Eric Bradner, a really top-notch reporter for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article looking at Unigov in Marion County which is relevant for the Evansville area in that they appear to be considering the concept.
The upshot is that the Democrats lost a mayoral election to Dick Lugar in 1967, lost big at the state level in 1968, and found themselves legislated out of power in Marion County for the next 30 years. African-Americans were the big losers in this deal. They went from being about 50% of the majority party in the city to being a minority of a minority party in the city-county government. From the article, it seems that the big “tell” that this was more of a power grab and not so much directed at more efficient government is that the schools were left out of the consolidation. The wealthier suburbanites were willing to share city-county resources to some extent if they got to call the shots, but they weren’t going to send their kids to a unified school system.
The article did note that Indianapolis has fared better than places like Cleveland and Detroit where consolidation with the suburbs did not happen and black politicians maintained control. Their control of the city often reflected the fact of white flight to the suburbs and the resulting lack of resources for use in addressing their cities’ problems.
I’m a reasonably affluent white-guy so I probably don’t have the basis to comment a whole lot about this, but reading the article I found myself thinking we’ll all be in a lot better place if/when we reach a place where race isn’t a primary determinant of one’s political affiliation. Note: this is not by default a critique of how blacks choose to cast their votes. Whether one considers race or socioeconomic factors, Republicans, by and large, have not given blacks much of a reason to vote for them. And, with the latest round of nativist hysteria, “conservatives” (loosely defined) seem determined to alienate other racial groups as well.
That IndyGov was merely a power grab was immediately evident when I arrived to Indianapolis in 2002. I was chalked that up to a political grab first and foremost. I’ll not doubt racial undertones.
I would suggest that it did not deny the wealth flight, not merely white flight, as this is too often simplified to.
I’m from Cleveland, and I lived in a desperately poor neighborhood (St. Hyacinthe) for a handful of years. It was about 60% black, but uniformly poor. The City has done virtually everything in its power to chase people of means away. Being run by black Democrats hasn’t meant a better life for Cleveland’s black population, nor has it meant strong desire by well-to-do black Democrats to stay. It’s a very segregated region, and what you see is that blacks of means fled to suburbs like Shaker Heights, Euclid, and Cleveland Heights, while whites of means fled to Parma, Brecksville, and North Olmstead- all of which are within Cuyahoga County.
Long term, thanks to UniGov, we’re going to see the same thing covering all of Marion County, where people of means, regardless of race, will continue to leave the county.
It’s the policies, and the results of the policies, that people flee. It’s the high taxes, the high crime rates (and accompanying high insurance rates), the demonstrably awful schools, and the visible decay that cause people to leave, not race.
I agree that we will be better off when race is less of an obvious factor of how votes are cast. I also agree that the Republican Party has done little, and most of that for the worse, to attract blacks and other minority groups.
mike: so you don’t doubt the racial undertones of unigov, but deny racial undertones to wealth flight? even though the point of unigov was to counteract the political effects of wealth flight?
also, let’s not forget that whole “civil rights movement” thing, which was kind of a big deal at the time.
My experience has been that while white flight is real, black flight is too. In the end, it’s wealth flight. People who have the means to avoid the public schools, do so. Most do by leaving. Some stay and pay for a second education- public schools via taxes, and then private schools for their kids.
So, to answer your question, re-read what I wrote. I didn’t deny racial undertones to wealth flight. I described that it’s more nuanced than that.
The other major pieces that were left unconsolidated in Unigov were the police and fire departments – and it could be argued that finally consolidating those in this decade cost Mayor Bart Peterson his job. He earned the animosity of the IPD and that had some far-reaching consequences, including an anonymous IPD/IFD-related blog to undermine him that helped tap into the property tax debacle and erroneously assign the blame for it at him.
So what are the benefits of Unigov?
Lake County has the reputation for having a lot of governmental entities, and downstate interests like Mitch are pushing us towards Unigov. Local black legislators are at the forefront of the push, because Gary is essentially bankrupt. They see unigov as a way to recapitalize Gary.
But I look at Marion county, which has a 1.65% income tax (we have no income tax) and an average property tax rate of $2.7/ $100 (ours averages $2.5/ $100) and I just don’t see any benefit.
Unigov, whatever the racial issues, results in a less accountable government that is more influenced by public employees and other insiders. Taxpayers and ordinary citizens have lost influence, and it is reflected in the tax rates.
It is actually possible to find a few old-timers around who still remember this as it occurred and aren’t too far in their dotage, rather than extrapolate from 2002. I’ve got one nearby.
The other major areas of non-consolodation–police, fire, township governments–were left alone because their political opposition would have scuttled the deal. The lesser non-consolodation–denizens of Speedway and Beech Grove maintaining their own governments while helping select mine–was a sop to voter approval in those areas.
And the fact that IPS did not absorb the township schools is all about the racism that was driving those populations, which weren’t in any danger of losing their local schools, but were in danger of having the boundary lines redrawn.
Township schools weren’t any better academically in those days–Shortridge was still the premier academic public school at the time–but they were on the other side of the redline. Every township high school in Marion county was built in the 60s or beyond, excepting North Central, built in 1956 because Washington Twp. didn’t have a high school. The last IPS high school to be built was Northwest, in 1962. This has nothing to do with a search for quality education, nor the “failing schools” meme, which are later interpretations retroactively applied, and everything to do with the accelerating desegregation of IPS (which began, interestingly enough, when Attucks won the 1956 basketball championship, and IPS coaches began agitating for “their” local athletes to be admitted).
