Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Will we or won’t we?

The Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform issued its recommendations while I was teaching a class for mid-career government employees in Southern Indiana. They applauded many of the proposals. When the conversation turned to the likelihood of action, however, they were cynical. As one said, “Ultimately, those guys in the statehouse look out for their own political interests, not those of the citizens.”

We all have a stake in proving him wrong.

Those of us who teach public administration like to use words like “transparency” and “accountability.” What those terms mean in simple English is that citizens should be able to figure out who is in charge of what, and who made what decision. It isn’t rocket science.

The Commission’s recommendations would eliminate lots of unnecessary layers of government, and that streamlining would obviously have a major fiscal impact. But important as cost-saving is, the real product of reform will be more transparency, more accountability, and greater efficiency. (How many township assessors or county coroners do we elect based upon their skills in assessing or dissecting? How many of us even know who’s running for those positions?)

The major elements of the report have been widely publicized, but other excellent  recommendations haven’t received enough attention. I particularly like Recommendation #24, which would prohibit employees of a local government unit from serving as elected officials of that unit. (Under this provision, Monroe Gray, among others, would have been disqualified from acting both as lawmaker and city employee.) As the report points out, such service is a clear conflict of interest. It undermines the chain of command and procedures for discipline, and “diminishes the faith that citizens must have that local governments act in the public interest.”  

Recommendation #16 proposes moving municipal elections to even-year cycles, when all other elections are held. Not only would this save the considerable costs involved in holding an extra election, it might improve voter turnout for these contests. In the last Indianapolis mayoral election, for example, only a quarter of those who were eligible voted. Thirteen percent of registered voters chose Greg Ballard. That’s hardly a mandate, and that reality will make it harder for him to govern.

Many of the other recommendations are equally common-sensical. Several have been kicking around longer than I have—and believe me, that is a long time!

I’m not suggesting that legislators obediently enact every single one of the Commission’s recommendations. Some will need to be tweaked. All should be fully debated and analyzed. But overall, the Commission has produced a map to the 21^st Century for a state whose administrative structures mostly date from the 19^th. If the bulk of these recommendations become law, we can expect the outcomes the Commission identifies: local governments that will be “more understandable, more efficient, more effective and more accountable.”  

The question is whether we have the will to withstand both vested interests and civic inertia—if we have the will to prove my cynical students wrong.   

 

 

 

 

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    We are approaching the sixth anniversary of 9-11. This might be a good time to stop using those numbers as a way to score political points, and to reflect on what we’ve lost. Not just the tragic loss of life, or loss of America’s historic innocence, but the twin losses of opportunity and accountability.

   In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, we had a brief experience of what could have been an enormously positive aftermath. A genuine wave of fellowship at home—a reaffirmation of the unum in e pluribus unum—was met with an outpouring of support from abroad. We might have built  an enduring monument to those we lost by reinforcing those twin sentiments: by repairing our tattered national unity at home and engaging in an era of co-operative enterprise abroad.

    The fact that we did neither is an indictment of our tragically flawed and inadequate national leadership, of course, but it is also a sign of troubling systemic failure, without which politicians would have been unable to use the events of 9-11 in the service of partisanship, ideology and power. 

    Let’s face it: for far too long, Americans have viewed the concept of civic virtue as “quaint” (to borrow a phrase from our less-than-estimable Attorney General). We have left governing to the few public-spirited individuals willing to undergo the intrusiveness, pettiness and rancor that passes for the electoral process these days. One result has been that along with the public-spirited we have attracted the venal and power-hungry to what used to be called, without irony, public service.

    And when we get the government we deserve, the government we have failed to monitor or control, the government that is increasingly unaccountable, we are shocked! Shocked!

    Do we have a state legislature that has refused to act on consolodation and streamlining of local government, refused to manage our unwieldy and unequal tax system? Let’s spend our energies arguing about daylight savings time.

