Category Archives: Local Government

Remember comic Rodney Dangerfield and his “I don’t get no respect” routine? Recently, a faculty colleague told me a story that illustrates perfectly why so many of us view government with a mixture of bemusement, annoyance and even contempt—why so often, government gets even less respect than Rodney Dangerfield.

 

My colleague’s fiancée had just completed renovating a double in Lockerbie Square. He’d finally moved in, and needed garbage cans. Lockerbie is one of the central city neighborhoods in which  homeowners are required to use garbage cans provided by the City that have been engineered to be picked up by automated garbage trucks.

 

My colleague called the Mayor’s Action Line and asked for two garbage cans. She was told that she would first have to call the police and report the old cans as stolen. Once she had obtained an incident report number, she was to call back, and the cans would be ordered.  She patiently explained that no cans had been stolen; they simply hadn’t gotten any because no one lived there during restoration. She was told that truth was immaterial; if they wanted garbage cans, they had to follow procedure and report that the old ones were stolen.

 

When she called IMPD, she felt compelled to tell the person on the phone that there hadn’t really been a theft. (As she said when telling me this, “Isn’t filing a false police report a felony?”) The person on the other end of the line said it didn’t matter, this was “procedure.” She was then required to give her driver’s license/social security number in order to get the report issued.

 

Eventually, she got the incident reports, called back to the Mayor’s Action Line with the required numbers, and the garbage cans were duly delivered. Why the “theft” charade was necessary remains a mystery.

 

In the scheme of things, the saga of the garbage can is a minor irritation. But there’s a lesson here.

 

So often, Americans remain fixated on policy itself, on the question “what should government do?” In this case, for example, policymakers have determined that municipal governments should collect garbage. Public administrators then decided how to deliver the service—should employees be hired, or private companies contracted?—and how to fund it.  Those are all proper matters for public discussion and debate, because decisions about what government should do and how are most likely to be driven by ideology, and thus most likely to generate political conflict.

 

Those of us who teach public administration must focus on a different question, however, and it is equally important. Once policymakers have given administrators a job, how well do they perform?  Are they efficient? Ethical? Competent? Do they treat citizens equally and constitutionally?

 

Respect for our governing institutions has taken a real beating lately. Local governments can’t do much about the daily drumbeat of reported corruption and incompetence in Washington. But citizens might feel better if we didn’t have to visit an alternate universe just to get a garbage can.

 

 

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It’s hard not to feel sorry for Mayor Greg Ballard. Not just because he’s being hit with criticism from all sides, but because he was so clearly unprepared for the realities he faces.

The most basic question of politics—the question every mayor must confront—is “what is government’s job?” The answers fall into a spectrum between “you’re on your own” and “we’re all in this together.” It should be noted that these aren’t partisan categories; Steve Goldsmith and Bill Hudnut, both Republicans, had very different visions of government’s responsibilities. (I used to describe the differences between them by suggesting that, if a poll showed lack of public support for transportation planning, Hudnut would explain to people why such planning was essential, while Goldsmith would stop planning.)

Most of us agree in the abstract that government should do only those things that must be done collectively, and should leave other tasks to the private sector. The problem comes when we try to apply that principle to specific tasks. Let’s take garbage collection as an example. There are private scavenger companies that will pick up your garbage for a fee—why not leave that responsibility with homeowners? The short answer is that some people will be irresponsible or unable to pay for the service, and uncollected garbage is a threat to the health of all of us.

We don’t hire private security firms to provide public policing, not just because we have made a collective judgment that the use of force should be controlled by those who are accountable to the public, but also because we have learned that providing public safety is a broader, more complex task than policing alone.

We support transportation planning because failure to do so creates traffic nightmares and costs a fortune when gridlock forces us to add more concrete to our already bloated highways. (We are paying dearly today for prior mayors’ decisions to “save” money by cutting back on planning.)

We support the arts, public parks and public transportation (however inadequately) because we have learned that successful economic development depends upon the quality of life in a community—and economic development is critical if we are to maintain a tax base that allows us to collect garbage, pay police and pave streets.

