A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

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Executive Order 20-48: Color Coded County Assessments

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Gov. Holcomb has issued Executive Order 20-48 which rescinds the “Stage 5” COVID mitigation order and replaces it with the “Color Coded County Assessment” order. This relies on the State’s color code system where it averages two numbers for each county. The first number is the weekly number of new cases per 100,000 residents in a county. Blue is less than 10 cases per 100,000 residents. Yellow is between 10 and 99. Orange is between 100 and 199. And red is 200 and above. Blue gets you zero, yellow – 1, orange – 2, and red – 3.

The second number is the seven day positivity rate for a county. Positivity rate is number of positive cases divided by number of tests. This is important because a low positivity rate gives you more confidence that you’re identifying most or all of the cases in your community. Blue (0) is less than 5%. Yellow (1) is between 5% and 10%. Orange (2) is between 10% and 15%. And red (3) is above 15%.

You average these two numbers to get your county score/color. Blue for 0 and 0.5, yellow for 1 and 1.5, orange for 2 and 2.5, and red for 3. The executive order requires the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) to monitor these metrics as well as hospitalizations, available critical care beds & ventilators, and testing & contact tracing ability. The order also makes some recommendations to citizens: follow CDC guidelines, self-quarantine when sick or having been in contact with someone symptomatic, and be vigilant if you’re in a higher risk category or in contact with such people. Many of the old stage 5 requirements remain in place: Social distancing and masks are part of the order. Masks are not required in private businesses where maintaining distances of 6 feet is feasible.  Some exemptions are specifically authorized – among other things, where a medical condition that prevents wearing a face mask. (This is the one the anti-maskers are most likely to abuse by lying.) Masks aren’t required when seated at an establishment to eat or drink. Masks are required at schools for students grade 3 and above as well as all staff members. However, if 6 feet of space can be maintained, masks aren’t required. And, if 3 feet of space can be maintained and students are all facing the same direction, masks aren’t required during in-person instruction time.

The color coded approach will limit the size of social gatherings and events based on the county’s color. Larger social gatherings are permitted but the organizer has to submit a safety plan and have it approved by the local health department. In blue counties, social gatherings can have up to 250 people, yellow counties up to 100, orange counties up to 50, and red counties up to 25. In yellow counties, local officials and health officials are expected to meet regularly to talk about potential actions to decrease the spread of COVID. In orange counties, there is the same expectation. In addition, IHSAA sporting events are limited to 25% capacity. In red counties, local officials are also expected to talk and, in addition, to consider limiting hours of operation for bars and restaurants. There’s a lot of encouragement for red counties: the Governor encourages events to be cancelled, encourages businesses to limit employee congregation in public areas, and encourages restaurants and retail businesses to promote curbside pickup. Senior care center activities must be suspended or cancelled.

(I probably mock the “encouragement” more than I should. Yes, there’s a part of me that wants The Law to take forceful action to compel people to act in a way that won’t spread this deadly disease. But the reality is that the rule of law depends heavily on voluntary compliance. If you have to use force in a high percentage of cases to obtain compliance, your government is in trouble. If our leaders were speaking with one voice on the appropriate actions citizens should take, I think we’d be in better shape than if we have mixed messages even if some of those messages come with legal compulsion.)

The order does come with some enforcement provisions for business. Verbal order to business owner followed by written cease and desist order to business followed by the local department of health issuing an order to close the business. There don’t seem to be explicit enforcement provisions for situations not involving businesses but I presume, for example, the courts could issue injunctions in non-business situations. Also, disaster emergency law under which the Governor is issuing these orders has some general penalty provisions which might come into play even though they aren’t specifically articulated in the order.

 

Bonaventura Resigns from DCS in Protest

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Marisa Kwiatkowski, writing for the Indy Star, has an article on the resignation by Mary Beth Bonaventura from her post as director of the State’s Department of Child Services. She was a Pence appointee to DCS and, prior to that, had been a Bayh appointee as judge of the Lake County Juvenile Court. So, she’s been in the child welfare business for a long time, and it sounds like she’s either bipartisan or non-partisan.

Her letter of resignation outlines four reasons for her departure.  First, is the Governor’s choice of DCS chief of staff. (I had initially posted, incorrectly, that it was a very partisan Eric Miller, known for his campaigns in favor of socially conservative views. Turns out it was a different Eric Miller):

She said the governor’s office placed Eric Miller as her DCS chief of staff — someone with no child welfare experience — because he “was an asset during the campaign.”

