Vic Ryckaert, reporting for the Indy Star, has an article entitled Sheriff not about to turn IMPD over to Ballard. Indianapolis-Marion County has a unique, unified form of government. In most places, the county and the city are distinct units of government. The lines are blurry to non-existent in Marion/Indy. Sometimes it’s tough to distinguish between the vestigial organs of government and the necessary ones.

I’m not familiar with the details of the recent merger, but apparently the Indianapolis Municipal Police were merged with the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. Apparently mayor-elect Ballard has vowed to reclaim control of the police officers. Sheriff Frank Anderson said he’s not going to give up control of the 1,600 officers without a fight.

There are Constitutional issues involved — the Sheriff is an elected officer, mandated by the Constitution; but no particular are really provided about the duties of the office. There are certain duties prescribed by the General Assembly, but generally all kinds of special statutes (another Constitutional issue) related to Marion County that I never read. The City County Council surely has some say in the matter, and I suspect they’ll want to be careful. Republicans will now control and, for the short term, I suppose they might want to go with fellow Republican Ballard. However, Ballard isn’t exactly part of the Marion County GOP club and, long term, they might want to think about whether they will more often be able to get elected to the Sheriff’s Department or the mayor’s office. (Or, I suppose — brace yourself — they could try to figure out what the most effective policy might be for keeping law and order in the county).

Anyway, a battle over law enforcement isn’t likely to be pretty.

(H/t Oliver Willis) The New York Times has an article entitled Conservative Authors Sue Regnery Publishing Over Royalties. Some authors who publish through Regenery Press are mad because they get little to no royalties for books sold through at steep discounts. Regenery, which is an arm of the right-wing noise machine, moves a ton of books in this fashion. That helps them to get some of their crap listed on the New York Times bestseller lists.

Some of the authors’ books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, including “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” by Mr. Corsi and John E. O’Neill (who is not a plaintiff in the suit), Mr. Patterson’s “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and Mr. Miniter’s “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror.”

I’ve gotta think Regenery is going to get the better end of this. I imagine they have contracts that allow them to distribute the books as they see fit. And, I imagine it will be tough for Corsi, et al, to prove that people who received the books at a deep discount would have otherwise paid retail for the books.

In a perfect (to me) world, the authors lose, Regenery Press loses, and their lawyers win.

The National Council of State Legislatures has a table reflecting 2007 Post-Election Partisan Composition of State Legislatures. Only three states (Mississippi, Virginia, and New Jersey) apparently had any legislative elections this year. Democrats appear to have claimed narrow majorities in the Mississippi and Virginia Senates, maintained majority status in the Mississippi House, and the New Jersey House and Senate. In the Virginia House, the GOP maintained control but lost a few seats. For 2008, it appears that Democrats will control 23 legislatures; Republicans will control 14 legislatures, and 12 will be split between the two parties.

A post over at stAllio!’s way made me think of the property tax implications for the State generally of the Ballard victory over Peterson in the Indianapolis mayor’s race.

mayor peterson is perhaps the first major victim of the property tax crisis. he didn’t cause the problem; the governor and the legislature are the primary culprits there (and are surely quaking in their boots now that they’ve witnessed the fall of so many incumbents today). but the mayor and the city-county council weren’t proactive enough about preventing property taxes from going up, and so they went way up for some unlucky souls. in the end, the GOP did a better job motivating their people to get to the polls.

I hope we don’t take the wrong message away from that loss though. My fear is that Marion County’s almost uniquely bad handling of property taxes isn’t mistaken for the condition in the State generally. For example, Marion County did not do a think to mitigate the loss of the inventory tax when the State eliminated it. Elsewhere, a county option income tax was imposed to replace the lost inventory tax revenue. This was an option for Marion County, but it was not taken. Consequently, the tax burden shifted from inventory tax payers to property tax payers. That bill came due at the same time a few other property tax chickens were coming home to roost – e.g. the State balancing its budget on the backs of local government, reducing the homestead and property tax replacement credits homeowners have previously enjoyed; and State mandated trending valuations for residential property playing “catch up” when compared to business property.

