Hurricanes and Politics

I’ve been on the phone on and off today with my son who lives in Manhattan. He and his friends are having a hurricane party in his apartment–which is on the 14th floor of a new (read:lots of glass) building in a low-lying area one block from the Hudson river.

If that sounds like a worried mother to you, you are right.

The very unusual weather we are seeing more and more is to a large extent a product of climate change. It will get worse. How much worse depends on whether we get serious about the health of planet Earth. The scientific consensus on environmental issues is overwhelming.

And yet, only ONE Republican currently running for President (John Huntsman) admits to believing that climate change is real. For that matter, he’s the only one who believes in evolution.

That there are actually people who will vote for any of these throwbacks is absolutely terrifying.

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One Size Doesn’t Fit All

This morning’s news included a report that the IPS school board had extended the contract of Superintendent Eugene White–by a 4-3 vote. Given the lockstep voting that has characterized the Board in prior years, the close vote was a notable signal that White should (but probably won’t) heed. In fact, his high-handed and arbitrary leadership style has landed IPS in hot water with our equally high-handed and people-skills-deficient State Superintendent, who evidently subscribes to the belief that privatization of school management is “the answer” to whatever ails education.

The current ego-driven arguments about who knows best how to educate all children is depressing in the extreme, so a morning discussion with Michael Durnil, Executive Director of the Simon Youth Foundation was a welcome respite.

I’ll admit that I didn’t know very much about SYF except that it existed, so I was impressed to learn that they operate 20+ alternative schools spread across several states, devoted to working with high school students at high risk of dropping out. Their success rate–in excess of 90% of their students graduate, and a significant number go on to college–is impressive.  What accounts for it? From what I was able to glean from our conversation, it is their focus on the individual needs of the students they admit. No rigid ideological framework that students must fit within, no “secret formula” that must be imposed. Just a recognition that students are people, and people are most likely to flower and achieve when they feel valued and listened to.

American political figures (and make no mistake, Superintendents these days are first and foremost political figures) are increasingly focused on the search for a magic bullet that will allow them to apply a favored approach to all students. It’s understandable, since recognizing and addressing the diversity of learning styles and personal attributes of every student requires much more work and is much more costly than “one size fits all.” But just because something is understandable doesn’t make it successful.

In the real world, one size doesn’t fit all.

Easy Answers are Rarely the Right Answers

The various contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination have been falling all over themselves to attack the Environmental Protection Agency, joining their congressional colleagues in a race to see who can call loudest for abolition of the agency. According to these critics, the continued existence of the EPA is a leading reason job creation has lagged the recovery.

It’s so nice to have a simple explanation for our current economic lethargy. Get rid of the tree-huggers! Everyone knows that scientists just made up stuff like global climate change anyway. (What no one seems to know is why they would do that, but let’s not think too deeply or we might get headaches…)

Let’s assume the EPA is really enforcing policies that hinder job growth. I’ve seen no evidence to that effect, but let’s play “what if.”  Does that mean we should NOT protect the environment? Wouldn’t it make more sense to evaluate EPA regulations, to do a cost-benefit analysis to see how we can continue to protect the earth while taking care not to unduly hinder the economy? Of course, that sort of analysis is complex. It requires analytical skills. And it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

If we don’t emerge pretty soon from this era of stupidity, we’re doomed.

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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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