Tag Archives: Ballard

Let There Be Spin…

I see that both of our Mayoral candidates are planning to go up with television commercials within the next day or so. We will be inundated with political ads soon enough–not just from Melina Kennedy and Greg Ballard, but also from candidates for the legislature and council.

These ads do provide us with information, although not necessarily the information the candidates intend to provide. You can tell a lot about a candidate by analyzing the messages they are willing to air: how fair are their criticisms of their opponent(s)? How accurate and honest are their presentations of their own accomplishments? Do they have a vision for the City, and if so, how compelling is that vision?

Several years ago, Morton Marcus and I wrote a “he said/she said” series of columns for the IBJ called Letters to the Next Mayor. The candidates back then were Sue Ann Gilroy and a political unknown named Bart Peterson. I dug my first column for that series out of my files, and was bemused to note how much of what I wrote remains relevant.  Here is that column.

“This year, voters in Indianapolis will elect either Sue Ann Gilroy or Bart Peterson to lead our City into the new millenium.

Being Mayor in any year is a demanding job. A good chief executive must fill multiple job descriptions: manager, cheerleader, communicator, visionary. A Mayor, more than any other elected official, gives the community its identity, its sense of itself.

During the upcoming campaign, there will be discussion and debate about a number of  issues. But there is a danger in focussing too intently on the specific administrative tasks at hand, because the next Mayor must be much more than a manager/technocrat. The next Mayor must help us create an inclusive, civil and progressive community with a shared vision of its problems and possibilities.

Over the next months, Morton and I will highlight specific problems our next Mayor will inherit: a troubled police department, beleagured schools, racial tensions, environmental issues, runaway debt levels, and many others. People of good will hold dramatically different positions on these issues. If they are to be resolved, we will need political leadership of the highest order. The ability to provide that leadership must rank as the single most important issue of the campaign.

Indianapolis is part of the phenomenon some call, aptly, the “niching” of America.  Commercial enterprises deal in market segmentation; political institutions respond to special interests; even the daily newspaper prints different editions for different neighborhoods. We have lost sight of a central reality: we are all in this together. What happens in any part of our city affects the rest of us in a multitude of ways, tangible and intangible. When we retreat to our respective neighborhoods, churches, professional associations or social groups, we lose civic synergy. We lose pride of joint enterprise, the sense of belonging to a larger whole. There is a huge difference between a city and an accidental agglomeration of adjacent neighborhoods.

If we are to regain that communal identity and restore that sense of civic pride, the next Mayor must encourage the broadest possible participation in the civic enterprise; it is no longer possible—if it ever was—to administer a municipality from the top down.  Cities that work today are cities whose citizens truly own them, and ownership comes from meaningful involvement in the institutions that shape city life.  The next Mayor must encourage the participation, and value the contributions, of all our citizens.

Politics at its best is the art of building consensus, and that means recognizing the importance of process. How we get there is ultimately more important than where we go, because results achieved without consensus, without civility, without genuine citizen ownership, do not last.  Building consensus ultimately rests on trust. Trust is reciprocal; it is a byproduct of dialogue and collaboration To earn it, the next Mayor must preside over an open and forthcoming administration, recognizing that every question is not a criticism and every criticism is not an attack..

Indianapolis faces challenges, but we also have substantial assets.  We are a fundamentally sound city, with thoughtful and involved civic leadership, a robust nonprofit sector, impressive public institutions, and the fortunate habit—fostered by Unigov—of thinking of ourselves as an urban whole.  Whether we use those assets to rebuild our sense of community or allow our divisions to overwhelm us will depend in large measure on the leadership skills of the next Mayor.”

At the time that was written, Indianapolis was still a city on the move, and the major argument was over the direction of that movement. Today, I would characterize Indianapolis as a city in stasis, struggling to provide even basic services and floundering when it comes to the big issues. We have yet to make substantial improvements in most of the problems I identified 12 years ago (I would argue that we have actually lost ground on several during the past four years).  There has been a palpable absence of vision. Mayor Ballard is a very nice man, but he came into office with absolutely no background in city management, economic development, policing, education or other municipal policies. The question to ask as you look at his campaign ads is: what has he learned? Has he developed the knowledge and skills that would justify giving him another term? Or is he still over his head?

