Tag Archives: Indiana

Signs of Improvement

The U.S. left Iraq (mostly) over a year ago. We seem to finally be departing Afghanistan. And yesterday brought welcome signs that yet another war is ending: the Culture War. (This must be Eric Miller’s worst nightmare…)

Nationally, there were reports in several news outlets to the effect that the Boy Scouts would abandon their ban on gay Scout leaders, and allow each troop to decide such policies for itself. Given the fact that the national organization felt strongly enough to take its case to the Supreme Court not all that long ago–where they made the argument that being straight was an essential and defining characteristic of “scout-ness”– this is quite the turn-around. The cynic in me notes that Scouting lost a lot of members in the wake of that case, and that it generated a new, competing organization, “Scouting for All.” Nevertheless, the Boy Scouts have stubbornly persisted in this position, reaffirming it as recently as a few months ago.

So–I’d say this is a big deal, as cultural markers go.

Here in Indiana, there are signs that our legislators–so hell-bent on protecting my heterosexual marriage from the certain doom that would befall it if same-sex couples weren’t conclusively banned from the institution–have seemingly misplaced their sense of urgency over the need to insert a ban into the State’s constitution.

Republican leaders who previously insisted that the prospect of same-sex marriage was an existential threat are reportedly assigning a lower priority to the matter this year. Senators who had previously highlighted their opposition to both same-sex marriage and civil unions–not to mention anything that looked remotely, sorta, kinda like marriage–are expressing doubts about the much-debated “second sentence” of the current language of the ban. And several Senators are actually advocating prudence, suggesting that it would be wiser to delay action and wait for the Supreme Court’s decision in cases it will decide this term.

Even in Indiana, the electoral calculus has changed. Homophobia and mean-spirited attacks on gay folks aren’t the surefire winners they used to be.

We Americans can be slow learners, but just maybe we’ve figured out that–both at home and abroad–some wars are misplaced, and others aren’t worth fighting.

Law and Sausage

There’s an old saying that you should never watch either of two things being made: sausage or laws. A report in the Indianapolis Star’s “Behind Closed Doors” section this morning is a good example of the sort of game-playing and disregard of the public interest that is the counterpart to sweeping up the floor to plump up the sausage.

As I’ve posted previously, Mike Young has authored a bill that would divest the Indianapolis City-County Council of its fiscal authority. His bill–and a couple of other iterations also pending–would create an “imperial” Mayor no longer answerable to Councilors for spending, hiring and other important decisions that are now part of the democratic checks and balances. It’s terrible policy.

In response, Democratic County Chair Ed Treacy has an equally bad idea. He wants the Democrats in the Legislature to hold the mass transit referendum hostage. Since it will take actual bipartisanship–i.e., votes from both Republicans and Democrats–to pass the bill allowing Marion County voters to decide for ourselves whether we want decent mass transit enough to pay for it, Treacy proposes that Democrats withhold those votes until and unless the Mayor-as-King bill is defeated.

The only people who get forgotten in this unsavory game of political chicken are the citizens of central Indiana. But hey–watch those politicians play that inside baseball game! Watch them give as good as they get! Tit for tat….and screw the public interest.

Pass the sausage.

Unlimited and Unrestrained, or Politics as Usual

It’s bad enough when partisan warfare leads to gridlock and a refusal to operate in the public interest. It may be worse when one party has super-majorities that allow it to pursue political advantage despite the wishes of the opposition and effect on the general public. We have such super-majorities in the Indiana General Assembly, and among the many kinds of mischief being proposed, the one that may be most nakedly self-serving would eliminate the four at-large Indianapolis City County Counselors, and dramatically increase the power of the Indianapolis Mayor to act without Council approval–indeed, in defiance of the Council–in a variety of situations.

Senate Bill 0621 allows the Mayor to unilaterally reduce appropriations approved by the Council (now he must either sign or veto them as passed), essentially allowing him to ignore legislative actions. It eliminates the requirement that the Council approve the Mayor’s appointments of Departmental Directors. It “eliminates provisions that allow the city-county council to require the capital improvement board of managers to make payments in lieu of taxes.” It gives the Mayor effective control of the Development Commission. And it eliminates the At-Large City County Councilors.

Quite the power grab.

This is terrible public policy–whether you approve of the decisions made by the Council or not, in a government of checks and balances, it is inappropriate to strip the legislative branch of its authority and to create an “imperial” Mayoral office. We can debate the necessity of at-large positions, but the purpose of those positions was to elect at least four councilors whose allegiance would be to the voters of the entire county, to balance those whose votes would be geared to the interests of their own constituents.

The irony, of course, is that this naked attempt to reduce the influence of Marion County Democrats is likely to come bite these short-sighted Republicans in the you-know-where. Indianapolis is increasingly a “blue” city. Upcoming Mayors are more likely than not to be Democrats, and the ways in which those Mayors deploy the new powers being provided to that office are unlikely to be palatable to the folks who are promoting this power grab.

That’s the problem with trying to game the system: you can’t always foresee who will be playing the game.

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A Low Bar

Mitch Daniels will be leaving the Governor’s office next week, and the predictable “puff pieces” are popping up. Daniels will leave with a reputation for good stewardship, primarily because Indiana emerged from the recession in decent fiscal shape–at least if you gauge fiscal health by money in the state’s bank accounts rather than by the condition of its cities, towns and workforce. (By that measure, we don’t look so good…)

Which leads to a question none of these adulatory articles has bothered to address: how should we measure a Governor’s performance? What are the criteria for success as a state’s chief executive?

In Daniels’ case, those applauding his performance seem to set the bar pretty low. Yesterday, Matt Tully’s column celebrated the fact that Daniels actually made decisions. Granted, Tully has long exhibited what local political wags call  a “man crush” on the Governor, but he is not alone in suggesting that the mere fact that someone we elected actually did stuff is reason enough for praise.

