Management versus Leadership

Mayor Ballard’s much-debated 50-year contract with ACS to manage Indianapolis’ parking infrastructure squeaked through the City-County Council, thanks to the deciding vote cast by Council President Ryan Vaughn, who refused to recuse himself even though his law firm represents ACS.

As a national commentator wrote to Bill Hudnut after that vote, the fact that Indianapolis gave an insider a sweetheart deal is less distressing than the fact that this transaction was yet another piece of a longer-term trend. “When you were Mayor, it seemed to me that the community leadership was really committed to downtown and the City, to the point where they even invested their own cash to make it happen, such as the corporations that helped fund Circle Centre Mall. Today, it’s pretty much a portion of the community elite using government simply to pull money out of the City.  I’m not sensing that there’s the same commitment to the City and its future as there once was.”

My husband and I both served in the Hudnut Administration (we met there), and we can still recall the energy and excitement of being part of a team that was working to create a new Indianapolis.  We were partners with local business and civic leaders who were equally invested in that future.

A local civic leader I admire believes there is an important distinction between leadership and management: as he notes, cities must operate in a businesslike fashion, but they aren’t simply businesses requiring managers.  Leaders understand that a city is the sum of the human values that make it up, the values that give cities their character, their “soul.”

For those who believe that there is no such thing as a city soul, or an identifiable civic culture, who think that this is all soft-headed romanticism, Neal Peirce has news for you: Civic culture drives economic development and fiscal health.

“We know the old and familiar way—grant tax subsidies or other special favors to nail down new office or factory prospects. Local tax bases take a hit and all taxpayers end up subsidizing the favored businesses. But to draw both investment and talented individuals—demonstrably the base of strong economies in today’s globalizing world—cities might focus more intensely on the qualities that most prominently build residents’ attachments to their communities.”

Peirce cites a key finding from three years of Gallup polling: what drives attachment to a community is not “the usual suspects” like jobs, the economy or even public safety.  While these things are important, “soft” quality of life factors—social offerings, openness, aesthetics and education (especially the presence of colleges and universities) drive attachment.

Communities scoring well in these categories also have higher rates of economic growth. The theory is that when people feel more attached to their communities, they spend time and money there, are more productive, and tend to be more entrepreneurial.

Such communities develop when people elect leaders concerned with the greater good, rather than managers interested in cutting deals with favored insiders.

Mother, May I?

Every so often, residents of Indiana’s cities and towns are forcibly reminded that we don’t have the right to govern ourselves—that we are not, to use the legal terminology, a “home rule” state. Instead, Indiana municipalities are creatures of state law, and absolutely subject to the whims, ideologies, policy preferences and egos of state lawmakers. We may vote for a mayor and City-County Council, but those holding such offices must go hat in hand to the state for permission to do anything not specifically authorized by state statute.

Repeated efforts over the years to make Indiana a home-rule state have failed, and thanks to the recent vote putting tax caps into the constitution, the situation will only get worse. Those who control the purse-strings control policy.

The most recent evidence of our local impotence is the legislative response to Indianapolis’ request to hold a referendum on mass transit. After years of studies and debate, a broad, bipartisan coalition of Indianapolis’ business, political and civic leaders has rolled out a plan to upgrade our inadequate transit system. That plan requires revenue not available from current taxes, and the local committee proposed to put the question to those of us who live within the area to be served; we would vote on whether to tax ourselves to provide better service.

The immediate legislative reaction was insufferably paternalistic: “we don’t think the time is right to allow you to decide this for yourselves.”

There are two issues here. First, improving transportation is critical to the economic health of central Indiana. Over the years, Indianapolis and central Indiana have generated more jobs, and attracted more residents, than other sections of the state. That good performance has been largely due to an attractive quality of life. Our transportation deficit threatens that quality of life, and the inability of workers to get to their places of employment conveniently and inexpensively threatens our ability to attract new employers and our continued economic health. This is hardly news; city leaders have spent years debating what sort of system we need. It is past time to fish or cut bait.

The second issue is our right to decide matters of local importance for ourselves.

It is ironic that the same state legislators and officeholders who complain bitterly when Indiana has to comply with regulations, programs and unfunded mandates from Washington see nothing wrong with telling local governments what they can and cannot do.

