) And they want “Academic liberty” for teachers who want to “discuss the problems and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.” (i.e., they want their version of religion taught in science classes.)

Anti-gay bigotry, unsurprisingly, permeates the questionnaire. There are references to the “homosexual agenda.” They want candidates to agree to “standardize” business regulations by overturning local ordinances that protect GLBT people against discrimination in education, employment and housing. They want to pass a Constitutional Amendment limiting marriage to heterosexuals. And of course, they want to protect those little schoolyard bullies.

There are also the more general “morality” issues they want to dictate. They want to prohibit casinos, discontinue state support of the Kinsey Institute (evidently, studying sex is just as immoral as engaging in it) and require dancers in strip clubs to remain 6 feet away from customers at all times.

There’s more, but you get the idea. And next week, there’s a very high probability that we will elect a governor who endorses all of these retrograde positions, and has supported them throughout his entire career in public life. Mike Pence–a governor for the 15th Century!

Now that’s scary!

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Poor Fiscal Management. Again.

Government isn’t a business, but it does have an obligation to conduct its operations in a business-like way.

According to recent news reports, three state agencies — the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Health and the State Budget Agency — paid more than $130,500 in late fees in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. The payments were uncovered in recently released audits by the Indiana State Board of Accounts.

The penalties were assessed because the agencies failed to pay claims on time. The audit reports say the delays resulted, in “an unnecessary use of state funds.” The reports are just one more bit of embarrassing evidence of this administration’s tenuous grasp on fiscal competence. (Remember that 300 million dollars they “found” awhile back? Or the payments “inadvertently” withheld from local government agencies?)

The report is not just a reminder that our Governor’s much-touted business acumen is mostly hype. It is also a reminder to those of us who vote that the positions politicians are spending millions of dollars to win require not-so-glamorous skills. Running state government requires an understanding of a whole range of management practices, many of which go beyond the skills required by private-sector enterprises: building bridges with fractious legislators, demanding accountability from those you’ve appointed to run departments, an acquaintance with the intricacies of policy formation, and an ability to communicate with citizens.

Campaigns test the ability to connect with enough voters to get elected, but otherwise, require no evidence that a candidate possesses any of these skills, and most have not held previous positions that demanded them. So we get rigid ideologues who–despite their pro-business rhetoric–never met a payroll, never had to build a team from competing factions, never had to be accountable to anyone who didn’t agree with them.

I’ve had my differences with the Daniels Administration, and I’ve aired many of those differences here. But the Governor is pragmatic and intelligent, and has done many things well (been to the BMV lately?? Much improved.)

Mike Pence is a different matter entirely. Pence is running a strategically brilliant campaign for Governor–a campaign intended to “upgrade” the Pence 1.0 version to a kinder, gentler, and infinitely more competent Pence 2.0. His 30-second spots portray someone very different from the culture warrior whose entire focus while in Congress has been on de-funding Planned Parenthood, working with Todd Akin to define “legitimate” rape and outlaw most existing birth control methods, and ensure that GLBT folks remain second-class citizens. Fortunately for women and gays, Pence has been a much more effective Tea Party spokesman than legislator: in his eleven years in Congress, he’s sponsored 63 bills and has been successful in getting exactly none of them passed. Only three ever made it out of committee.

Unfortunately for Pence and the other “true believers” who have come to dominate the GOP, governing involves a lot of non-glamorous, practical tasks where conciliation, an open mind and sound information are required. Self-righteousness, ostentatious piety and intransigence don’t contribute much to transportation policy or parks maintenance–or to fiscal accountability.

Urban Life and Political Strife

Every couple of weeks, I get an email from Citiwire.net, a brainchild (I think) of Neil Pierce, the longtime observer of urban life and policy. Each email has two columns, one from Pierce and a second that “rotates” among a variety of writers. (Those of you interested in–or passionate about–cities should sign up. It’s free.)