Using the position and authority given by Holcomb’s office, Bonaventura argued, Miller has engineered his own hires, bullied subordinates, created a hostile work environment, exposed the agency to lawsuits, overridden her decisions, been ‘brazenly insubordinate” and made cost-cutting decisions without her knowledge. She said her attempts to “rein him in” haven’t been supported.

Second she says the works DCS has done to build a better relationship with child welfare providers and the work DCS been trying to do to update its rates and licensing is being undermined. A collaborative relationship is being returned to an adversarial one.

Third she says antiquated technology is threatening to wreck the Child Support Bureau and that the governor’s office has cancelled the plan for a new system despite years of work to secure federal approval and matching funds.

Finally, she says efforts to reduce or cap staffing levels of family case managers and child welfare attorneys “will lead to disastrous results.” She contends that DCS was permitted “to request only a fraction of the funding and staffing needed to protect kids.”

A lot of the complaints sound more or less like you could chalk it up to budgetary concerns. A good director is going to believe in the mission of his or her agency and will frequently chafe at budgetary constraints imposed from higher up where they are trying to balance a lot of different priorities. But, I doubt that can be the whole story. She managed under the Pence administration which, I don’t suppose was overly free with money when it comes to social welfare. So, it sounds like this might go beyond the usual penny pinching.

Social welfare spending can often seem like you’re pouring money into a black hole. The need is infinite, and it’s tough to see good results from the spending. At best, it seems like you are merely making bad situations less bad. But, at the end of the day, Ms. Bonaventura is correct that kids lives hang in the balance.

Gov. Pence First Indiana Governor in 173 Years not to be Re-Elected when Eligible for Consecutive Terms

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I believe my history on this is correct: Governor Pence is the first Indiana governor since Samuel Bigger in 1843 to be eligible for consecutive terms but fail to win a second term. Bigger was a Whig who  was elected in 1840, in large part because he was not connected to the Indiana Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836 which failed in spectacular fashion. However, when it was time for Bigger to stand for re-election, Indiana had a bad economy, Whigs were having a hard time nationally, and Bigger had made some anti-Methodist comments about a decade earlier that were coming back to haunt him.

After Bigger, James Whitcomb won election twice. Whitcomb resigned after being elected Senator during the middle of his term, and his lieutenant governor, Paris Dunning (who had not been elected as governor) finished out the term. Joseph Wright won two terms, including one under the new Constitution of 1851 which prohibited consecutive terms. Between 1851 and 1972, Indiana governors were prohibited from consecutive terms.

From 1972, Doc Bowen, Robert Orr, Evan Bayh, Frank O’Bannon, and Mitch Daniels all won election and re-election. Joe Kernan (like Paris Dunning) was never elected as governor. That brings us to Mike Pence, elected in 2012 but who won’t be re-elected in 2016.

 

Beyond the Pale Without the Benefit of the Doubt

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So Donald Trump has made news again. Anyone who reads this blog has probably heard it by now. But, just so we’re clear on what he said, here’s the quote:

“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially, abolish — the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

He’s imagining a time after Hillary Clinton has been elected, a time when she’s picking judges. At that point, there’s nothing you can do — except (wink, wink) maybe there is! The official line out of the Trump campaign, desperately trying to spin a comment that’s clearly out of bounds is saying he was just talking about political advocacy by Second Amendment enthusiasts. Beat her in the court of public opinion and then at the ballot box, I guess. But to say this is about writing sternly worded letters or going to the ballot box is dishonest. Folks looking at this statement and telling you it’s about anything legitimate to the political process are like the shopkeeper in Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch.

 This is a guy leading rallies where supporters are advocating locking up his political opponent. This is a guy who undermines the political process by — well in advance of the election — claiming it’s rigged. This is a  guy who questions the integrity of the judiciary because the Hoosier on the bench is of Latino ancestry. That guy certainly doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.

And then you have our governor. Governor Pence has not been our best leader, but his flaws are more or less ordinary political flaws. I might disagree with him, but until he embraced Trump, I don’t believe I ever thought his decisions seriously undermined the fabric of our democracy. When Trump’s missteps are of the less serious variety, like throwing shade at a baby and his mother, Pence’s job ends up looking like the Kevin Bacon character in “Animal House,” saying “Remain calm! All is well!!!”

