Another budget season, another judicial mandate. In this installment, St. Joseph County judge Peter Nemeth issued “a judicial mandate ordering the County Council and Board of Commissioners to appropriate $60,208 to pay raises to eight court employees and $295,950.98 to renovate the Juvenile Justice Center.”

I’ve covered this ground before. The axe I continue to grind is that it seems wrong to me that judges have special rights to county money not provided to other county department heads. Our judiciary is an odd hybrid of state and county. The judge is regarded as a state officer but his or her employees are generally county employees. The county is required to provide funding for the court facilities and staff. Judges have no responsibility to raise revenues but they can compel expenditure on behalf of court operations.

I don’t think judges are using their power capriciously or for particular gain; but there is an inequity when they don’t have the same constraints as other department heads. Perhaps making court funding entirely a state matter — a proposal that’s floating around since judges are state officers — would rationalize the use of the mandate power. I suspect the mandate power would get modified pretty quickly if the funds were coming out of the state general fund instead of a county general fund.

Via:

Sen. Bayh: I may filibuster health care bill too if it’s not “fiscally responsible.” The public option itself, however, doesn’t seem to be a sticking point for him.

At least he’s consistent. After all, he filibustered the Iraq War because it wasn’t fiscally responsible. . . . oh, wait. Blue Dogs who didn’t bat an eye over paying for the war in Iraq should, at a minimum, have to explain why helping people not die for lack of health care requires penny pinching where blowing up a toothless dictator half a world away did not.

DougJ at Balloon Juice, riffing off of another good post by Sardine at Eschaton with a reminder that this health care debate isn’t some abstract political game:

I realize that if you’re poor in this country, then everything is your fault. If you take out a loan you shouldn’t have taken out, it’s proof that you’re too much of an idiot to handle money, whereas when rich people are fleeced by Bernie Madoff it’s proof that Madoff is a super-genius monster. If you’re hit by a stray bullet, you were probably in a gang. If you’re sick, it’s because you smoke and you’re overweight. And whatever trouble you have getting a job, it’s all because of your genetically determined low IQ. And if you weren’t poor, overweight, genetically deficient and so on you wouldn’t have trouble getting disqualified because of preconditions and you’d never get scammed by bogus insurance outfits.

Our system is screwed up and people are dying as a result.

Speaker of the House, Pat Bauer (D-South Bend) announced a proposed package of ethics rules for next year’s legislative session, including a one year cooling off period for legislators who want to become lobbyists.

Near as I can tell, resistance to ethics reforms has been a bipartisan effort. Last year’s effort by Sen. Miller was throttled in the cradle, never getting a committee hearing in the Senate. In the past, various legislators have pretended to be offended that their honor was being impugned.

Past experience suggests that this latest ethics proposal will be so much sound and fury and disappear when it gets time to actually vote on things. But, I’ve certainly been wrong before. Other elements of Bauer’s proposal:

•Requiring lobbyists to report any gift to a legislator, legislative candidate or legislative employee of more than $50 – down from the current $100 – and changing the definition of what constitutes a gift.

•Prohibiting the governor or any candidate for that office from fundraising during the long budget session of the legislature. This rule already applies to the General Assembly.

•Requiring people appointed to a position in the executive branch to wait one year after they leave before they can lobby the legislature.

•Prohibiting people and businesses having contracts with state government or bidding on contracts from making political contributions to people who hold or run for state office.

•Prohibiting lobbyists or lobbying firms from representing multiple clients if there is a conflict of interest between those clients.

News came out yesterday that Harry Reid will merge the various Senate health care reform bills that were passed out of committee into a consolidated floor bill that contains a public option with a state “opt out” provision. This basically means that there would be a nation wide government insurance option competing with private insurers. However, states could opt out of allowing the plan to operate in their state. The mechanism for opting out will be one of the important issues — e.g., will it require a state law or just a governor’s executive order? When will the opt out be available? Immediately or only after the plan has been in place for a while. This gives the states the flexibility to do their own thing if they think they can do it better, but it also creates an insurance program that will hopefully have the leverage and scale to keep costs down.

The significance of having the option put into the floor bill is that now opponents will have to overcome a filibuster to get it out as opposed to proponents having to overcome a filibuster to get it in. I saw some news reports with vague indications that “unnamed Democrats” are indicating their “concern” as to whether such a bill can get the necessary Senate votes. One thing to keep in mind is that it does not take 60 votes in the Senate to pass a bill. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster, there is a difference. While I can see, for example, Senator Bayh voting against a health care bill; I can’t really see him being one of a few Democratic Senators standing with Republicans to kill the bill with a filibuster. In any case, as for the Democratic Senators (and, like I said, I don’t think Bayh is one of these but I could be wrong) who would join a Republican filibuster to prevent a majority vote on a health care reform bill, I would like to see them publicly forced to take that stand rather than doing damage in the shadows while publicly saying something like, “Well, I would have liked to vote for the bill, but, see, there were these *other* Senators . . . .”

Meanwhile, in the House, the question will be whether to push through as strong a bill as they can so as to negotiate from a position of strength going into the conference process or whether to pass a bill that’s similar enough to the Senate bill to maybe make passage of the conference mark up a little easier.

Oh, and idle thought — if an opt out is passed, I wonder if Gov. Daniels’ IBM/ACS debacle with social services privatization will make it significantly harder for Indiana to opt out.