Last Friday’s edition included a piece from Curtis Johnson, identified as the President of Citistates Group, commenting on a very prominent article from the previous week’s New York Times headlined “Republicans to Cities: Drop Dead.”

Johnson–who noted that he had worked many years for a Republican governor–said he cringed “to see the way sensible economics has been chained up, locked out and hooted over by the reigning ideology of today’s Republicans. Not that the Democrats are much better. A dear colleague of mine says ruefully that the Democrats don’t have very good answers, but Republicans don’t even understand the questions (and he’s Republican).”

Johnson goes on to report what most people who follow urban policy already know: as baby-boomers age, a huge number of them are abandoning suburbia and moving back into the cities, while the “millennials” already prefer urban life. (He shares a ‘factoid’ of which I was unaware–millennials are the first modern generation showing a decline in automobile ownership.)

Despite the increasing move to the cities–a move amply documented by demographers–those cities are struggling. Infrastructure is crumbling. Mass transit is lagging (or, as in Indianapolis, virtually non-existent). “Things that metro regions used to be able to build in a decade now take 30 to 40 years.” Yet policymakers of both parties give short shrift to these problems.

Johnson ends by pointing out something I’ve known ever since I got married, because it is my husband’s most persistent gripe: We rely upon our cities to generate the profits that pay the nation’s bills. Here in Indiana, certainly, tax revenues generated in Indianapolis don’t stay here–along with the other cities in Indiana–South Bend, Ft. Wayne, Evansville–we pay the lion’s share of the state’s bills. We fund the priorities of Indiana policymakers–priorities that rarely include us.

It behooves us to take better care of the goose that is laying that golden egg.

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Time for Tough Love

The folks who live in Indianapolis’ suburbs are a lot like the kid who moved back into his parents’ basement after college, and despite having a job, doesn’t pay rent or contribute to the grocery money, so he has money to spend on a snazzy new car and vacations.

More than 180,000 suburban residents drive into Indy to work every day. Approximately 50,000 drive out to jobs located in the suburbs. That means we have a 130,000 net influx of people who regularly drive on streets paid for by Indianapolis taxpayers, rely on police protection furnished by Indianapolis taxpayers, flush toilets into sewers paid for by Indianapolis ratepayers…all without paying a penny for those services.

It isn’t just the people who drive into the city to work. Residents of the collar counties have easy access to Indy’s arts, sporting and cultural events and other urban amenities that improve their quality of life without affecting their property taxes. At least in those cases, nonresidents are patronizing important activities–and when they eat a meal in a downtown restaurant, they do pay a small surtax. Commuting contributes nothing.

Indianapolis business and political leaders have talked about imposing a commuter tax for at least thirty years. We discussed it when I was in City Hall. It hasn’t happened–hasn’t even been seriously pursued, to the best of my knowledge. The politically cynical and criminally shortsighted decision to include property tax caps in the state constitution may change that.

Local governments are starved for revenue. We don’t have the money to hire enough police, to maintain public parks, to pave streets and build sidewalks. Important public amenities like the canal are being allowed to deteriorate. The Mayor is trying to cope by selling off public assets–a “penny-wise, pound-foolish” effort that trades up-front money for long-term income streams and shortchanges our childrens’ futures.

Indiana does not have real home rule. Indianapolis lacks the legal authority to raise property taxes. We have to look elsewhere if we are to invest in our public infrastructure and keep our city from going the way of Detroit. We are rapidly running out of public assets to sell off. The logical thing to do is to levy a commuter tax–to insist that the people using our public services pay something toward their maintenance.

Mayor Hudnut used to warn against allowing the city to become a “doughnut” with a hole in the middle. Civic health, he insisted, required patterning ourselves after a “cookie,” solid clear through. Without sufficient revenue, all those suburban residents who depend upon Indianapolis for their employment and quality of life will find their property values diminished along with their job prospects.

It’s time to charge that kid in the basement some rent.

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