Local Government – Page 66

Sausage-Making at Work

There’s an old saying that the two things you should never watch are sausage-making and law-making. Good as that advice is, it can be very enlightening (if somewhat nauseating) to be present as the democratic process unfolds.

Yesterday, I accompanied the President of Indiana Equality to South Bend, where the Common Council was to deliberate (for the third time) on a proposal to amend that city’s Human Rights Ordinance. The existing Ordinance allowed the Human Rights Commission to mediate complaints of discrimination in employment, public accommodations and housing based upon race, gender, national origin and religion; the proposal being debated was to add sexual orientation and gender identity to that list.

I was there to offer “expert” testimony–my status as an expert by virtue of an imposing title and the fact that I live more than 50 miles away. Opponents insisted that the city had no legal authority to enact the changes, and that the Ordinance was so poorly drafted that enforcement would be impossible. Since the language was identical to that in the Indianapolis Ordinance–which has been in effect for seven years without challenge or problem–that wasn’t exactly a winning argument.

The most audacious claim made by those who opposed the new language, however, was that the standard religious exemption–specifying that the provision would not apply to churches and religious institutions–was inadequate because it would not protect “religiously motivated” discrimination. This is similar to other arguments we’ve been hearing lately: that allowing female employees access to contraception violates the religious liberty of Catholic employers, or that anti-bullying legislation infringes the “free speech” rights of the bullies. The argument is apparently that I should be able to pick on gay people—or black people, or women, or Jews–if my motivation is religious. This is an argument one occasionally hears from those who still believe that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a violation of their individual rights.

There were two hearings: a committee meeting that began at 4:00 pm and the Council meeting, which began at 7:00–and lasted until 1:00 a.m. (And you wondered why there was no blog post this morning!) The hearings were Democracy In Action. (Please note capitals!)

I’ve been to similar debates before, and I fully expected that the conservative churches would bus in lots of their parishioners in order to dominate, if not fill, the chamber. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the “good guys”–wearing big blue paper buttons provided by Indiana Equality–vastly outnumbered the folks wearing red stickers emblazoned with “No Special Rights.”

I was also impressed with the testimony of the very long line of supporters–beginning with the young Mayor, Pete Buttigieg, who began the public testimony portion of the hearing with a brief but powerful speech about the importance of being an inclusive community and doing what is fair and right.

There was a tall, elderly African-American woman who identified herself as a grandmother, and told the councilors they needed to “do what’s right.” There was a representative of the AFL-CIO, who delivered an impassioned plea for inclusion and equality. A young service-member back from two tours in Afghanistan looked straight at the members of the council and said, “I’m sitting in the front row, right there.” (He pointed to his seat.) “If you vote tonight to tell me that I am not entitled to the same rights I fought to protect for all Americans, then I want you to come look me in the face and tell me why.” There were several ordained ministers, and a bible scholar from Notre Dame, all contesting the notion that being “Christian” meant opposing equality for GLBT citizens.

Those who testified were young and old, black and white, gay and straight. (A surprisingly large number, in fact, were straight.)

The response by opponents was predictable–and much as they tried to argue on legal and policy grounds, the inevitable ugliness soon emerged to discredit them. It was the parade of the “usual subjects”–this is a “Christian Nation,” sexual orientation is a choice, same-sex relationships are “disordered” and “immoral,” protecting GLBT people from discrimination will increase the incidence of AIDS. A nurse graphically described medical problems she attributed to anal sex (the “ick” factor). Several people asserted that the measure would “promote” homosexuality and the dreaded “gay agenda.”

And I’ve never heard so much talk about who will use which restrooms.

Virtually all of the testimony from opponents was based upon religion: the grandmother who assured the council that a “yea” vote would be a vote against the will of God (she evidently talked to him recently…), the used car salesman/pastor (I am not making that up!) who quoted selected bible verses, and the concluding litany by the self-described “Good man of God” who threw the kitchen sink at the issue: gays cause disease, sin and early death, and they need to repent. Reparative therapy works. It’s a choice. And repeatedly, that prohibiting him from firing gay people, telling him he couldn’t refuse to rent an apartment to a gay person, would deprive him of his constitutional right to religious liberty.

