Ballard’s Brand of Socialism

This morning, Matt Tully criticized Melina Kennedy’s campaign for recent, negative ads. Essentially, he said that she had already demonstrated that she was the superior candidate, and that the ads were beneath her–that Ballard, whatever his deficiencies, is a decent guy and didn’t deserve the negative characterizations.

I agree with Tully about negative ads, which are never nuanced arguments about policy. I don’t watch much live television, and thanks to TIVO, rarely watch campaign ads, but I’ve seen distasteful stuff from both campaigns, and we all know why: they work. That’s not an endorsement of the tactic, just a recognition of reality.

And the reality that the Kennedy campaign has not–and probably cannot–address is that, yes, Ballard is a decent guy, but so clueless that he is not really running the city. From what my remaining friends in the GOP tell me, soon after his surprising election, the “usual suspects” swooped in to “help” the neophyte and not-so-incidentally help themselves at taxpayer expense.

I’ve written before about the parking meter fiasco that enriched ACS (a company closely tied to the Mayor’s closest advisers), and I won’t belabor that fifty-year giveaway again (although from my point of view, it is reason enough to vote for Melina Kennedy).

I haven’t previously examined the equally scandalous deal struck for the parking garage in Broad Ripple. As Paul Ogden has amply documented, this is yet another example of what I’ve come to call “Ballard socialism.” The basic story is that taxpayers are paying to build a garage that the city then simply gives to the developer. We pay 6.35 million for a facility that will be owned 100% by Keystone Development (where Paul Okeson, former Deputy Mayor in the Ballard Administration, now works). The developer gets 100% of the parking revenues and 100% of the rent from the commercial space.

As Ogden points out, there is no requirement that the developer put a single penny into this deal.

Why do I call this “Ballard socialism”? Socialism is a term that simply means spreading the cost–we share costs of such services as police and fire protection among all of us, via taxes; we pool the costs of automobile accidents via insurance. But in the Ballard Administration, as a disillusioned Republican friend of mine recently complained, we turn this time-honored approach on its head. We socialize the risk–but we privatize the profits.

I am perfectly willing to believe that Greg Ballard does not understand the details of these sweetheart contracts. But he’s the Mayor, and it is not unfair to hold him responsible for the actions of his administration–actions that will cost the city dearly in an era of diminishing resources.

Cynics will say that city government has always operated to benefit political insiders, and it’s true that people who know people always have an edge. But I’ve lived in Indianapolis my whole adult life; I’ve been involved in both Republican and Democratic politics since I was twenty, and I have never seen anything on this scale. Whether it’s corruption or ineptitude, we need to clean house.

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The Free Rider Problem

Yesterday I received my copy of PA Times–a publication that is admittedly unlikely to be on the bookshelves of those who read this blog. It’s issued by the Association for Public Administration, and it has articles that appeal primarily to geeks like me who study how governments work.

The article that caught my attention–and raised my ire–was all about “crowd-funding” government.

Crowd-funding, like crowd-sourcing, is a phenomenon of the internet. People wanting to raise funds for new businesses, or for charitable efforts, use the web to solicit many small investors or donors, rather than attempting to raise capital from banks (many would not be “bankable”) or large amounts from big donors. That’s creative, and I applaud the entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations that are using that new tool.

But now, according to the article, the same approach is being taken by cash-strapped units of government to raise money for public projects. And I have a big problem with that.

Let me make one thing clear: I do not oppose efforts to trim government spending by revisiting what government does. Although citizens would passionately disagree over the propriety of having this or that task done by government, that is a discussion we should be having. (I would vote to discontinue the drug war in its current form, for example. Others might argue that local government ought not provide golf courses, or other recreational services.)

Once government at any level assumes responsibility for providing a service that benefits all its constituents, however, all of us need to pay our share to support those services. And let’s be honest about what constitutes “benefit.” My children aren’t in the public school system any more, but I benefit in numerous ways from living in a community where people are educated. I also share the disadvantages of a school system that is below par. A good school system adds value to my property, it helps my community attract good jobs, etc.

A government agency that inspects the chicken before my local Kroger can sell it, another that monitors air and water quality and yet another that keeps merchants from peddling unsafe devices all benefit me. I benefit from paved streets and traffic signals, from parks I can walk in, from zoning laws that keep someone from building a strip bar in my neighborhood…Well, you get the picture.

If these government functions are financed by contributions, rather than taxes, we have the classic “free rider” problem. The people who are unwilling to pay their fair share benefit equally with those who do pay. This is the dirty little secret that the rabidly anti-tax folks want to ignore.

In a sane world, citizens would decide by majority vote just what services government ought to provide. Then they would fund those services through a system of fair taxation. We can and should debate just what role government must play in our communities, and we can and should have robust arguments about the sort of tax system that is fair and equitable. We can and should demand efficient and businesslike management of our government agencies.

But when we reorder our common institutions to satisfy the selfish, when we burden those who care about their neighbors and neighborhoods in order that others can enjoy the benefits of government without bearing their fair share of the costs, we’ve truly lost any sense of what it means to build communities.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the last thing I want on my tombstone is the epitaph “free rider.”