When a measure is proposed that concerns Indianapolis and central Indiana, that measure should be decided by the residents of Indianapolis and central Indiana. There is an argument to be made that an improved transit system, by generating economic growth, would also improve state tax revenues, but the benefits of the proposed system would basically be limited to those who live in central Indiana.  We are also the ones who would bear the costs.

We may make a good decision or a poor one, but it is a decision that should be ours to make.

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Grow Old Along With Me…

When my son first came out, I vividly remember my reaction: he will grow old with no one to care for him—no children or spouse to be there for him. He will be alone.

It made me incredibly sad.

In the years since, I’ve recognized that even though “Mr. Picky” has no partner, he has a huge “family of choice.” He is a very social being, and he has an enormous circle of very good friends. And of course, he has his brothers and sisters, not to mention the nieces and nephews who adore him.

And yet.

A good friend of mine committed suicide this year. He too had many friends—although honesty compels me to acknowledge that he was more guarded, more private, than my son. Still, I couldn’t help thinking: he didn’t have a significant other, he didn’t have anyone truly close to whom he could turn in moments of despair. What if….??

Which brings me to a recent study conducted by a whole raft of very impressive organizations—the LGBT Movement Advancement Project, SAGE (Seniors and Advocates for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders), the American Society on Aging, the Center for American Progress, and the National Senior Citizens Law Center. The study confirmed (as so many do) something we all instinctively know:  LGBT seniors face unique challenges that make successful aging much more difficult for them than it is for those of us who are heterosexual. (And let me assure you, as a woman aging far more rapidly than I am comfortable with, it isn’t all that easy for us heteros.)

The study found that the effects of social stigma and prejudices—past and present—have made it much more difficult for members of the LGBT community to save for retirement. It also found that the need to rely on “families of choice” for care and support made the availability of that care and support far more “iffy.” (Granted, the report didn’t use terminology like “iffy,” but that was what it meant.)

More important by far, LGBT seniors face continued unequal treatment under the law. Rules surrounding everything from hospital visits to inheritance rights elevate the legal status of blood relatives over long-term partners, even in cases where those “blood” relatives have disowned, belittled, demeaned and disparaged the individual involved. Take just one example: Medicaid, the largest funder by far of long-term care, has spousal impoverishment protections that simply do not apply to GLBT unions. The result is that the healthy partner in such unions may be left homeless and/or penniless. The study notes that the lack of spousal benefits in Social Security can cost an elderly LGBT person as much as $14,000 a year. Tax-qualified retirement plans have punitive rules that don’t apply to heterosexual couples. And that same disparity applies to employment pensions, health insurance benefits for retirees, estate and inheritance taxes, and even veterans’ benefits.

These inequities are the result of a society that has stubbornly resisted applying the principal of equal protection of the law to gay and lesbian people.

Right now, many in the gay community are focused upon issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and same-sex marriage. Those are very important issues—especially marriage, the recognition of which would go a long way toward ameliorating the gross unfairness this study documents. But sometimes it is a good idea to take the long view—to stand back and recognize the lifetime effects of the unfair, unequal and prejudicial legal environment we inhabit.

My son has assured me that he does not entertain suicidal impulses, and that he appreciates and values both his blood family and his large, extended “family of choice.” And I know he is sincere. I know he is loved—and I know that he knows it too.  And he is still young; he may yet find someone who meets his exacting specifications.

But I’d feel a lot better if we had a fairer legal system, and a fairer society, for him to grow old in.

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The Crux of the Matter

As Indianapolis prepares to enter into a 50 year contract with ACS, under which it will hand over management of this asset–and an estimated 1.25 billion dollars that would otherwise come to the City during that period–I thought I’d share an observation from my son, made in response to a letter from the Mayor’s office to City Council members, defending the proposal against criticisms. I think he gets to the heart of the matter.

“Having scanned the administration’s response to the analysis of the non-partisan Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), and particularly the Administration’s view that it is leveraging a “non-core asset” (parking meters), it finally struck me why the Mayor continues to press this deal to give so much money, and particularly control, to ACS.  Ultimately, there is one glaring analytical flaw, which is really at the heart of the City’s analysis: The Administration fundamentally doesn’t understand the “value” and “purpose” of the asset it is selling. This leads to a fundamental error in the financial terms and structure of the deal and explains why the city is willing to give away so much in the deal.

