Category Archives: Local Government

Echoes of Republicanism Past…..

This morning’s Star reports that Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller has conceded the unconstitutionality of the anti-immigration bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Delph and passed by the General Assembly.

For those of you who do not follow such things, Indiana had passed its own version of Arizona’s mean-spirited and deeply flawed immigration law; a couple of months ago, the Supreme Court found virtually all of the Arizona law unconstitutional. That decision operated to doom most of the Indiana statute as well. And rather than use the Court’s decision as an occasion for grandstanding or ideological posturing, Zoeller did what a good lawyer in that office should do–he agreed that Indiana should follow the law.

The article also quotes an observation by former Marion County GOP Chair Mike Murphy to the effect that much of the current anti-immigration fervor on display is a response to tough economic times; in such times, he points out, people look for someone to blame.

An elected official doing his job properly, and a political operative conceding to the nature of reality might not seem newsworthy, but it is a small, heartening reminder of the GOP to which I used to belong–the party that produced Bill Hudnut , Dick Lugar and John Mutz.

Now we have Mike Delph, Mike Pence and Richard Mourdock. It’s enough to make you cry.

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Charlotte vs. Indy

My husband and I have been wanting to visit Charlotte for some time. During our annual trip to South Carolina, we always read the Charlotte Observer, which (unlike the Indianapolis Star) is still a real newspaper–perhaps not as excellent as it once was, but one of the few remaining examples of actual journalism. The Observer piqued our interest well before the DNC chose the city for its convention, and since Charlotte is about the same size as Indianapolis, we were curious to see how the two cities compare.

We are staying downtown, in a historic Hotel, the Dunhill. Very nice. There are a lot of hotels in the center city–including a pretty posh Four Seasons. There are also a lot of corporate headquarters, mostly but not exclusively bank headquarters. (Being a banking center right now is probably not an asset.) Lots of restaurants, too–although, like in Indy, most are chains.

What I have seen that I like/envy: the scale of the downtown is wonderful. It is dense. The  streets aren’t too wide. The sidewalks–paved with very attractive concrete brick pavers–are immaculate (the hotel concierge tells me they are swept daily–something we used to do when Hudnut was Mayor, but not since). There are lots of trees and plantings, and the streets are lined with benches that invite you to sit a while. There are kiosks where vendors sell flowers and produce. While few buildings are architectural gems–most are “corporate inoffensive”–some are very nice, and the scale and trees combine to make strolling downtown Charlotte a very pleasant experience.

The transit has me green with envy. There is a free trolley that circulates downtown every few minutes. There are real buses that appear to be frequent too. But the star is the train. We rode it to the end and back; it was clean and quick and the stations were well-designed and attractive. The train and bus systems are integrated, with bus service “feeding” the train in what appears to be a very efficient transportation system. My only quibble was the automated machine from which we bought our tickets–it wasn’t intuitive to people like us who hadn’t used it before, and in the bright sunlight, the screen with instructions was hard to read.

That ticket dispenser reminded me of the confusing parking meter system we have just installed in Indianapolis. Charlotte has a similar system, but it is much, much more user friendly–and it dispenses a receipt. A real, genuine paper receipt, unlike ours. Their version sits on streets lined not just with the benches I’ve mentioned, but lots of nicely-designed bike racks. In addition, like NYC, Charlotte is in the process of introducing a bike-sharing program; rows of sparkling new bikes were being set out at various busy intersections as we walked around. Most impressive of all–there were free “quickie” charging stations for electric and hybrid vehicles. (In fact, there were many signs that Charlotte is trying hard to be green.)

There is abundant downtown housing. I walked through a historic district a couple of blocks from our hotel, where lots of multi-family housing–both original and infill–was intermingled with the same sorts of charming old houses, virtually all restored, that we have in the Old Northside neighborhood. Once again, the scale of the neighborhood compensated for some fairly pedestrian architecture. There were “pocket parks” everywhere–delightful little oases that appear to be well-maintained. Downtown also has multiple high-rise apartment buildings, condo and rental. I would guess that even with Indianapolis’ surge lately, Charlotte has a considerably greater range of downtown housing choices. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that Charlotte has one consolidated, county-wide school system and excellent public transit (including 8 Amtrak trains a day to destinations like New York and New Orleans).