    Do we have a national government that is bankrupting our grandchildren, isolating us globally, fixated on undermining our constitutional checks and balances? Let’s gossip about the latest sex scandal.

    At the end of the day, we can’t escape responsibility by blaming the Republicans, the Democrats, or the media. Harry Truman to the contrary, the buck stops with us.

    We can’t recapture the window of opportunity that opened in the wake of 9-11. That window is closed. But we can reclaim the concept of civic virtue that is essential to protecting the rule of law—the powerful idea that legitimate democratic governments are responsive to their citizens, but citizens are responsible for creating responsive governments.

    If we don’t rise up to demand a return of accountability—if we just sit on the couch and watch the latest iteration of “American Idol” or the further adventures of Paris the Inane—we will have lost a whole lot more than the twin towers and the people who worked there.

    We will have lost America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As sure as the sun comes up in the morning, Indiana citizens can be counted on to grouse about taxes. While the complaints usually focus on how much we pay (no matter what the rate, it’s too much), I have a theory that it isn’t the absolute amount that gripes us. It’s whether others are paying their fair share, and above all, it’s what our taxes are being used for.

 

I may be idiosyncratic, but I’m very willing to pay taxes—my “civic dues”—for services I think government ought to be providing: police, fire and environmental protection, streets and sewers and parks. Individual lists may differ. It all comes down to what we think government’s job is.

 

Which brings me to Mitch Roob and the good folks over at Family and Children’s Services.

 

FSSA has been sued by the Freedom From Religion Foundation for paying a “Pastor” (the quotes are because according to the Star, the gentleman in question appears to have simply declared himself to be such—he lacks any credentials other than his own say-so) to provide “spiritual counseling” to the employees of that government agency. According to the Complaint, the Pastor was hired—for $60,000 a year!—to “encourage a faithful environment in the workplace.”

 

Why in the world is Indiana spending our tax dollars to provide “a faithful environment” for state employees? Put aside, for the moment, that this practice is likely a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Put aside the question of how a very Christian pastor will address the “spiritual needs” of Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan or freethinking employees. Even put aside the fact that this particular Pastor holds two other jobs and rarely shows up. Looking at it solely from the standpoint of what a government agency like FSSA is supposed to do, it is inexplicable.

 

Caseworkers at FSSA are among the most poorly paid and overworked members of the state workforce, as numerous studies have confirmed. Their clients are Indiana’s poorest and most disadvantaged citizens. Those clients have seen dramatic cutbacks in services over the past several years. The poor pay of caseworkers and pitiful level of benefits are routinely justified by a (genuine) lack of adequate funding.

 

So we violate the U.S. Constitution to pay a part-time “chaplain” nearly three times what we pay a caseworker, so that he can provide those caseworkers with a “faithful environment”?  

 

I may be a voice in the wilderness here, but I am quite willing to pay taxes that are used to help Indiana’s poor children and disabled adults, or to provide assistance to struggling Indiana families. I am equally willing to pay taxes to provide state employees who are doing proper government work with a living wage and manageable workloads. But if those employees want “spiritual counseling,” it is easily available from their own Pastors, Rabbis or Imans, at no cost to the taxpayers of Indiana.

 

If this is how my tax money is being spent, then yes, my taxes are too high.

 

    

 

 

 

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Partisan apologists for the Bush administration—joined by cynics of all political persuasions—shrug off recent disclosures about the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. Just politics as usual, they yawn. Those discharged served “at the pleasure of the President,” and can be fired for no reason at all, so what’s the big deal?

 

Bud Cummins, one of the eight fired Prosecutors, recently answered that question. In an article in Salon, he acknowledged, “The president had an absolute right to fire us. We served at his pleasure.” But Cummins went on to explain the damage that is done when dismissal is based upon the prosecutor’s unwillingness to break the rules to “help” favored politicians.