No doubt today there’s plenty of flight to quality schools by people of all races and decent means, just as, no doubt, such hides a lot of racist intent into the bargain. But that doesn’t excuse what we’ve allowed the schools in poorer districts to become, or the discrepancies we allow to continue in the name of 18th century plating conventions, and it sure shouldn’t erase the ugly memory of how we got here in the first place.
But that doesn’t excuse what we’ve allowed the schools in poorer districts to become, or the discrepancies we allow to continue in the name of 18th century plating conventions, and it sure shouldn’t erase the ugly memory of how we got here in the first place.
How do you figure? I don’t know jack squat about Marion County, but Gary schools, which are about 90% African American, and have a graduation rate of 50%, spend well over $10k per year per pupil. So how are “we” at any way at fault for the conditions of that particular school system when “we” are spending that much money per kid and getting those really bad results?
The answer is that “we” are not responsible. The people of Gary, the parents and students of Gary, the voters of Gary, and the employees of that particular school system are responsible for those results.
To the extent that “we” outsiders are responsible (state funds now pay for day to day school expenses) “we” are doing a pretty good job funding that particular school system. Heck, when kids (quite rightly) leave the school district, we let the district keep the money for three more years, which puts financial strain on the districts that the kids escape to.
And the Democrats have given African-Americans a reason to vote for them? The Dems have opposed every education reform ever offered, leaving inner city urban blacks in failing school systems. African-Americans overwhelmingly support things like charter schools, which Democrats oppose. I fail to see anything the Democratic Party has done for African-Americans.
For those who did not read the linked article let me summarize it for you:
Republicans are by definition evil incarnate.
If you have ever voted Republican, it is absolute proof that you are a racist.
The method that you use to determine the value of a particular law is to count the number of Democrats that it elects.
Yeah. No.
1. The vision of Unigov presented on this site is quite bent. An inference is made that Unigov was some sort of racist conspiracy rammed through a Republican legislature. Nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose of Unigov was to bring efficiency and accountability to city and county government. Any measure labeled as reform was nearly impossible to get through the Indiana Legislature.
Concerning the schools, there were clearly not enough votes to enact school consolidation. It would have been absurd for Unigov proponents to advocate provisions that would have killed their bill. More importantly, Unigov was about the Mayor’s Office, and the Mayor did not preside over the independent school systems.
Republicans definitely had the edge in Marion County elections, but the county was still winnable for Democrats. What were the odds of a Republican winning in Lake County? By the way, the very first bill in the Legislature to consolidate Indianapolis and Marion County was introduced in 1965 by Senator Nelson Grills, a Democrat.
2. There appears to be a lack of awareness on how Indiana school systems operate. The school systems are independent of other local governments. In 1960, the Legislature locked the school system boundaries in place. This meant that if a city like Lafayette decided to annex a nearby housing division, the school system boundaries would remain the same. If the Legislature had decided to expand IPS at the same time it expanded the city of Indianapolis, there would have been an exception to that rule.
3. The race card is being played in opposing directions. First, we are told that if we support city-county consolidation, then we are racists because we are diluting the African-American vote. But next, we are told that if we oppose school consolidation, then we are racists because we are segregating African-Americans in the city schools away from the county schools.
If one does not support city-county consolidation, then why wouldn’t he be a racist because he is segregating city African-Americans away from the county? If one does not oppose school consolidation, then why wouldn’t he be a racist because he is diluting the African-American vote?
Thanks for reading, Masson.
but if it was so durn hard to get any reform through the legislature, then how did unigov even pass?
so unigov didn’t include schools because there weren’t enough votes? funny how there were enough votes for consolidation that robbed local blacks of political power, but not enough votes for the one form of consolidation that might have actually helped the local black community.
Buzzcut, first you’re going to have to explain to me why a conversation about Uni-gov suddenly moves to Gary. Although, as I’ve noted a couple dozen times in this forum alone, “we” do not spent x amount of dollars to educate Gary students; we spend $10k, or whatever, per student to run the system, including maintaining older facilities, as well as providing free or reduced-price lunches and Title 1 and IDEA stimulus money, which use federal funds. In addition, as pointed out before, graduation rates are not amenable to scientific accuracy, not until we start implanting ID chips in kindergartner’s necks. Such figures are someone’s estimate, and, by necessity, simply ignore the relative rootlessness of poverty-level populations compared to middle and upper-classes (when Colin Powell came to Indy a couple years ago to tout his Education non-profit with tales that the IPS graduation rate was under 50% it took about two questions before he changed the subject).
(On second thought, let’s do talk about Gary. For one, why was it chosen as your example? Gary’s the second largest and second most poverty-stricken district in the state, but its per student expenditures ($12,447 in 2007) rank 22nd in the state. It receives more than twice the federal monies the average Indiana school receives, to educate a student population living with 250% of the average state poverty level. Its fourth graders score 87% of the state average in math and 84% in English on the ISTEP; its high school students score 96% and 81% respectively. So why is Gary the poster child for wasted educational funds?)
As for the legal barriers, we are, of course, talking about the very legislature which overcame all the other legal restrictions with a quick wave-off, once which was ignoring the fifty-year history of de jure segregation, and the continuing de facto segregation which would lead, in just two years, to the poorest district in the state paying those surrounding white townships to educate students from the same city. Districts which real-estate redlining would keep predominantly white for a generation.
The only reason I bring up Gary is because the legislature and the governor are pushing for Unigov in Lake County. My feeling is that you can’t prove that Unigov has been successful in Marion county, so why push it on us?