So what “stuff” did Mitch do? Let me use Tully’s list: He leased the Indiana Toll Road. He led the fight for “Right to Work,” and was successful in adding property tax caps to the State Constitution. He was the moving force behind Tony Bennett’s approach to education reform. He revamped the BMV, and finally got Indiana on Daylight Savings Time.

Fair is fair: the BMV is a far, far better agency than it ever was before. It is efficient, user-friendly–I’d certainly give Daniels kudos for solving agency problems that defied his predecessors. I will also give him credit for Daylight Savings Time; it seems ridiculous that getting Indiana to go along with the rest of the country took so much political capital, but hey–this is Indiana, where one of our brilliant legislators worried aloud that an extra hour of sunlight would burn the crops. So props to the Guv for that one, too.

The rest of it, not so much.

The Toll Road deal was part and parcel of the conservative love-affair with privatization; it amounted to what one expert recently called an “intergenerational transfer,” meaning the state deferred expenses that will be paid by our grandchildren in return for quick and easy up-front cash that could be spent during Daniels’ term in office. (And spent it was–it’s all gone.)

Right to work was a payoff to the business interests that supported his campaigns.

The tax caps are strangling every urban area in Indiana–making it virtually impossible for Mayors to fund ongoing services, and forcing them into “rob Peter to pay Paul” deals to sell off public assets. Indianapolis is less safe, less clean, and less healthy; thanks, Mitch.

Whatever the merits of the education policies that Daniels and Bennett championed, it is hard to find anyone–education reform advocate or defender of the status quo–who has a kind word for their aggressive, slash-and-burn attacks on teachers.

I haven’t read all of the fawning articles, but the ones I’ve seen haven’t mentioned some of the other legacies Governor Daniels is leaving. There’s a state contract with a horribly expensive coal gasification plant in Southern Indiana, run by a company that employs Daniels’ close ally Mark Lubbers–a contract that ensures Indiana ratepayers will overpay for gas for the next 30 years. There’s the developing scandal involving the IEDC and Mitch Roob, another Daniels protege.

Tully and others acknowledge that there is “debate” about the consequences of many of his decisions, but they praise Daniels for the fact that he actually did stuff, that he “boldly” made decisions. That he changed things.

Apparently, that’s enough to earn their praise.

Talk about setting the bar low.

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Vouchers and Education

While the constitutional challenge to Indiana’s much-hyped voucher program is pending in our Supreme Court, it might be instructive to look to Louisiana, where Bobby Jindal’s equally-hyped version has just been declared unconstitutional. The legal issues are very different–both challenges were based upon state constitutional provisions, and Indiana’s constitution doesn’t contain the provision that was fatal to the Louisiana program. So there’s no legal equivalence.

Instead, what we can learn from Louisiana falls under the old adage that “there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”

Even the most well-meaning privatization efforts tend to founder on the shoals of accountability. When the effort involves education, those problems multiply. Despite lots of rhetoric, most academic studies of school voucher programs find that the only area of improvement is in parent satisfaction. Even in well-run programs, student performance remains where one would expect based upon a variety of sociological factors. Reports about rising test scores tend, upon further inquiry, to be based on the ability of private schools to eject students who aren’t making the grade.

Those results come from well-run programs. Louisiana is a poster child for the programs where ideology trumps accountability and basic common sense.

A report from Louisiana Progress, a good-government business group, is instructive. The group petitioned the Board of Education to set at least minimal standards for schools receiving vouchers–evidence that the schools have adequate physical facilities, that they not dramatically increase either tuition or enrollment in order to benefit financially from the program, etc. Calling the program “poorly thought out and poorly implemented,” the report noted that schools selected to participate were not chosen on the basis of educational quality. Most were religious, and many of those quite fundamentalist: the New Living Word School had been approved to increase its enrollment from 122 to 315 students, despite lacking physical facilities for that number; increased its tuition from 200/month to 8500/year, and has a basketball team but no library. Students “spend most of the day watching TV. ..Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses bible verses with subjects like chemistry or composition.”

Another voucher school, the Upperroom Bible Church Academy, operates in “a bunker-like building with no windows or playground.”

There are 120 private schools authorized to receive vouchers in Louisiana. A significant percentage are “Bible-based” institutions with what have been characterized as “extreme anti-science and anti-history curriculums” that champion creationism. (One is run by a former state legislator who refers to himself as a “prophet or apostle.” Wouldn’t that encourage you to enroll your child??) A number use textbooks produced by Bob Jones University.

Mother Jones has a list of 14 favorite lessons being taught by Louisiana’s voucher schools. Among them: dinosaurs and people hung out together; gays have no more claims to ‘special rights’ than child molesters and rapists.

Your tax dollars at work.

Louisiana Progress pointed out–reasonably–that since the reason for the voucher program was that Louisiana’s public schools were not meeting educational accountability standards, it makes no sense to spend tax dollars on private/parochial schools that aren’t even being asked to meet those same standards.

We Americans have a love affair with easy answers. We also tend to believe that–whatever the task–private enterprises will outperform governmental ones. And we have a well-documented belief that change equals improvement. Unfortunately, solving real-world problems requires analysis. Sometimes, there is an easy answer; sometimes, a private entity is better suited to solve a certain problem. Sometimes, change is warranted–and positive.

Sometimes, not so much.

If we want to improve education, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions. We might start with: what is the content of a good education? How can we determine whether schools are providing that content? What can we do to improve the prospects that children who enter our schools without the necessary background and tools will actually learn?

Louisiana and many other states–including our own–don’t want to grapple with those questions. They want an easy way out.

Even Adam’s pet dinosaur knew better.

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