The questions we should ask when we look at Melina Kennedy’s ads are similar. Do they display a coherent vision for the city? A genuine grasp of the issues we face?

Deciding which candidate is most likely to provide the leadership we so desperately need requires that we look beyond the “spin cycle.”

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Teachable Moments

Sometimes, a gaffe or disclosure that is unimportant in and of itself will nevertheless offer us a useful insight. There were two examples in this morning’s news.

The first was a glaring grammatical error in the morning Star editorial about–of all subjects–education.  The paragraph in which it occurred read “Bennett needs public buy-in to ensure that the new operators, whoever they are, have the best chance to succeed. And that buy-in is more likely to occur if parents, teachers and community leaders think that they’re concerns were taken into account before an outside operator was hired to run one or more of their local schools.”

“They’re” should obviously been “their.” Oops! Perhaps Gannett’s decision to cut copy and proofreading personnel was a bit too hasty?

The second was a brief report in the IBJ of an exchange between Greg Ballard and Amos Brown. During a discussion on his radio program, Amos asked the Mayor whether he had ever met with the head of the NAACP. Ballard replied that, while he had not had a face-to-face meeting with “him,” he had been at a breakfast meeting with “him.” The problem, of course, is that the head of the NAACP is a woman.

This could, of course, be shrugged off as a simple case of “mis-speaking.” But I think it is a particularly vivid example of Ballard’s most unfortunate flaw: an inability to admit–evidently even to himself–what he doesn’t know, or hasn’t done, and a corresponding need to try bluffing his way through.

When Ballard was campaigning, it was painfully obvious he knew very little about urban policy and governance. Having spent much of the preceding 25 years in the Marines, he also didn’t know a lot about what had been happening in Indianapolis. Those gaps wouldn’t necessarily make him a bad mayor; lots of people go into positions unprepared, recognize their deficits, and work to correct them. Understanding what you don’t understand is the beginning of wisdom. Those who ultimately succeed despite lacking the requisite knowledge or skills are those who are willing to say “I don’t know” when they don’t.

Those who fail, try to bluff their way through.

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Greg Ballard’s Curious Approach to Fiscal Discipline

There has been a good deal of discussion on local blogs about our Mayor’s ham-handed approach to the just-concluded Gay Pride celebration.

The Indianapolis fire department has participated in the Parade previously, and this year, IMPD announced that it, too, would participate–and show that our local police serve all parts of the Indianapolis community. The day before the Parade, Ballard unexpectedly reversed course, and told IFD it could not use a city fire truck, and IMPD that it could not officially march at all.  (Several members of the police department did march, in uniform, but in their “individual” capacity, and the department’s Hummer was nowhere in evidence.)

Yesterday, Mayor Ballard was interviewed by Amos Brown, who asked an entirely appropriate–and foreseeable–question: why had the Mayor prevented the police from driving an official vehicle in the parade? The obviously bogus response was that the decision was made in order to save tax dollars. It had nothing to do with the fact that this was a gay event, or that Micah Clark and the Indiana Family Institute pitched a fit about the symbolism of treating the gay community like all other taxpaying citizens. Nope–just being fiscally responsible.

I asked a friend of mine who is a police officer whether IMPD officially participated in other community celebrations, and he rattled off a list: St. Patrick’s Day, Veterans Day, Black Expo and several others. I guess those constituencies must be more deserving of the tax expenditures involved.

And that brings up an interesting question: just how many dollars are we talking about?

What is the cost of vehicle depreciation and gasoline during a trip down Massachusetts Avenue? Ten dollars? Five?

Yesterday, the media reported that the Ballard administration stands to lose a three-million-dollar Federal grant, because it hasn’t complied with the grant’s staffing requirements. This makes Ballard the poster child for “Penny wise, pound foolish.”