Seth Slabaugh has an article about the cost of fixing an aging water system in Muncie.

Muncie has 368 miles of water lines and some 600 miles of sewer lines, many of which were constructed 75 to 95 years ago, Bennington said.

I only mention it to note the difficulty in budgeting for upkeep of infrastructure. Present needs have a way of shoving aside intentions to set aside money for future needs. When you build something, it’s a certainty that repairs will be needed in the future. It’s almost as certain that routine maintenance will be less expensive in the long run than deferring maintenance until something catastrophic happens. But, it’s hard to say “no” to a present need or to raise taxes just to pay for something preventative on systems that are largely taken for granted. So, public servants who budget for appropriate maintenance in lieu of items that are more immediately popular are probably unsung heroes in some sense.

A couple days back, I had read in the minutes of the Interim Study Committee on Alcoholic Beverage Issues (pdf) that members of the package liquor industry were billing themselves as the “stewards of control” of Indiana’s liquor regulations. According to an investigation by the State Excise Police, the truth seems to be pretty much the opposite. It is easier for minors to buy alcohol in liquor stores than in grocery stores and drug stores:

That led to statewide sting operations that began in July and have resulted in 417 citations at bars, restaurants, grocery stores, liquor marts and other alcohol retailers.

The worst violators: restaurants and liquor stores.

More than 44 percent of restaurants and 40 percent of liquor stores failed the checks. Hotels allowed underage purchases 36 percent of the time, grocery stores 26 percent, drugstores 21 percent and private clubs 12 percent.

I am shocked, shocked to find out that lobbyists testifying in front of a legislative study committee were full of crap.

One of these Stewards of Control was grousing about the sting operation in the Indy Star article. Essentially, the liquor store owner was bellyaching about the excise police not having anything better to do than harass people. After all, the owner said, he had a sign on the door that said people under 21 shouldn’t come in the store. Why are they busting his chops?

“It was a big setup. These guys don’t have anything better to do than to come in here and get people caught up so they can get a bigger paycheck?” Cobb said. “The sign on our door says clearly no one under the age of 21 should come in, and for a law enforcement officer to bring somebody in who is under 21 to set somebody up is ridiculous.”

As I recall, in Richmond growing up, a high school girl could go across the state line to Carl’s Carry Out in New Paris, Ohio and, so long as she could see over the counter, Carl would sell her some booze. Guys had to work a little harder: wait outside a liquor store until just the right kind of person came by – someone who looked shady enough to buy for a minor, but not so shady that he’d just disappear with the money.

Bill Engle, writing for the Richmond Palladium-Item, has a good article on how Richmond City Council members circulated e-mails prior to a vote, specifically to avoid a public meeting, resulting in a successful effort to eliminate funding for Richmond’s Human Rights office. When councilman, Clay Miller, suggested that Republican members of the council caucus to discuss the issue, Council President, Bruce Wissell discouraged such a meeting since it would trigger the state’s open meeting laws. Instead, they planned their action through a series of e-mails and successfully blindsided advocates of the human rights office.

I don’t usually drift too far into popcult around here — which is maybe a little odd, because I like to wallow in brain rotting entertainment — but the following from a recent episode of Batman: The Brave & the Bold was a big hit in the Masson household:

Neil Patrick Harris appears, singing as the Music Maestro. Cole just loves Batman. And, I have to say, I really enjoy the Brave & the Bold incarnation of the Dark Knight. Among other things, Aquaman is so over the top, he reminds me of The Tick. NPH as the Music Maestro is very reminiscent of his stint as Dr. Horrible in Joss Whedon’s Internet musical. In some sense, Neil Patrick Harris will always be Doogie, but I love Barney in “How I Met Your Mother” and his appearances in the Harold & Kumar movies were legen – (wait for it) – dary!

An article by Seth Slabaugh in the Muncie Star Press reports a Ball State study on the stuff in our water.

Here’s what you might be ingesting the next time you have a cool drink of water: acetaminophen; antibiotics used to treat urinary tract infections; antibacterial agents found in soap; trace amounts of caffeine and cotinine, a body-producing byproduct of nicotine; anticoagulants; and carbamazepine, a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder. Oh, and DEET insect repellant.
. . .
The federal government has not established maximum contaminant levels for pharmaceuticals in treated drinking water, Alan DeBoy, vice president of operations for Indiana-American Water Co., said during a community forum in Muncie this week.

“But those will be coming,” he said.

I don’t know how you deal with this except through government regulation. I know that anti-government types dislike almost any sorts of government intervention and believe that property owners should be able to do as they will on their property and that people’s ability to manufacture or buy products should be almost unfettered. But, as always, a person’s right to swing his arm stops at the other guy’s nose. In the case of something as simple as a punch in the nose, you don’t need a whole lot of government intervention; you can just sue the guy for damages you sustain from the punch. Pollution is a tougher issue because the damages are less direct. If I’m get sick from a steady stream of cocktails consisting of soap, caffeine, nicotine, and DEET, who do I sue?

You have to either stop the chemicals from getting in the water or treat the water more completely before it gets to third parties. So far as I can tell, this requires regulation and taxes. Like I’ve said before, I’ve never heard a very good Libertarian approach to pollution. I’d certainly like to hear it though.