But, he’s made a Faustian bargain. His ambition for higher political office on a national level has caused him to  make common cause with Donald Trump, a man whose vision of politics — a vision where any loss has to be because he was stabbed in the back; a vision where “joking” (not joking) about violence as a political tool is acceptable — that vision does threaten our democratic system. And Governor Pence is not only tolerating this vision; he’s trying to give this vision a home in the White House. We’ve been numbed, I think, by political rhetoric where every policy decision with which we disagree is a step on the path to tyranny. But, imprisoning and killing political opponents are hallmarks of tyrannical systems of government. Sure, he or his supporters will say he was “just joking.” But, Trump is not notably a man of good humor. His “jokes” are the same as those of a bully who says something insulting or pushes you around and then, when called on it, tries to avoid responsibility and blame you as someone who “can’t take a joke.”

It’s not funny, and citizens need to speak out and vote against Trump to show this kind of rhetoric is not acceptable in a political candidate.

Update: Paul Waldman has a post that goes into a little more depth on some of the same themes I alluded to above. It’s worth a read in its entirety, but here’s a good paragraph:

[T]this comes after Trump has been trying to delegitimize the results of the election before it actually happens, claiming that the vote will be “rigged.” If you’re arguing to your angry, heavily armed supporters, who already think the federal government is tyrannical, that there’s a conspiracy afoot to steal the election and that your opponent will be sending jackbooted government thugs to confiscate their guns, you don’t get to pretend that when you say that the “Second Amendment people” might be able to stop the next president’s judges from subverting their gun rights that it’s all innocent and you would never contemplate something as irresponsible as encouraging violence.

Less than meets the eye

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It seemed like I should take a moment to acknowledge the fact that Gov. Pence is now running for Vice-President. That’s a throwback to Indiana’s glory days of the late 19th century and early 20th century when we had someone on the national ticket during most cycles. Between 1868 and 1916, there were Schuyler Colfax, Thomas Hendricks, William English, Charles Fairbanks, John Kern, and Thomas Marshall (along with the Presidential run of Benjamin Harrison.) Since then, I guess it’s been Wendell Wilkie and Dan Quayle.

That previous list surely includes greater and lesser talents alike. This Politico article suggests that Gov. Pence is on the lesser end of that spectrum.  At first glance, with Pence, it looks like the Trump campaign is getting a communicator, a legislator, and an executive. But, each of those qualities looks better on paper than the reality — perhaps a perfect fit given Trump’s history of failing to deliver what he promises.

Pence’s reputation as a communicator probably originates with his history as a talk show host. But, if you’ve ever seen Rush Limbaugh get into an argument where he didn’t control the microphone, you can tell that’s not necessarily a skill set that translates past the friendly confines of your radio studio. If you can’t turn off the camera or microphone when someone asks a follow up question, those well-framed sound bites wilt when they aren’t soundly connected to the underlying reality. Local reporters seem to agree that Gov. Pence often communicates by robotically repeating phrases he’s settled on. This isn’t necessarily a partisan observation, by the way. I think most of the same folks would freely praise Governor Daniels’ ability to riff on a subject and play to the room when called upon to elaborate on a topic.

With respect to his legislative background, my sense is that, while in D.C., Gov. Pence got in good with the cable news and talk radio set. He seems to have tried to move legislation when he first got to D.C., but after the first couple of years was content to mostly just talk. (A friend referred to him as “a back bench bomb thrower with huge ambitions.”) My review of GovTrack information a few years back indicated that he’d introduced 63 bills (about half of which were in his first two years), managed to get three out of committee, and passed nothing. Here is what I wrote then of the GovTrack information:

2001 – 2002:
#34 bills to suspend tariffs on various chemicals — used in agriculture, if I’m not mistaken
#one bill to criminalize the use of domain names to attract kids to look at dirty pictures (again in 2003-2004); and
#one to posthumously give a promotion to an admiral.

2003 – 2004
#A bill to allow an illegal immigrant to remain in the country. She was apparently a Muncie woman, originally from Sierra Leone, who had become a nurse at Ball Memorial.
#A bill to reduce individual capital gains taxes to 10%
#A bill to eliminate the requirement that health insurance issuers offering health insurance coverage in the small group market in a State to accept every small employer that applies for such coverage. (again in 2005-2006)
#A farm bill that would allow acres used to plant fruits and vegetables to be counted the same as oilseeds.