The council voted 6-3 to amend the Ordinance. I’m not sure who was more persuasive–those of us who supported the measure, or the homophobes who demonstrated why it was necessary.

Democracy worked.

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Disturbing Questions

We woke this morning to news reports that five teenagers had been shot while walking along Indianapolis’ downtown canal. The shots evidently came from the parking lot of the Historical Society–where a wedding was taking place at the time.

As I write this, little is known except that two of the teens are in critical condition and no one is currently in custody.

It may be that this was one of those random acts that no city, no matter how safe or well-run, can prevent. We deceive ourselves if we believe that police can guard against every sudden eruption of violence. But this shooting, in the heart of our city and next to the canal that so many of us routinely walk or bike, raises sobering questions.

First, what is the relationship–if any–between the recent “discovery” of fiscal shortfalls in public safety and what some people living along the canal claim was a diminished police presence? (The fiscal situation itself raises very troubling questions about the honesty of the Administration’s budgeting process during an election year.)

Second, if there were fewer police in the area, was that due to deliberate decisions about deployment, and if so, what were those decisions and why were they made? One story suggested that a number of officers were called to a brawl at the fire station at West and Ohio; do we have so few police that an incident in one place necessarily leaves other areas unprotected?

We don’t know the answers to these questions, and asking them is not meant to assume the answers. But the questions need to be asked, because this event will have repercussions far beyond the personal tragedy it represents.

Civic and political leaders have been nurturing the rebirth of downtown since the 1970s. The canal is one of the “jewels” of that effort–a jewel that has been sadly neglected the past few years, as I have previously noted. It is an important amenity in a city without oceans or mountains. Developers have been enticed to make significant investments along its banks; museums and public buildings adjoin it. Maintaining it and keeping it safe for the residents and tourists who enjoy it is an important responsibility and should be a high priority of the current Administration.

When the media is filled with stories of shootings, when on-camera interviews feature onlookers declaring they no longer feel safe in the area, the result is to undercut years of painstaking effort, and to reinforce inaccurate stereotypes about the “dangers” of downtown.

Perhaps this was one of those random events that even the best policing couldn’t have averted. Perhaps it was the result of public safety mis-management.

Or perhaps we are seeing the inevitable results of the anti-tax zealotry that added tax caps to the Indiana Constitution–tax caps that are starving local governments and decimating public services.

Whatever the answer, we need to find and fix it.

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There’s No “We” in Mitch Land…

When Steve Goldsmith was Mayor–talking incessantly about government’s “customers” while shifting costs from the operating to the capital budget in order to “reduce” taxes (i.e., push the costs to the next administration)–I used to grouse that his vision of the ideal government would be one that eliminated all municipal services so that the City-County Building could be rented out to give taxpayers a rebate of 50 cents each.

I’ve often considered Mitch Daniels to be a Goldsmith clone. They share a touching belief that privatization cures cancer–a belief that appears unshakable no matter how many times they’ve been bitten by poorly-thought-out contracts. (They also share a patronizing attitude that lets you know they think they know more than anyone else–and most definitely more than those annoying yahoos elected to legislative bodies.) I’m not the only person who has noticed the resemblance: the joke that made the rounds when Mitch was first elected was that he was Steve Goldsmith with a personality.

Now Mitch has confirmed my snarky “rent out the City-County Building” description of their shared governing philosophy.

According to the Governor, Indiana has suddenly “discovered” 320 million dollars that we somehow didn’t know we had. Assuming the accuracy of his description–i.e., assuming the administration really didn’t know the money was there–most of us would first question the competence of the administration employees involved. After all, how do you “lose” 320 million dollars? Then–in a sane universe–we might begin a discussion to see which of the recent, draconian cuts to public services we might mitigate. Our bridges are crumbling, our parks are untended, our schools struggling, early childhood education still largely unfunded. Foster parents have just taken a big hit, and the administration has continued its unremitting war on Medicaid recipients. Granted, 320 million won’t restore all that–or even come close–but it would help.