It’s impossible to construct a city budget without first deciding what it is that government must do. People of good will can differ on the answer to that question, but those differences must be based upon an appreciation of how cities actually work. Money saved by refusing to pick up garbage will eventually be offset by increased costs of public health. Money saved by selling off parks will add to the costs of public safety and make it much more difficult to attract new employers.

Greg Ballard seems like a very nice man, but it is increasingly clear that he is in over his head. And while he’s learning that running a city is complicated, all of us are paying his tuition.

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“Corrected” property tax bills have been mailed, and welcome as the effort to equalize assessments is, values overall continue to increase.
The problem is that, while assessed values are increasing, actual home values are declining. There are both short-term and longer-term reasons for that decline: rising gas prices will inevitably affect the price of homes that do not have access to public transportation. (In Indianapolis, unfortunately, that pretty much describes the whole city.) The slowing economy reduces both the number of buyers, and the prices the remaining buyers are willing to pay.
Then there’s the ballooning mortgage foreclosure rate. It is tempting for those of us not caught up in that crisis personally to be sympathetic, but detached. Sure, we say, it’s a shame that some (other) homeowners find themselves embroiled in the foreclosure process. Of course, some of them weren’t as prudent as they should have been. But that really isn’t our problem.
Except that it is.
Recently, IUPUI’s Center for Urban Policy and the Environment used a statistical modeling process to estimate the effect of foreclosures on housing values in Marion County. The study was limited to foreclosures during 2004. (There is always a lag in the availability of data for this kind of analysis.) The researchers found that the properties that had been foreclosed sold for 26 to 29 percent less than comparable non-foreclosed properties. Even more troubling, in neighborhoods with a number of foreclosures, those “fire sales” get used as comparable transactions for purposes of establishing housing values and sales prices for the other homes in the area. That limits what banks and mortgage companies are willing to lend against those properties. This so-called “foreclosure discount” can thus have a significantly negative impact on the value of other homes in the area.
In 2004, the total decline in housing values across Marion County due to foreclosures was an estimated 9 percent.
Protestors complain that higher property taxes also drive down the market prices of residential real estate. True enough. But lower housing values will in turn drive down tax receipts, giving local government even less money to spend on the public services that—as we sometimes forget—add to the market value of our properties. The quality of our parks, schools, public transportation, police and fire protection all factor into the price a prospective buyer is willing to pay for a home.
There is no easy “fix” apparent. From all accounts, we have yet to see the worst of the housing crisis. The federal government has led by bad example, running up its own unaffordable mortgage—our gargantuan national debt. That bill is coming due, and further straining our ability to tackle our economic problems. Gas prices may level off, but they are unlikely to decline, and energy costs drive up the cost of everything else.
We have been living on our national credit card, unwilling to control the wheeler-dealers or invest in our communities. Now the bill is coming due.
It’s going to get ugly.

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The Indiana Senate has demonstrated that it will spend its limited time during this short session on those matters most important to—who, exactly?

 

At a time when public passions are at a boiling point over our dysfunctional tax system, when citizens are demanding that we streamline Indiana’s wasteful, overlapping government structures, the Senate has decided to take decisive action—to ban same-sex marriage.

 

By this point, the arguments against SJ7 are well-known. It “solves” a problem that doesn’t exit, by denying still-theoretical gay couples access to hundreds of legal rights that heterosexual citizens enjoy. Those include the right to be appointed as a guardian of an ailing or injured partner, the right to take family leave, and the right to half of the partnership’s accumulated property if the relationship dissolves. Same sex partners pay more taxes because they aren’t entitled to spousal gift and estate tax exemptions and deductions. They can’t seek damages for a partner’s wrongful death. There are hundreds more—rights enjoyed by heterosexuals married two days, but denied to gays who have been partners for 30 years.

 

Worse, as constitutional expert Aviva Orenstein testified, part B of this poorly-drafted Amendment is likely to hurt all unmarried couples, not just gay ones, and is an invitation to the “judicial activism” that proponents claim to detest. No one has a clue what “legal incidents of marriage” are.

