Tag Archives: leadership

Harder than It Looks

This morning, an acquaintance told me he’d recently been on the downtown Canal, and immediately thought of this post, in which I had bemoaned the city’s neglect of this important urban amenity. He was appalled–as we all should be.

That brief conversation made me ponder the current state of affairs in Indianapolis, and the importance–and difficulty–of civic leadership.

When Greg Ballard ran for Mayor, he talked a lot about leadership. Why, he’d written a (self-published) book about it! If elected, he would reduce crime, put more police on the streets, and reduce the budget. How hard could it be?

Reality is so messy and disappointing. It turns out that managing a city is significantly more complicated than giving orders to subordinates in a military unit. Not only do you have to deal with people elected to the City-County Council, who don’t think their job is to carry out your orders, you have to understand the inter-relationships of municipal issues and departments, and budget for a variety of services that are required by law or political necessity and constrained by reduced revenues. When Ballard ran, he displayed the sort of hubris that motivates citizens to write letters to the editor expressing amazement that elected officials can’t seem to grasp how simple the answer to climate change, gas prices, public safety, or the national debt really is. Americans tend to be ambivalent about credentials: we want our doctor or lawyer or CPA to be well-trained, but we think any well-meaning citizen has what it takes to run a city.

So three-and-a-half years later, we have a higher crime rate, fewer police on the streets, and no reduction in municipal expenditures. We are fixing streets and sidewalks with dollars “borrowed” from future utilities ratepayers, and we’ve sold off our parking meters for fifty years, presumably because the city is incapable of managing that infrastructure. Important civic assets like the Canal are falling into disrepair, and Indianapolis’ once-sterling reputation as a City that Works has become a punch line.

I think Ballard is beginning to realize that running a city is harder than it looks.

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No Knowledge Required

I was driving to the gym this morning behind an obnoxiously huge SUV sporting a bumper sticker that said “Greg Ballard. Leadership in Action.”

Now, I realize there’s a campaign underway, and that political operatives produce these slogans. I’ve run for office, so I also know that candidates are very tempted to believe their own hype. But all I could think of after reading that bumper sticker was how carelessly we throw words around and how little we value knowledge and expertise.

My personal evaluation of Greg Ballard’s term in office is that he has been anything but a leader, at least as I would define that term. But what’s worse, he has exemplified the widespread belief that you really don’t have to know anything in order to be a public official–a Mayor or Governor or Senator. (Sarah Palin considers it an absolute virtue to be clueless–she ran for Vice President sneering at “elitists” who went to “fancy schools” and I don’t remember anyone calling her out on that particular charge.)

I teach public administration, so I’m pretty touchy about the notion that anyone who’s run a business or led a marine division can run a city. We don’t choose doctors who didn’t bother with medical school, or lawyers who failed the bar exam. We don’t let people drive until they can demonstrate they know how to operate a vehicle. But we make it a political virtue not to understand the differences between public and private finance, be familiar with the tools needed for economic development, or aware of best and worst practices in areas like zoning and transit and public safety.

Greg Ballard is what happens when we elect someone Mayor just because he seems like a pleasant fellow, and showed “leadership” by being a Marine.

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Leadership Wanted

The legislative special session has an unenviable task. Times are tough, and we have long since stopped cutting government fat, and moved on to muscle and bone.

 

That said, one of the most monumental threats facing Indianapolis in this round of budget cuts is their potential to effectively destroy IPS—and thus deliver a mortal wound to economic and community development in Indianapolis.

 

The House/Senate budget proposal that failed in April would have meant a $47 million loss to IPS over the next two years. After the last revenue forecast, Governor Daniels told lawmakers to cut more; his numbers would mean an additional $11 million lost to IPS. (To add insult to injury, the House/Senate proposal cut IPS’ state formula funding while increasing state funding for 287 other school districts. Resentment of Indianapolis by legislators from elsewhere in Indiana is nothing new, of course, but this discrepancy seems rather blatant.)

 

The dollars IPS will lose cannot legally be replaced with stimulus money, which is one-time, tightly targeted money in any case. And the loss can’t be made up by closing more schools, although that will certainly happen. IPS says every program not legally required will be in jeopardy: Art and music programs, high school electives, field trips, magnet programs, and a variety of other alternative programs, many of which serve our most at-risk youngsters. IPS has made considerable progress over the past few years; a loss of this magnitude will wipe out those gains and cripple the system for years to come.

 

What the city’s leaders have given no indication of understanding, moreover, is the incalculable damage the evisceration of IPS will do to Indianapolis.

 

Whatever their other failings, Dick Lugar, Bill Hudnut, Steve Goldsmith and Bart Peterson all understood that efforts to make Indianapolis a world-class city depend first and foremost on quality of life—that our ability to lure employers and grow the tax base requires urban amenities like parks, museums, libraries, public safety, decent public transportation and above all, good public schools. Despite the best efforts of our political and business leaders, Indianapolis continues to lag other cities in many of these categories. To the extent we do, we lose our competitive edge. We lose employment and tax base—which means those of us who remain will pay higher taxes for fewer services. That, in turn, will encourage more out-migration. It’s a vicious cycle.

 

I don’t dismiss the civic benefits of major league sports teams, but I find it difficult to understand why so much more effort and attention has been lavished on the CIB’s troubles than on the threat facing IPS.

 

Bill Hudnut used to say that a successful city is like a cookie—solid clear through—and not like a doughnut with a hole in the middle. If IPS is allowed to disintegrate, we will have taken a giant step back to becoming a doughnut.

 

Mayor Ballard wrote a book about leadership. If he is ever going to demonstrate that leadership, now is the time.