The Administration’s ignorance of the true value of the parking meter assets is evident in its label of parking infrastructure as “non-core assets.”  From a revenue raising perspective, they are right in a very limited sense: the city hasn’t used parking meters as a “core” revenue raising tool.  But as Aaron Renn has forcefully argued, parking meters and control of rights-of-way are NOT, first and foremost, revenue raising tools/powers, but instead are central or “core” to a city’s ability to plan and control its use of public space and, ultimately, to control and encourage economic development. The Administration’s analysis actually ignores the “core value” of parking meter assets to the city: that is, control over parking meters gives the city control over how it manages development, transportation, land-use, etc.  And by ignoring this “core value,” or by failing to see the value in it, the Administration is failing to properly value the asset…. Or to fully understand and protect those other rights and benefits that are tied to control of its rights of way.  (It’s kind of like a landowner selling a plot of land that he thinks is barren or only useful on the surface, when there are mineral/oil rights below ground that he is giving up without receiving value.) It’s the City’s ignorance of the true value of the asset that is leading it to agree to terms that it should never agree to.

As some councillors have observed in their very well-stated remarks, the City is not simply striking a very bad deal – it is striking a deal that future councils and future administrations will be effectively unable to undo and will have to live with for decades… As Bill Hudnut observed a few weeks ago in an interview with WTHR, there is no need for the city to give up so much revenue or control.

There are other flaws in the analysis forwarded by Mr. Cochran to City Councillors, but perhaps the most telling one is that they apparently don’t understand the true value of the asset they are selling and so, as day follows night, they have incorrectly valued it and placed inappropriate restrictions on it’s future use.”

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Sanity And Taxes

A couple of weeks ago, fifty-five assorted residents of Indianapolis boarded a chartered bus and headed to Washington, D.C. for the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert “Rally for Sanity.”  It was a pretty diverse group—college students and retirees, black and white, varying religions and political parties—but we all wanted to demonstrate that the cable shouters, insult-throwers and nasty political ads dominating the airwaves don’t represent most Americans.

There were plenty of clever signs on display, but two more serious ones summed up what I think was the “message” of the Rally. One said “Turn Your Caps-Lock Off!” And the other read, “I pay taxes because I’m an adult and that’s the way it works.”

Ah, taxes. We have just emerged from an election season that was high on heat and low on light. Candidates of both parties were on my television—with their “caps-locks” on—promising to deliver services and balance budgets while cutting—or at least not raising—taxes. (On those rare occasions when a reporter challenged a candidate to identify what cuts he would make to accomplish this miracle, the lack of response was revealing.)

Here in Indiana, voters overwhelmingly agreed to place property tax caps in the state constitution, despite the fact that the negative consequences of the statutory caps are already being felt. The political golden rule—“He who has the gold, rules”—has shifted spending authority to the state, and made it much more difficult for local governments to deliver even basic services.

Mayors are desperate. They have fewer resources with which to meet the demands of citizens who want their public services improved, but who don’t want to pay for them.

Some—like Mayor Ballard—resort to gimmicks like the proposed contract with ACS to take over the city’s parking meters for fifty years. In return for giving away significant future revenues, the city will get some up-front money; more important, it will contract away its responsibility for deciding whether and when to raise parking fees.

Stripped of all the fancy rhetoric, this is best understood as a deal to outsource the taxing power. That is what the state did with the Toll Road. Recognizing that the legislature lacked the political will to raise tolls, the Daniels Administration “sold” the right to do so. That is also what motivated the sale of the Water Company to Citizens Gas; ratepayers essentially will be “taxed” in order to recover the up-front payment that is being used to pave streets and repair sidewalks.

Citizens, as a public trust, may prove to be a more prudent operator than the city. The parking proposal has no obvious merits and many obvious drawbacks. But good deals or bad, this is not the way adults make decisions.  Eventually, services must be paid for. That doesn’t mean we cannot deliberate over the proper type of tax, or who should pay it, or how high it needs to be. But games cost more than taxes in the long run.

Adults know that.