2005 – 2006
#Campaign finance legislation made it out of committee — would relax contribution limits and restrictions.
#A capital gains tax bill that would allow an inflation adjustment for determining capital gains (again in 2007)
#A child pornography bill.
#A journalist shield bill, the timing and content of which seems to have been designed to protect Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper from giving up Scooter Libby for leaking CIA information in the Plame affair. (I believe he introduced a similar bill in 2011).

2007 – 2008:
#A bill to prevent family grants to be given to an entity that provides abortions (Planned Parenthood defunding, I’m guessing) (a similar bill in 2009-2010, 2011-2012).
#An anti-Fairness Doctrine bill that would prevent the FCC from requiring broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints. (again in 2009-2010 and 2011-2012)
#An election law seeking to repeal disclosure requirements about disbursements for electioneering communications.

2009 – 2010:
#A bill seeking to restrict U.S. loans to the IMF where money would be used to support European countries with debt to GDP rations in excess of 60%.

2011-2012:
#A bill seeking to repeal the sunset of certain tax cuts.
#A bill seeking to remove maximum employment as one of the goals of the Federal Reserve (stable prices and moderate interest rates would be the two remaining goals.)

Finally, as to governing, Governor Pence did not create the impression of someone who was engaged and active with the Indiana General Assembly. I’ve heard (admittedly second hand) that legislators were frustrated at the lack of organization and activity from the governor’s office. The governor’s agenda would be late and sometimes vague. Members of the executive branch were not as active in shepherding legislation through the process as had been the case in the Daniels administration.

The roll-out of Trump’s announcement of Pence as running mate was choppy and erratic. Reports streamed in on Thursday. Then Trump looked like he was getting cold feet. The attacks in Nice caused Trump to waffle on when he was going to announce his decision. Then he said he was going to make an announcement on Saturday. Then he tweeted out an announcement on Friday anyway. Then the campaign issued a logo that was immediately and thoroughly derided as being graphically symbolic of what Trump was doing to Pence. As one person described by the Politico article as a “top Indiana Republican” put it, now that Pence is part of the Trump campaign, “every day [Pence is] going to have to go out on the trail and eat a shit sandwich.”

That prediction seems to be panning out. Already, he has had to agree that Mexico was, indeed going to pay for Trump’s wall. And he has said he now backs Trump’s plan to ban people from the country based on particular religious beliefs which he had earlier — correctly — described as “offensive and unconstitutional.”  Mike Pence has famously described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order” — now that full throated fealty to Trump is his new job, the order of that list is going to have to change.

Pence & Zoeller Exchange on Immigration Challenge

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Maureen Groppe has a story on some interesting wrangling between Gov. Pence and Attorney General Zoeller regarding Gov. Pence’s desire to get Indiana involved in litigation over President Obama’s executive order on immigration.

Instead of pursuing an action against the President over immigration as requested by Gov. Pence, Attorney General Zoeller has given consent to Gov. Pence to hire outside counsel. At issue seems to be IC 4-6-5-3 which I can’t quote because the General Assembly’s new online Indiana Code is terrible and only in PDF. But, it says that state agencies (defined broadly as including any instrumentality of the state) cannot hire outside counsel without consent of the Attorney General.

I wonder if it will be the Office of the Governor suing the President or if it will purport to be the State of Indiana bringing suit. If it’s the latter, I wonder what the basis would be for Gov. Pence to unilaterally bring suit against the President on behalf of Indiana while maintaining his ability to criticize the President for unilateral action on behalf of the United States.

Gov. Pence Seeks to Ennoble Hoosiers by Reducing Food Stamp Benefits

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In another installment from the Economy as Morality Play Department, we have Gov. Pence making the moral case for cutting food stamps.

The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration announced last month that beginning in 2015, it would no longer request a waiver to the federal work requirement for certain people who use the SNAP program. Up to 65,000 single Hoosiers could lose food stamp benefits unless they are working 20 hours a week or attending job training.

Asked about whether this action targets poor people, Gov. Pence responded “I’m someone that believes there’s nothing more ennobling to a person than a job[.]” The article, however, reminds us that “there were 2 million people in the Midwest seeking jobs, but only about a million jobs available. And that’s not counting the thousands of people who are no longer counted as unemployed because they gave up looking for a job.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, the assumption here is that poor people need food stamps because they’re lazy and only if they have to choose between work and starvation will they get off their butts and get a job. That assumption is not, by and large, based on evidence. My sense is that people who cling to this world view do so in large part because it’s scary to acknowledge that the world is often uncontrollable and unfair; that you can be willing to work and still go hungry.