In short, this is a place where people appear to care about their city.

All is not perfect in Charlotte, of course, and there are some gaps that ought to worry the city fathers and mothers.

There is virtually no retail in the center city. No shopping streets. There’s a library, a “Discovery Center,” several very nice museums (I can’t speak to the collections, since I didn’t go in–only so much you can do in a day.) But no street had shops to browse. I didn’t even see grocers–especially surprising given the amount of housing. (Turns out I missed a food market, but the absence of other shopping was confirmed in a conversation with our lunch waitress.)

There is also no obvious arts community. I asked the hotel concierge, and he admitted that Charlotte had nothing like Asheville’s vibrant arts community. He hastened to say that there is a lot of corporate support for “the arts”–but it was clear he was referring to museums, concerts and the like, not to the sort of robust arts scene we have in Indianapolis.

So there’s my snapshot, after one hot and muggy day. There’s a lot to like here, and some important missing elements.

I’d kill for their transit….

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Use the Damn Money to Do Your Job

Not-my-man Mitch has announced that the state has a 2+ billion dollar surplus, and that he plans to return 100. to each taxpayer.

Let me see if I have this right: Indiana has shitty transportation, neglected parks, and substandard schools. We have a Department of Childrens Services that is so understaffed that children are literally dying. Services have suffered while public servants have been furloughed and fired. But rather than apply the surplus to any of these purposes, Daniels proposes to send each of us taxpayers a refund sufficient to buy a nice dinner.

Whoopee.

John Gregg and Vi Simpson reacted strongly–and appropriately– to the Governor’s announcement, pointing out that a significant part of the “surplus” Daniels is bragging about includes money that should have been spent by DCS on programs to protect children.

Between 2007 and 2011, DCS returned more than 234 million dollars to the state’s general fund. During that same time period, the Indianapolis Star found at least 25 Hoosier children had died even though DCS had been notified of abuse or other severe problems in their families. Gregg told of one 12-year-old boy who was beaten to death on the very same day that DCS closed its investigations into allegations that the boy was the victim of neglect and abuse. He also noted that the Department has stopped its previous practice of providing mental health services to families with children who pose a threat to themselves or others.

For years, child advocacy organizations have echoed the Star’s conclusion that the agency has too few caseworkers and is underfunded, but miraculously, it had $234 million dollars “left over” to return to the state’s general fund.

Guess what, Governor Daniels? I don’t want a refund. I want to live in a state with a reasonable quality of life. I want to live in a state with a decent educational system. And I definitely want to live in a state that takes its obligation to protect defenseless children seriously.

I can buy my own damn dinner.

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My Country ‘Tis of Thee….

If you are looking for an uplifting, “ain’t we great” post appropriate to the 4th of July, you probably need to stop reading now.

I began my reading this morning with Kurt Anderson’s Op Ed in the New York Times, on the downside of liberty. Anderson revisited the historic American tension between individualism and community, and concluded–in concert with many other contemporary observers–that Americans have confused a robust defense of individual rights with a wholesale abandonment of our civic obligations to the wider community. He argues that we have lost the ability to distinguish between individual rights and self-interested greed.

Anderson points to a cultural phenomenon. Thanks to the recent weather, I have been pondering a structural one.

As anyone who isn’t spending time in the arctic knows, we’ve been having an unprecedented heat wave. Much of the nation has also been battered by ferocious storms, and television news has been featuring visible evidence of the damage–especially shots of the downed power lines responsible for a massive loss of electricity. As of last night’s newscast, more than a million homes remained without power. Elderly people and children, especially, are at risk without air conditioning.

My question is simple: why don’t we bury our power lines? My answer is equally simple: because we have a political/economic structure that privileges short-term savings over long-term quality–a structure that rewards those who are penny-wise and pound foolish.