 

SJR 7 is opposed by Indiana’s largest employers, by many clergymen and religious organizations, by university professors, by dozens of professional organizations, and in recent polls, by a majority of Indiana citizens. So what compelling justifications are offered for cluttering the Indiana constitution with this confusing and discriminatory language?

 

Basically, proponents say gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry because some religions teach that homosexuality is immoral. (Of course, all religions teach that rape and murder are immoral—but Indiana allows rapists and murderers to marry. Go figure.) They say marriage and sex are for procreation (although we allow sterile folks to marry). Most of all, they insist that recognizing gay unions will undermine families and the institution of marriage. (Similar claims were made about interracial marriage, and about allowing women to own property and vote.)

 

Let’s at least be honest. This isn’t an effort to protect families—it is an effort to privilege some families at the expense of others. SJ7 is not about religion or morality—it is about whose religion, whose morality.

 

This is also not about our Senators responding to some groundswell of public opinion. This is an issue rapidly losing its salience with most voters, who are understandably a lot more concerned about taxes, crime, access to health care and other bread-and-butter and quality of life issues. To the extent the Senate is responding to public pressure, it is pressure coming from a small but highly vocal constituency.  

 

We can only hope that when SJR7 arrives in the Indiana House, our Representatives give it the priority it deserves—and bury this bad bill whose time has thankfully passed.

 

 

 

   

 

 

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Marion County’s dramatically—if erratically—increased property taxes have been the topic of non-stop conversation and exhaustive media coverage for the past two weeks.  I’m hearing lots of complaining. What I’m not hearing is serious consideration of the causes of the problem (finger-pointing doesn’t count) or suggestions for sensible measures to reduce unnecessary costs.

 

I know that one person’s “unnecessary costs” are the next guy’s “absolutely essential public services,” but—at risk of enraging more readers than usual—let me suggest just two measures that could reduce taxes and improve services at the same time.

 

• Marion County supports eleven school systems. That’s eleven superintendents, making over 100,000 each. That’s eleven administrative structures, each with its own buildings and staffs full of deputy superintendents, curriculum experts, human resources departments and the like. Eleven transportation systems, bus fleets and dispatchers. Eleven food service operations. Eleven separate school boards, with per diems, travel budgets, and other expenses. Each school system hires its own lawyers, negotiates separately with the teachers’ union, builds its own schools, provides its own counseling, policing and standardized testing. Meanwhile, enrollments have been declining in several of those districts, even while costs continue to accelerate.

 

            The savings that would accrue from consolodating those districts would be         significant. (In 2006, the budget for IPS alone exceeded five hundred million            dollars.) We could also redirect resources from overhead into our classrooms, and            equalize services—and school tax rates—across the county.

 

• A similar argument can be made for consolodating (or preferably abolishing) the outdated Township Trustee system. Over the years, most of the duties originally discharged by individual trustee offices have been assumed by other agencies. And repeated studies have confirmed that trustees are not cost-effective providers (to put it kindly) of poor relief, their  major remaining function.

 

So why are these two measures, which could yield substantial savings without sacrificing service, essentially off the table? Simple: politics and patronage.

 

In the case of the schools, it has been the politics of money and race. When Unigov was enacted, it was common knowledge that including the schools would have been the kiss of death—privileged white parents weren’t going to send their children to school with poorer children, especially if they were black. Demographics (and, one hopes, attitudes) in Marion County have changed considerably since 1971. It’s past time to revisit the issue. 

 

In the case of the Township Trustees, patronage is the culprit. As the county has become increasingly Democratic, suburban Trustee’s offices are among the last Republican strongholds, while the Center Township Trustee is a longtime source of Democratic jobs, especially for minorities.

 

Meanwhile, political game-playing hasn’t helped. When President Bush “cut” federal taxes, states were stuck with the costs of services those taxes had paid for. Then state governments realized that two could play that game, and shifted costs to local units of government.

 

Now local government has to decide who it will hurt: property taxpayers, or those with vested interests in keeping things as they are.  

 

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