Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Stupid Is as Stupid Does….

Ah, the Indiana legislature! An inexhaustible source of blog fodder.

Yesterday, it was Brian Bosma twisting the rules in order to deny GLBT people equal rights. Today….well, remember that old adage to the effect that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt?

There’s a legislative equivalent–an ironic twist on our usual understanding of “do nothing” legislators. Usually, we think of a “do-nothing” Congress or General Assembly as one that quite literally does nothing–doesn’t pass legislation or attend to business. (That’s not always a bad thing, either; these days, when a legislature is active, it’s as likely to be creating problems as solving them. HJR3, anyone?)

But there is another way to do nothing, and State Senator James Smith has produced a perfect example. Here is the entire text of a bill he has introduced:

Celebration of winter holidays in schools. Provides that a school corporation may: (1) instruct students about the history of traditional winter celebrations; (2) allow the use of traditional greetings concerning the celebrations; and (3) display on school property scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations if certain conditions are met and the scenes or symbols do not include a message that encourages a particular religious belief. Requires the department of education to develop guidelines to assist school corporations in developing appropriate instruction and displays.

In other words, this bill would allow schools to celebrate winter holidays in any fashion consistent with the First Amendment.

Perhaps Senator Smith’s next bill will allow us to kiss our mothers, ride a bike, or write a letter without fear of state interference?

I assume Smith’s intent is to reassure the good folks back in Mayberry or wherever that passage of this (absolutely meaningless) measure will make life harder for the atheists and non-Christians who are waging that War on Christmas that only the wingers can detect. And he’s counting on those constituents to be totally unaware of how the Constitution and legal system actually work.

Not an unreasonable assessment. Just depressing.

Of course, there’s another possibility. Perhaps the Senator actually thinks he’s legislating. In which case, he really ought to take that old adage about remaining silent to heart.
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How a Bill Shouldn’t Become a Law

Remember the old cartoon developed to teach students “how a bill becomes a law”?

A proposal is introduced. It is assigned to a committee that reviews it, hears testimony about it, and deliberates its merits. The committee then votes whether to advance the measure. If the vote is affirmative, the entire chamber votes on it.

In bicameral legislatures (those with both a House and Senate), a positive vote sends the bill to the other house, where the process is repeated.

Speaker of the House Brian Bosma is teaching young people–who are disproportionately interested in the fate of HJR 3–a different lesson.

What if a bill the Speaker really wants passed is assigned to a committee that actually does its job–a committee that deliberates based on the evidence before it and the testimony it has heard? What if that committee then concludes that the bill should be defeated?

Why, you just change the rules.

You don’t abide by the decision of the lawmakers you assigned to make that decision.  You cheat.

Speaker Brian Bosma insists that there is nothing unusual in his decision to take HJR 3 away from the committee to which it was originally assigned. And it’s true that some bills are reassigned, mostly in order to expedite the process, or because on closer examination the bill really belonged elsewhere.

In this case, the change was made for one reason only: to get the result Bosma wants. The decision he couldn’t get playing by the rules.

Even more incredibly, the Speaker has scheduled the new committee’s vote for tomorrow. The vote will be taken without the benefit of evidence or testimony–but then, as we’ve seen, the Speaker considers evidence and testimony irrelevant. The only thing committee members need to to know is what the Speaker wants them to do.

Usually, the power plays and the wheeling/dealing is done behind the scenes. This time, that wasn’t possible. This time, everyone got to see what is seldom on public display: the House leadership’s absolute contempt for democracy and the rules of fair play.

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Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad “Frankenfood”?

Last Sunday’s New York Times ran an extensive article about the highly emotional grass-roots effort to eliminate or label GMOs--genetically-modified organisms–and the political risks to those who resist that emotionalism in favor of reliance on the science.

This is an issue that drives my cousin, a cardiologist and scientist, up the wall. At his own blog, he has written extensively on the subject, pointing out–among other things–that foods made with GMO crops have been consumed by hundreds of millions of people around the world for more than 15 years with no discernible ill effects; that virtually all processed foods sold in the U.S. contain GMO ingredients; that genetic engineering simply “speeds up” the conventional cross-breeding and hybridization that humans have done for thousands of years.

He also points out that genetic manipulation allows us to produce plants more resistant to insects and disease–which in turn allows us to reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides that can be harmful. He also points to the promise of better nutrition for people in third-world countries.

The scientific community is solidly in my cousin’s corner on the issue.

There is one thing, however, that I think my cousin gets wrong. He has concluded that “the irrational opposition to these products is likely being propagated by the same individuals who deny, among other things, global warming and evolution.”

Not quite.

As the New York Times reported,
Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and the teaching of evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones.

“These are my people, they’re lefties, I’m with them on almost everything,” said Michael Shintaku, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, who testified several times against the bill. “It hurts.”

So why are liberals willing to accept the scientific consensus on climate change and evolution and most other things, but so suspicious of that same science when it comes to GMOs?

There is a lack of scientific literacy that contributes to all “denialism,” of course, and we all suffer from a lack of good reporting on scientific issues. But I think something else is going on here. Liberals are willing to trust scientific expertise in other areas–why not in this one?

I think at least part of the answer is that the GMO issue has become confused in the public mind with other practices of the food industry that are far less benign.