But that’s not the way officials think in “Mitch land.”

Mitch doesn’t want to apply that money to improve the state’s infrastructure, or to ameliorate the suffering caused by cuts to social services during an economic downturn. He wants to trigger an automatic “rebate”–to return it to individual taxpayers. Rather than applying the windfall to improve public services or the public goods we all share, he wants to give each taxpayer a refund. Elementary math suggests that refund might be enough to buy a couple of coffees at Starbucks–it certainly won’t be enough to repair that tire you ruptured on one of our neglected roads, or to pay the tutor you hired to supplement your child’s inadequate math instruction.

In Mitch land, government can do no good and the private sector can do no wrong. Applying “found” money (forgive the quotes and my skepticism) to education or infrastructure is “waste”–but sprinkling it among hundreds of thousands of taxpayers is “good government.”

Maybe Mitch can rent out the statehouse, and send each of us enough to buy an hour or two of privatized parking.

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The Devil You Know….

A couple of political truisms–which I have always accepted as “givens”–went up in smoke last night. The first was that at-large candidates win or lose based upon the performance of their party’s mayoral candidate. The second was that in close races, victory is largely a matter of getting your vote out.

In Indianapolis yesterday, the Democrats got their votes out. They took back the Council, including the at-large seats. But enough of those Democrats scratched Melina Kennedy to allow Ballard a second term.

There will undoubtedly be lots of second-guessing and post-election analysis. Here’s my two-cents-worth: the sorts of things about the Ballard Administration that appall so many of us who watch government closely are not the sorts of things that are apparent to the average voter (and the media largely ignored those issues during his term). No one was enthusiastic about him–he never got out of the low 40s in internal polls–but the average voter was aware of no strong reason to oppose him. Meanwhile, Melina Kennedy never gave people a strong reason to vote for her–her ads did not adequately introduce her to the voters before they began attacking Ballard, and the attack ads were, as Paul Ogden has noted, insufficiently specific; they failed to explain what was wrong with the cozy deals they alluded to–they simply attacked.

Given two candidates seen as interchangeable, voters opted for the one with whom they were familiar.

The good news is that a Democratic Council should be able to block the sorts of cozy deals and poor policy choices that have characterized Ballard’s tenure. The danger is that the Council will simply act out of partisanship, rather than principle. In either case, the next four years are likely to be contentious.

A mediocre (at best) mayor and a hostile council aren’t exactly a recipe for progress.

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Did Not! Did So!

Ah, budget battles.

This morning’s Star detailed the back and forth political arguments about whether the Ballard Administration actually made the budget cuts the mayor promised during his campaign. Their independent analysis amounted to: who knows? That’s not a criticism of the reporters–it’s a reflection of the games public managers play.

This actually began back during the Goldsmith Administration. In fact, it could argued that the City’s dicey finances actually began there; I know Ballard blamed Peterson because he inherited significant budget problems, but Peterson himself inherited a true “smoke and mirrors” budget from Goldsmith. (That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have done more to fix it.)

Goldsmith’s clever game was to change the way in which the budget was reported from the relatively straightforward system employed during the Hudnut Administration. When you change budget categories, it becomes virtually impossible to compare apples to apples. (He also touted savings from his own exaggerated “estimated growth” figures–as in “we project that expenditures would have reached X if we hadn’t done Y. What good managers we are!)

In this case, Ballard’s folks excluded federal and other grants and some debt service from the budget calculation, and “voila”–they saved money.

I know I’m talking crazy, but what if we focused less on the relative amounts we spend, and more on what we get for our money? What if we focused less on the tax levy (the total amount raised) and more on how fairly we assess property and set rates? What if we rewarded good management rather than providing incentives to cut corners and push higher maintenance costs to the next guy?

What a dreamer I am…..

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