TMI

I have been working on an upcoming speech on government accountability, and I have been mulling over a seeming contradiction. In our public management courses here at SPEA, we stress the importance of transparency–and the reason for the First Amendment’s specific grant of freedom to the press/media. It stands to reason that journalists need to watch government officials and activities, investigate possible wrongdoing, and then report what they find to the voters. Journalists–whatever their warts–were considered essential to accountability, because they supplied the information needed to keep citizens informed and government agencies accountable.

Today, we have more information available than ever before–and less accountability. Why? I think it is because we have lost what Clay Shirkey has called “the journalism of verification.” Yes, there are mountains, oceans of information available to us. But we have no uniformly trusted source to verify its accuracy. Between the journalism of distraction–who slept with whom, how to groom your pet, who celebrity X is dating now, etc. etc.–and ‘news’ that is really just political propaganda, the sheer volume of sources competing for our eyes and ears has drowned out the news that is both verified and necessary to our ability to hold government accountable.

As Shirkey also noted,  “the transformation of newspapers from enterprises devoted to objective reporting to a cluster of communities, each engaged in its own kind of ‘news’–and each with its own set of ‘truths’–will mean the loss of a single national narrative and agreed upon set of facts.” Daniel Moynahan famously said that we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. Evidently, he was wrong.

TMI–too much information.  And much too much misinformation.

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Ballard Administration, Part 2

After my post yesterday, I got an email from a former Republican who is evidently no fan of our Accidental Mayor.

He had read the recent IBJ article–which he characterized as a “puff piece”–in which the reporter uncritically repeated the administration’s claim that the parking meters are “netting” additional revenues since they were privatized in a 50-year deal  with ACS.  As he wrote, the claim doesn’t hold up under even cursory scrutiny.

The IBJ wrote, in part:  “Total revenue from meter operations grew to $1.7 million in the quarter ended June 30 from $1.3 million in the same time frame a year ago. The city’s share of that revenue totaled $498,273, compared with $108,265 it made from meter operations from March through June a year ago—a whopping 360-percent increase.”

As my friend pointed out in his email, the IBJ simply ignored a number of issues, most significantly that these numbers were “apples and oranges” and accepted the 360% “increase” at face value, without noting the following: (1) Hours were increased from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM every night  and ACS added a day to the week (it used to be Mon.-Fri., now it is Mon-Sat.); (2)  the rate increase by $0.25/hour in Broad Ripple and most of downtown.  Clearly, these increases would yield substantially more revenue whether ACS or the City had increased hours and raised rates–and if we hadn’t privatized the meters, the City would keep all of the increased revenues after the relatively modest investment in new meter technology.

The final point made in the email was that the math makes no sense: As he wrote, “According to the IBJ, the administration claims that revenues increased a total of $400,000 (from $1.3MM to $1.7MM) – which is a total increase in revenues of 30% ($400K over $1.3 million) TOTAL; however, the IBJ reports that the City’s revenues went from $108K to $498K – something doesn’t add up here… I think the IBJ is comparing apples and oranges (i.e., comparing (A) the City’s old “net-of-all-expenses” revenues after all costs and before increases in rates and hours, against (B) the City’s gross revenues under the ACS deal after increases in rates and hours that they could have instituted without sharing revenue with ACS), and even more significantly, (B) not asking what in my mind is the most pertinent question: HOW MUCH HAS THE CITY HAD TO CREDIT OR GIVE BACK TO ACS DUE TO BAGGED METERS?   Do the “totals” reported exclude the amounts the city is contractually obligated to remit to ACS as compensation for bagging meters under the terms of the contract?. ”

The email raises some pretty important questions, to which I’d add another. There is a rumor floating around that in addition to control of our parking meters, the City also handed over to ACS the collection of past years’ parking fines that remain uncollected. Does anyone know whether this is true, and–if it is–whether receipts from those collections are part of the reported numbers?

I do wish Indianapolis still had real reporters covering government……

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THIS is Troubling……

The Indianapolis Times posted a fairly lengthy piece today devoted to some troubling questions raised by the award of city contracts to Ballard’s largest contributors. For example, this paragraph:

“Ballard Raised More Than $1.3 Million From Contributors Who Have Received $300 Million In Contracts: Ballard has received $1,368,693 in contributions to his reelection campaign from businesses and/or the employees of those businesses contracted with the city while in office. The total sum of the contracts those businesses have had with the city is $309,476,510. (Marion County Election Board, Ballard Campaign Finance Reports, Indianapolis Contract Database)”

Now, the Times is a Democratic blog, and it can be expected to spin reports to make Republicans look bad, just as Republican leaning blogs can be expected to spin in contrary direction. But if these numbers–and others reported in the same post-are accurate, this behavior raises still more ethical issues for an administration that is facing several other allegations of impropriety. There’s the garage deal in Broad Ripple, the lease of space in Eastgate, and the shenanigans that allowed the parking meter deal to squeak through by one vote (cast by a member of the contractor’s law firm…).