Marion County was also the recipient of special dispensation from the State legislature to impose a county income tax for public safety funding without first imposing county option income taxes for property tax reduction as was required for the rest of the state. Probably foolishly, the Marion County Democrats voted for that tax at the worst possible time, when its citizens were reeling from property tax increases that were generally in excess of the still substantial property tax increases in the rest of the state.

Anyway, I hope this election is seen for what it is – a reaction to a difficult general situation compounded by really poor decision making at the local level. I’d hate to see the Eric Miller crowd win the day, claiming their overreactions are good policy and reflect the will of the people statewide.

Meet [Indy’s] new Indianapolis Mayor, Greg Ballard. He has won the Indianapolis mayor’s race with little to no help from his fellow Republicans. Ballard or Peterson – I’m pretty sure I’m just glad I moved out of Indianapolis some time ago. Good luck down there.

Lots of municipal elections out there today. Blue Indiana is going to try to keep track.

The first election result that caught my eye was Frankfort where Independent Chris Pippenger has defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates.

Feel free to comment from your neck of the woods.

On a bulletin board I frequent, there was some discussion about checks and balances between the executive and legislative branch. One commenter noted that, in the end, Nixon handed over the tapes when he was ordered to and his people obeyed Congressional subpoenas. The current Bush administration is or was made up of a number of people who lost the Nixon wars — see, e.g. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. You can bet they have spent a lot of time thinking about why they lost back in the 70s. Nowadays, pointed out the commenter, the Bush administration routinely withholds documents and has been directing some of its people not to obey subpoenas.

It occurred to me how far removed our current batch of legislators are from the Founders. The Founders, who made up a good part of our first several legislatures, were not, themselves, so far removed from Cromwell and the Parliamentary forces that, quite literally, decapitated the executive branch of their day. The legislators today don’t seem to be nearly as insistent about their legislative prerogatives.

Now, I’m not advocating any public beheadings just yet. But, nice civics lessons about checks & balances notwithstanding, the fact remains that every power written into the Constitution requires a person or group of people to act to make it effective. And, no, I don’t think sternly worded letters count.

Thomas over at Blue Indiana is looking forward to election day 2007. I, to the contrary, have not been able to work up any interest in the 2007 election. The big races seem to be Henry v. Kelty in Fort Wayne; Ballard v. Peterson in Indianapolis, and Manigault v. Luecke in South Bend. So far as I can tell, the story lines are a) Kelty’s spectacular implosion; b) Peterson’s apparent failure to completely put Ballard out of contention despite Ballard’s lack of support and money from the Republican party; and c) the closeness of the South Bend race as well as anti-Luecke mailings declaring the death of South Bend.

I have absorbed these story lines without really paying attention or really caring too much about the outcome. I don’t see the outcome of these races having a huge impact on Hoosiers living outside of the particular municipality; though, I suppose if Peterson loses or only wins by a narrow margin, it could be detrimental to any future ambitions he might have.

My dear old dad — also a lawyer — sent me this quote:

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition; they have only a communal existence; and not only does the meaning of each interpenetrate the other, but all in their aggregate take their purport from the setting in which they are used.

Nat’l Relations Labor Bd. v. Federbush Co., 121 F.2d 954, 957 (2d Cir.1941).

Just thought I’d share.

(H/t Zach Wendling at In The Agora). An article at WSJ.com indicates that energy savings from Daylight Saving Time generally and the recent extensions specifically are unclear at best. The data is very old, for one thing. Americans use energy a lot differently than they did in the 70s. Furthermore, extending DST into times of the year with less available daylight makes it more likely that any savings enjoyed by more light in the afternoon and evening will be offset by less light during morning hours.

Indiana apparently could have provided a potential test area until recently:

To get reliable data about the time change in the U.S., “the best experiment would be to randomly assign different time schedules to different states,” Prof. Wolff said. He points out that his Australia study is the only only one to compare, concurrently, extended daylight time with the alternative in the neighboring states.

That model isn’t realistic, politically, on a national scale in the U.S. But in Indiana, until last year, daylight-saving time took effect in only part of the state. “It would provide an interesting test bed,” says Doug Gotham, director of the state’s utility forecasting group. But he doesn’t know of any such study to date.