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Another Reason to Retire Ballard

My husband and I ate dinner last night at the Left Bank, a nice bistro at water’s level on the Indianapolis canal, then walked a couple of blocks along the canal to a program at the Center for Inquiry.While I often walk or bike along the water in nice weather, it was the first time I’d been on the canal this spring, and I was shocked and dismayed by the deterioration of the concrete walks and the pedestrian bridges, and the peeling paint beneath those bridges. The concrete at the edge of the water is crumbling into the water at several places. The concrete in the steps down from street to canal level was so eaten away that the rebar showed.

This is absolutely inexcusable.

The canal not only represents a huge investment by prior administrations, it is an extremely important amenity in a city without mountains, oceans or other natural draws. It has triggered significant private investment, and it is very heavily used. Whenever I am there, I see large numbers of people walking, biking, paddle-boating and enjoying themselves. It is a beautiful urban space, a huge asset to Indianapolis and it absolutely must be maintained. Its current condition is criminal.

I’ve been watching the slapdash way in which the much-touted street and sidewalk “infrastructure improvements” are being made with some dismay. I’ve yet to see an inspector, and to my (admittedly non-expert) eyes, it looks as if the administration is doing superficial paving that will look good through the Superbowl (assuming that happens), but falls far short of what would be involved in genuine long-term repairs. I hope I’m wrong about that. But Ballard and his administration haven’t even made that minimal level of effort at the canal–and we are at risk of losing one of the rare jewels of this city.

Eric Hoffer once wrote that the measure of a civilization is its ability to maintain what it has built.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that an administration unable to manage its own parking meters is too inept to maintain its own infrastructure, but Indianapolis really cannot afford four more years of this.

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To Your Health…..

Federalism has many virtues, but it also makes some problems more difficult to solve. I don’t care how much your local city council cares about air pollution, there isn’t a whole lot they–or even your state legislature, assuming you have a more enlightened one than we do here in Indiana–can do about it. Health policies likewise tend to require state or national action; there isn’t a lot that local communities can do.

But there are some things we can do locally, and there really isn’t any excuse for failing to do them. Cities and states can encourage healthy lifestyles and physical fitness by providing well-tended parks, by increasing bike lanes, and by banning smoking in public places. These measures not only promote public health, they ultimately save money by reducing Medicaid and similar costs.

The Ballard Administration has at least responded to calls for additional bike lanes (although those downtown, where I live, are considerably less than optimal–the ones on New York Street were evidently painted by someone who was drunk or otherwise seriously incapacitated). Otherwise, not so much. Far from expanding opportunities for recreation, our parks have been shamefully neglected. And worst of all, Ballard has consistently blocked efforts to ban smoking in public places.

The Mayor’s refusal to honor his campaign promise to sign a smoking-ban ordinance is particularly galling, not just because he did a 180-degree turn on the issue once he was elected, but because smoking bans are a low-cost, highly effective way to improve public health.

There are essentially two arguments against smoking bans. Bar owners worry that business will suffer if customers cannot smoke in their establishments. Other opponents of the bans argue that no one has to patronize a bar or restaurant–that if smoke bothers you, you can just go somewhere else.  The evidence from other cities that have passed these bans should comfort the bar owners–far from diminishing, in many places business actually improved when nonsmoking customers weren’t assaulted by the smell of  “eau de stale cigarette.” And the argument about choice ignores the very real health hazard smoking poses for employees. (When asked about the impact on workers, Mayor Ballard dismissed employees as “transients” whose health clearly was not a concern.)

Hint: Telling hard-working waiters and bartenders that they should just get another job if smoke bothers them ignores the realities of the current job market, among other things.

Cities are in a world of fiscal hurt right now. At a time when there isn’t money to do many of the things that would improve our neighborhoods, a smoking ban is a virtually cost-free way to improve public health and make our public spaces more pleasant at the same time. Polls show an overwhelming majority of residents favoring such a ban, and in fact, when he ran for Mayor, Ballard supported the policy.

All of this makes the Mayor’s current, stubborn opposition hard to understand. If he has reasons for his abrupt about-face, he has yet to articulate them.

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