It costs more up front to bury our utilities. It’s cheaper–initially– to string lines. But not only does burying those lines improve the appearance of our cities and towns, it is much cheaper in the long run. It doesn’t take extraordinary storms to down the lines; more predictable weather also takes a toll. Over a period of years, utilities will more than save the extra dollars spent to bury the lines and consumers will enjoy more dependable service.

This same “penny wise, pound foolish” mind-set permeates our public services. Go to Europe (yes, I know, it is heresy to suggest that other countries might do some things better than we do) and walk on granite pavements that have lasted longer than most of our cities. Expensive to build, much less expensive to maintain and replace. Look at the current rush to sell off public assets–Toll Roads, parking meters, even the City-County Building–rather than spend what is necessary to maintain those assets for future generations.

In business, the triumph of the shareholder and manager over the entrepreneur-owner has meant that the next quarter’s bottom line is privileged over the long-term best interests of the enterprise. It’s more important to return an extra twenty cents per share now than to invest in improvements that will benefit the business ten years hence. In politics, it has always been the case that “long term” means “until the next election.” So we have the ridiculous spectacle of the State of Indiana returning $100 to each taxpayer rather than applying those funds to necessary improvements in education or infrastructure that won’t yield such immediate gratification.

Maybe it’s fitting that we have fireworks on the 4th of July. Children love fireworks, and we seem to have become a nation of children.

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Inexplicable Endorsement

I’m stunned.

The Indiana State Teachers’ Association has had an uncomfortable relationship with efforts to reform education. ISTA’s purpose, after all, is to represent the interests of public school teachers, and in a time when many public schools are not performing, even teachers disagree about what their interests are and where the Association’s efforts should be directed. So I understand why ISTA might decide not to endorse State Representative Mary Ann Sullivan, who is running for the State Senate this year, even though it endorsed her in earlier campaigns. Mary Ann has been a passionate and articulate advocate for education reform, and some of those reforms aren’t consistent with ISTA positions.

But rather than staying out of the race entirely–which would have been understandable–ISTA has endorsed Brent Waltz, the incumbent. And that makes no sense at all.

Waltz is a far-right Republican who defeated Larry Borst–the long-time “Dean” of the Senate and moderate Republican whose budgetary expertise was legendary–in a culture-war primary campaign. Waltz came at Borst from the Right and emphasized his anti-abortion and anti-gay positions–positions antithetical to ISTA’s.

When I heard about the endorsement, I thought perhaps Waltz’s tenure had modified or educated him, or that he had taken some position that would explain an otherwise inexplicable decision to support him, so I did some research.

Here’s what I found:

  • TV 6 reported that Waltz was the director of a company called Indianapolis Diversified Machinery; when it closed, employees discovered that the company had failed to pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund. Terminated employes who needed unemployment were just out of luck–and were also unable to collect several weeks of back pay. (Interestingly, as TV 6 pointed out, Waltz had voted against measures to “fix” problems in Indiana’s Unemployment Insurance program. Guess he didn’t see the point of fixing something he was ignoring anyway.)
  • Waltz co-authored Indiana’s version of “stand your ground” legislation. The bill authorized the use of force against public servants.
  • Waltz supported a constitutional amendment to entirely repeal residential property taxes. Aside from the fact that tax measures do not belong in the state’s constitution (as we are already seeing with the disaster that is the tax caps), and aside from the equal protection and economic issues involved in shifting the entire tax burden to businesses, residential property tax payers are the largest source of funding for our public schools.
  • Unlike Sullivan, Waltz supports vouchers–not just charter schools, which are public schools, but the use of tax dollars to send “children of all income brackets” to private schools.

I can understand why ISTA might disagree with some of the reforms championed by Mary Ann Sullivan. I can understand why parochial considerations might lead them to stay out of this race.

I don’t understand why ISTA would endorse a culture warrior who supports measures that would be disastrous to public education if enacted. That one is beyond my comprehension.

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