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Yielding My Time/Space to Paul Ogden

While I don’t always agree with his policy prescriptions, I consider Paul Ogden one of the most thoughtful and consistent of Indianaplis’ local bloggers.

His post this morning responds to this morning’s headline trumpeting a ‘drug bust’ and expands upon my post drawing parallels to prohibition. Accordingly, I am, as they say in Congress, yielding my time to the gentleman from Ogden on Politics. Ponder his message, with which I agree 100%.

We Never Learn….

Thanks to the magic of TIVO, Bob and I were able to watch the entire six hours of Ken Burns’ “Prohibition”–we just watched the last 2-hour episode last night. I defy anyone to watch this documentary without recognizing the parallels with our contemporary drug war; they practically jump out of the screen and punch the viewer.

Prohibition was one of those periodic efforts made by still-Puritan Americans to use the power of government to ensure the “good behavior” of their neighbors. (The Puritans, of course, get to define “good behavior.”) As we all know, it was a disaster, which is why it was the only Constitutional Amendment ever repealed. Crime and murder rates rose exponentially, corruption was rampant, enforcement was selective–and more people drank during prohibition than either before or after.

What is less often recognized is how significantly prohibition enabled the growth of the federal government’s infrastructure. Depending upon your point of view, that may be good or bad, but it’s ironic. As historians and political scientists have demonstrated, the “morality police” tend to be proponents of local control.

What is so discouraging about this exploration of our “great experiment” is that we have learned nothing. The only difference between alcohol and drug prohibition is that the former was constitutionalized. Otherwise, we are seeing precisely the same results. When a substance is forbidden, not only do people crave it, they are willing to spend more to obtain it, consistent with the risk involved. So we have more crime, more corruption, and (if experiments in countries like Portugal are any indication) more drug use.

At the end of the documentary, someone pointed to the obvious: when a substance is outlawed, anyone willing to break the law can get it. When it is legal, it can be regulated–the government can ensure that it isn’t adulterated with dangerous additives, that it is kept away from children, etc. As the noted libertarian Peter McWilliams once put it, “When was the last time you saw the owner of the local liquor store hanging around the schoolyard whispering “Hey, kid–just got in a new shipment of Stoli!”?

How many more billions of dollars must we waste, how many more lives must we ruin, how many more countries must we decimate before we re-learn prohibition’s lesson?/

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Getting From Here to There

In his latest column, urbanist Neal Peirce recounts the deteriorating condition of mass transit in the U.S., and details the ways in which that deterioration–if left unattended–will further depress the economy and damage the environment. It’s a gloomy picture, not just because it is clearly accurate, but because our political system is in the thrall of people who find reality inconvenient, and are determined to ignore real problems in favor of culture war diatribes against gays, immigrants and women’s reproductive rights.

Fix transit? How pedestrian (terrible pun intended)!

One of the few positive elements in this otherwise gloomy state of affairs is the steady growth in the number of people who bike rather than drive–to work, to do errands, and of course, for recreation.

As Jay Walljasper (no, I did NOT make up that name) has recently reported, biking has even taken hold in places where the climate doesn’t seem hospitable. He chronicles the things that Minneapolis, of all places, has done to encourage the growth of people who pedal, and there is a lesson for Indianapolis here.

“In a city where bicyclists of all ages and backgrounds already ride recreational trails the goal is to encourage people to hop on their bikes for commuting or short trips. This is not a far-fetched dream, since nationally half of all automobile trips are three miles or less—a distance easily covered on bike in twenty minutes.

To make that happen, Minneapolis is committed to creating separate rights-of-way for bikes wherever feasible — which helps explain why the city defies trends of bicyclists as overwhelmingly male. While only a quarter of riders are women nationally, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reports 37 percent in Minneapolis.

Research shows that most people — including many women, families and older citizens — are wary of biking alongside motor vehicles on busy streets. Having the option to ride apart from heavy traffic encourages more people to try out biking as a form of transportation.

Since the 1970s Dutch planners have separated bicyclists from motor vehicles on most arterial streets, with impressive results. Women now make up 55 percent of two-wheel traffic and citizens over 55 ride in numbers slightly higher than the national average.”

The lesson here is that how governments do things is every bit as important as what they choose to do.

Here in Indianapolis, one of the things the Ballard Administration has actually done right is focus on expanding bicycling. The Mayor has received a good deal of –deserved–commendation for extending bike lanes. But as a female rider, I can certainly attest to the accuracy of Walljasper’s report on the importance of separating those lanes from busy streets. Even my husband, a far more intrepid biker than I will ever be, tries to avoid the bike lanes that take riders across Michigan and New York Streets alongside speeding automobiles that far too frequently seem intent on running bikes off the road. A colleague of mine who doesn’t own a car, and commutes everywhere by bicycle, was seriously injured when a car sideswiped her last year.

As unglamorous as infrastructure may be, our elected officials need to learn to do things the right way. Just as it isn’t enough to pave roads if you don’t maintain them, it isn’t enough to slap some paint on an existing street and call it a bike lane.

So I’ll give Ballard an A for effort, but a D for execution. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much a description of his last four years.

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