 

“Put simply, the Department of Justice lives on credibility. When a federal prosecutor sends FBI agents to your brother’s house with an arrest warrant, demonstrating an intention to take away years of his liberty, separate him from his family, and take away his property, you and the public at large must have absolute confidence that the sole reason for those actions is that there was substantial evidence to suggest that your brother intentionally committed a federal crime. Everyone must have confidence that the prosecutor exercised his or her vast discretion in a neutral and nonpartisan pursuit of the facts and the law.”

 

We might draw an analogy to judicial selection. Everyone understands that the party in power can appoint federal judges whose judicial philosophy it favors. Would we then shrug our shoulders and say “politics as usual” if judicial appointments went to people who had promised in advance to rule on cases the way the administration wanted? Of course not. Choosing someone with a compatible judicial philosophy is one thing;  choosing someone who is corrupt is another.

 

Joseph D. Rich served in the Justice Department for 35 years, and was chief of the voting rights section from 1999 to 2005. As he recently wrote in the LA Times, he worked under Attorneys General with very different political philosophies, from “John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.” Not so the Bush Administration, which hired and fired solely on the basis of political loyalty.

 

“I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.”

 

The evidence we’ve seen so far suggests that prosecutors were dismissed because they refused to play politics—to bring bogus charges against Democrats, or stop investigating high-ranking Republicans. That’s bad enough—but what does that suggest about the U.S. Attorneys who were not fired? Their reputations have also been sullied, in most cases unfairly, because it is impossible not to wonder whether they kept their positions by “playing ball.”

 

When the White House trades justice for power, who can you trust?

 

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Over the past few years, conservative members of Congress have devoted considerable energy to efforts to repeal the Estate Tax. An expensive PR campaign has hammered at the awful unfairness of the “Death Tax.” People unfamiliar with the tax and its application have been led to believe that heirs are routinely having to sell the family farm to pay confiscatory taxes. They’d probably be surprised to learn that 99 percent of estates pay no estate tax at all. 

 

Among the 1% of estates that do pay these taxes, the "effective" tax rate — that is, the actual percentage of the estate that is paid in taxes — averaged about 20 percent in 2005 (the latest year for which IRS data are available), far below the statutory rate of 48 percent. 

 

Although few families pay, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that repeal would reduce tax revenues by a trillion dollars in the first ten years. That’s because the 1% of Americans who do pay the tax are very, very wealthy.

 

Meanwhile, as policymakers have argued whether the Estate tax imposes an unfair burden on our wealthiest citizens, they have been shockingly unmoved by a far more confiscatory and widespread “death tax”—the requirement that elderly citizens entering nursing homes impoverish themselves before Medicaid will pay for their care.

 

Millions of older Americans who have worked and paid taxes their whole lives cannot afford the ever-escalating costs of long-term care. Very few insurance policies cover these costs, and those that do are far too expensive for most middle-class retirees.

 

Before these vulnerable Americans can receive the services they need, federal law requires that they “spend down” their assets. That is, they must apply virtually everything they have to payment of the initial nursing home charges. Once they no longer have assets, medicaid will pick up the costs. There are few exceptions: prepaid funeral expenses, or a home that remains occupied by a spouse. Over six million elderly Americans are currently receiving Medicaid. All of those seniors have thus paid the “tax”—i.e. the spend-down. Its “effective rate” is 100%. 

 

My mother spent her last years in a nursing home. Many of the residents had worked hard their entire lives. Like the wealthy, most had hoped to pass their possessions and savings on to their children and grandchildren. Unlike the wealthy, they couldn’t afford estate planners and lawyers to help them shelter their assets and minimize the impact of federal rules. Their savings were gone, and all too often their pride and independence had vanished with the money.

 

Some wealthy Americans believe this state of affairs is wrong. They include Warren  Buffett, George Soros and William Gates, Sr. They have urged Congress to reject President Bush’s push to repeal estate taxes, arguing that "repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America‘s millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet."

 

In other words, agonize less over burdening George Soros, and worry more about wiping out Mr. Average Citizen.

   

 

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