Can we spell “appearance of impropriety”?

Have I Got a Revenue Enhancement for You!

I’ve been pondering the arguments about how to reduce the national debt, and I have a proposal. Dump the drug war.

The fiscal consequences of our current policies are staggering. While other estimates have been as high as 88 billion, an economics professor at Harvard reported in 2005 that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcohol would produce combined savings and tax revenues between $10 and $14 billion per year.  Even that’s not chump change. (Estimates from a variety of sources are that marijuana prohibition costs U.S. taxpayers nearly $42 billion dollars a year in criminal justice costs and lost tax revenues alone. This is just from marijuana prohibition—not efforts to control harder drugs.) As of August 19th of this year, state and federal governments together had spent $25, 969,752,344 on an effort that has–as the AP recently reported–has failed to meet any of its goals. The federal government alone spends approximately 500 dollars a second on drug prohibition.

Then there are the opportunity costs. Indiana used to have a robust hemp industry. Hemp is an enormously versatile and useful product that cannot be smoked or used as a recreational drug, but our indiscriminate policies outlaw its growth. They also prohibit use of marijuana to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy. And the drug war diverts desperately needed dollars from serious crime-control efforts and other government programs.Estimates are that the money spent annually on the drug war would pay for a million additional teachers.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is an organization formed by law enforcement professionals–current and former police officers, sheriffs, prosecutors and judges. These are people who have seen the drug war up close and ugly, and their message is simple: it has been a costly disaster. Just as with America’s prior experiment with alcohol prohibition, the result has been policies that have created a set of perverse incentives that have made drug dealing so profitable that they outweigh the prospects of being caught. Last year the FBI reported that there is a drug arrest every 19 seconds in the US, and 82% of those were for simple possession. That isn’t surprising, since government estimates are that 47% of Americans over the age of 12 admit to using illegal drugs–mostly marijuana, which is no more harmful than those legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

There is a copious academic literature documenting the failure of American drug prohibition–and wide consensus on the magnitude of its social and human costs. There is also wide recognition that politicians of both parties are loathe to act on the basis of evidence when that evidence contradicts their ideology or (heaven forbid) threatens their electability by causing them to be seen as insufficiently concerned about law and order. On the other hand,  the country’s current fiscal crisis may finally provide a rationale for doing what most students of the issue have long advocated: discard a policy that has never worked. Decriminalize, tax and regulate marijuana, and focus on treatment and prevention for those with genuine addictions. (Ironically, federal law does not distinguish between use and abuse: it simply declares that any use of a substance that has been declared illegal is a crime, no matter how sporadic or casual the use. This “zero tolerance policy” has cost us a fortune–on average, it costs $25,251 to incarcerate a federal prisoner for one year.) Surely, even the most rabidly anti-tax Republicans would not object to taxing another “sin.”

Over the past 30+ years, we have ignored the numerous books, scholarly studies and organizations advocating the repeal of drug prohibition. Perhaps the current focus on national financial issues can help us achieve both savings and sanity.

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Gender Matters

Back in 1980, when Republicans were members of a political party and not a religion, I was the Republican candidate for Congress from Indiana’s (then) eleventh district. In 1980, it was still comparatively unusual for either party to run a woman, and I had plenty of opportunity to grit my teeth over the tendency of reporters to focus on what I was wearing rather than what I was saying. My Washington-based consultant advised me to “look tough,” so that my gender would not be read as feminine softness–advice that, in retrospect, probably just made me look unpleasant.

In the 30+ years since that campaign, women have arguably made considerable progress–but we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think  sexism still frames political contests. Gender bias remains, but it manifests itself more subtly. In 2008, Sarah Palin tried to sell herself as a conservative version of a feminist, but that claim rang hollow to real feminists for many reasons, not the least of which was that much of her support was based upon her undeniable good looks. I am firmly of the opinion that neither Palin nor Bachmann would have achieved political prominence had they looked like Janet Reno.

Which brings me to an intriguing, if depressing, study recently reported in the Journal of Religion and Politics.

The authors were investigating the oft-noted tendency of today’s religiously conservative candidates to use “dog whistles”–phrases that don’t register with the more secular among us, but that signal to the extremely religious that the candidate is one of them. (George W. Bush was a master at this.) They found, however, that this tactic was more effective when used by male candidates that when it was used by females.  As the authors noted, “The code functioned as a highly sophisticated, closed-circuit cue for Evangelicals regarding male candidate acceptability…the code does not work in the same way for female candidates.” While reluctant to draw conclusions, they raise a pertinent question: “What if the Republican ‘advantage’ in using religious appeals is based on an inherent characteristic–gender–of those making the appeals?”

Whatever the answer to that question, if we have learned anything about politics during the past decade, it is that–for good or ill–race, gender, religion and sexual orientation continue to frame our responses to those who run for office.

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