The use of hormones and antibiotics in order to fatten chicken and cattle more quickly and with foodstuffs they wouldn’t otherwise tolerate is a cause of widespread and well-founded concern. The rapacious and well-documented business practices of companies like Montsano certainly suggest that those companies are willing to put profits above people’s health, and shouldn’t be trusted. Films like “Food, Inc.” have disclosed the frequently inhumane treatment of the animals raised to feed us, and engendered a visceral response in viewers. (I couldn’t eat chicken for months!)

Add these unquestionably valid concerns to our very imprecise use of the term “genetically-modified” and you get an understandable–if misplaced–reaction to anything considered remotely “unnatural.”

 
 
 
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Emerging from a Different Kind of Prison?

There are the prisons we all recognize–utilitarian buildings constructed to hold lawbreakers–and then there are prisons of a less recognizable sort: rigid beliefs, the sorts of ideological commitments impervious to evidence.

Yesterday’s post referenced the copious academic literature analyzing one such ideological commitment.

As I noted in that post, for the past thirty-odd years, devotion to contracting-out (mis-labeled “privatization”) has been an article of faith with a lot of public managers and political science theorists, not to mention substantial numbers of folks in the business community that have profited from such contracts and the even higher percentage of nonprofit enterprises that have come to depend upon government funding.

This belief in the benefits of privatization has persisted despite significant amounts of research painting a considerably more nuanced picture.

Sometimes, however, reality really does bite. So I was interested in an article from the Idaho Statesman, reporting that the state will resume control of a prison that has been run by CCA, one of the largest private prison companies in the country.

An Associated Press report last year raised questions about how the Nashville, Tenn.,-based company was staffing the prison, and the state’s move is part of a larger debate over whether prison privatization works.

Over the past several decades, contractors have been brought in to run prisons, federal lockups and even county-level jails. The number of inmates housed in the facilities grew from 85,500 in 2000 to more than 128,000 in 2012, according to federal statistics.

Private prison operators have been repeatedly sued, amid allegations of rampant violence, understaffing, gang activity and contract fraud.
The Idaho Statesman article quoted University of North Florida criminal justice professor Michael Hallett, who has written a book on prison privatization. Hallett said the problems in Idaho reflect those seen nationwide.

“A private prison corporation operates just like an old-fashioned HMO, where the less they spend, the more they make,” Hallett said. “ … There’s lots of ways to game the system, through contract violations and even just legal contracts to house easier inmates.”

Idaho’s governor has been a longtime supporter of privatization, but the problems became too obvious for him to ignore. The situation is reminiscent of then-Governor Daniels’ belated admission that Indiana’s costly experiment with welfare privatization was a disaster.

The lesson today and yesterday isn’t that government should never contract out. The lesson is: the decision to contract for public services is more complicated than ideologues want to make it. Sometimes contracting is a good idea; often, it isn’t.

We deserve public managers who can tell the difference.

Academics Say the Darnedest Things…

It’s too bad that articles in academic journals are so filled with jargon, because they often contain valuable information, or make important points that get ignored or glossed over, even by other members of the academy.

Case in point, a recent article in Public Administration Review, a very highly-regarded journal focusing on issues of public management. The title ” Governance, Privatization and Systemic Risk in the Disarticulated State” was calculated to make your eyes glaze over, and I will admit I only read it because I know both of the co-authors (one is a SPEA colleague) and know them to be first-rate scholars.

Ignore the wonky title. This is yet another analysis of government’s love-affair with privatization.

The authors apply research on “systemic risk” to the public-private partnerships that have become ever more common over the past quarter-century or so, the networks of for-profit and non-profit organizations increasingly used by public-sector agencies to do government’s work and deliver public services. As they note, such public networks are similar to financial systems: they are complex, interdependent and risky. Furthermore, if and when they fail, that failure has “potentially catastrophic” effects on citizens who depend upon public services.

One of those risks is that an organization in one of these privatized networks will try to benefit at the expense of the others. The article cites several examples: halfway houses in New Jersey were found to have falsified records in order to have high-risk inmates placed in their (understaffed) facilities; in Tucson, Arizona, a downtown development project employed a network of developers and consultants that spent millions of taxpayer dollars and failed to produce anything.

The risk isn’t confined to dishonesty and self-dealing. The Providence Service Corporation is the largest provider of privatized social services in North America. When the 2008 Great Recession hit, investors dumped their stock in the company (it went from $36 per share to less than a dollar). The loss of capital threatened the ability of the company to continue delivering services to 70,000 clients.

After an extensive discussion of the nature and extent of the dangers involved, the authors conclude that, “reliance upon third parties to produce government services is fraught with risk at all levels.”

This analysis joins a growing and steady accumulation of evidence that the wholesale embrace of privatization of public services is too often costly, risky and counter-productive.

The rush to privatize–to offload public responsibilities–is part and parcel of the assault on the whole enterprise of government that has always been part of American political discourse, but which really gained traction during the Reagan Administration. It’s an attitude, rather than a philosophy, and it plays to the very American desire to address messy, complicated realities with simple, bumper-sticker remedies.

As we are learning the hard way, government can’t privatize away its responsibilities, and too often, the effort to do just that ends up making matters worse.

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