Category Archives: Local Government

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.

Comments

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.

Comments

If It Walks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck…

Supporters of Mike Pence’s gubernatorial campaign pooh-pooh the notion that their candidate is an extremist. The candidate himself is frantically trying to re-introduce himself with huge ad buys that avoid any reference to his (exceedingly lackluster) congressional performance or to policies he supports.

Did you know he took his wife skating on their first date? Or that his grandfather was a bus driver?

His surrogates are also crying foul about Democrats’ use of a booklet published by the Indiana Policy Review when Pence was President of that organization, called “Indiana Mandate: an Agenda for the 1990s.” I would agree that a manifesto written nearly 25 years ago shouldn’t be relevant today, had Pence ever suggested he had changed the positions it espoused, or had he not consistently voted for the philosophy that booklet expressed.

You can find out about that document here.

Wonder why he voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act, an act to enforce equal pay for women?

Wonder why he has worked tirelessly to completely de-fund Planned Parenthood?

Wonder why he opposes the Americans with Disabilities Act? Minimum wage laws?

Wonder why he supports school vouchers and other, extensive privatization initiatives?

The justifications are all in that first booklet. Pence’s voting record during his time in Congress has been consistent with these and other positions set out in that Policy Review document. That in itself is fine–here’s a candidate who has a very strong ideology and who has continued to support that ideology. The idea of elections is that we voters get to compare the positions held by the candidates and choose between them. Unfortunately, when candidates realize that their beliefs are unlikely to be embraced by the average voter, they do what Pence is doing: they re-invent themselves.

Mike Pence has never shown the slightest interest in economic development, transportation policy, public administration, or the myriad other issues that occupy a governor. His sole passion has been the social issues that divide Americans–and even in the Hoosier heartland, most people do not agree with his positions on those issues. So he’s trying to “re-invent” himself as a softer, gentler Mike Pence.

When someone walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…..he’s a duck. When someone has an uninterrupted history of ideological extremism, he’s an extremist.

Comments

Audacious in Chicago

This morning’s New York Times reports that Rahm Emmanuel will announce a 7.1 billion-with-a-b infrastructure improvement plan for Chicago. Improvements will be made to everything from the water system to the airport, from public transportation to parks. The improvements will be financed primarily through a public-private investment trust, details of which Mayor Emmanuel is supposed to announce later today.

I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

Some public-private partnership projects have been criticized as giveaways to the private businesses that take them over — including two prominent cases in Chicago itself, the privatized Chicago Skyway and the city’s parking meter system, which obligate the city to leases that span generations. Mr. Emanuel says that the city has learned an important lesson, and that “I am not leasing anything,” or selling off the city’s assets, he said in an interview. “I’m using private capital to improve a public entity that stays public.”

Great cities are places people want to live. As former Mayor Hudnut repeatedly reminded us, livable cities are first and foremost “cities that work.”

Most of us don’t want to live in housing that is unkempt and run-down, but we also understand that we aren’t improving our situation if we sell the stove to pay for new carpet.

In order to build a great city–especially in these days of fiscal hurt–its leaders need vision, and the audacity to insist that investment in the public square is both necessary and important. The audacity to refuse to sell off public goods to private profiteers.

The audacity to defend and maintain great urban spaces for the generations of citizens who will enjoy them.

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.

Comments