State forgoes $80 million pre-kindergarten grant opportunity

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Chalkbeat and Matt Tully have articles reporting that the governor has chosen to drop out of an opportunity to get $80 million in pre-kindergarten education grant funding.

Tully reports that the State’s chances of getting the grant were very good:

Pence’s Family and Social Services Administration had worked with the state Department of Education and others on the grant since the federal government rejected a previous application last year. The state’s odds had greatly improved this year, as the federal government recently announced in the Federal Register that Indiana was among just two states, along with Arizona, that had qualified to apply for up to $20 million annually, for up to four years. The two states were labeled “category one” states; they were eligible to apply for substantially more money than the other 13 states.

The explanation from the Governor’s office was vague, citing concerns about getting involved unnecessarily with the federal government and generalities about “untested and unproven objectives in federal policy.” The cynical mind, however, immediately jumps to Gov. Pence’s presidential ambitions.

Even bearing in mind that our share of this federal money is coming out of our pockets anyway and will now be going to some other state instead, I think we can all agree that forgoing $80 million to improve the education of young Hoosiers is a small price to pay to ease the minds of Iowa and New Hampshire caucus and primary voters.

Elusive State Money in the News

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I noticed some similarities between two stories involving availability of state money both of which are at least superficially peculiar given the State’s recent announcement of a $2 billion surplus. Perhaps someone with better knowledge of the state’s fiscal processes can tell me whether the cases are similar or not, and whether they have anything to do with the announced surplus.

The first story has to do with a story by Niki Kelley in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette concerning the availability of State money to combat domestic violence. The Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence says the coalition has had to fight with the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to get all the money that is appropriated to it.

Indiana Criminal Justice Institute spokesman Gary Abel [confirmed] that $344,000 of funding for the domestic violence prevention and treatment program was reverted to aid the state’s bottom line at the end of fiscal year 2014 in June.

All agencies were told by [Governor] Pence’s Indiana Office of Management and Budget to revert money – or not spend everything appropriated.

Doing the math, in the ICJI’s case, the bulk of the $500,000 it reverted must have come from the domestic violence program. “Abel said the money was reverted because there was no plan submitted on how to use it.” So, the State’s explanation is that the money was there but it’s the Coalition’s fault for not submitting a plan for spending the money.

The other story I saw was by Ron Wilkins of the Lafayette Journal & Courier and had to do with a road project in West Lafayette to reconstruct Happy Hollow Road. (Disclosure: this is a road I drive nearly every day to work). The reconstruction was scheduled to begin today but the Indiana Department of Transportation stopped the project because it reportedly ran out of money for Fiscal Year 2014. According to the City Engineer, INDOT was supposed to have obligated FY2014 funds for the Happy Hollow project.

INDOT has apparently said that the funds were obligated but “the purchase order was not written” and funding was withheld. “INDOT has said once they see a plan for the balances, they’ll release the money.”

The money at issue here seems to be federal road funds that are overseen by the State. So I’m not sure that this money would play into the State surplus claims one way or the other. But, I guess I was struck by two stories in the same day that had the State blaming a failure to release funds on the intended recipient’s alleged failure to submit paperwork.

Indiana Medicaid No Longer Covers Early Elective Births

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Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that Indiana’s Medicaid program will no longer pay for early elective births. The rationale is that babies born early or small are at higher risk during their first year.

The Family and Social Services Administration – which oversees the low-income health program – said about 15 births a month might be affected.

Early elective births prior to 39 weeks’ gestation, such as planned inductions or C-sections, can still occur if the birth is eligible under a list of approved medical indications or occurs naturally.

Seems like I’m missing something in translation. Medically necessary early births are still covered. Seems odd that women would be choosing early elective births that were medically unnecessary. Maybe there is a grey zone where the mothers feel the early birth is necessary but Medicaid isn’t going to pay? In any event, the statement by the Medicaid Director seems to have an element of chest puffing that looks out of place in a purely medical discussion:

“This action sends a strong and clear message that we will not tolerate dangerous and unnecessary early childbirths, which puts our newborns at risk and increases costs in Medicaid,” said Joe Moser, Indiana Medicaid Director.

Maybe it’s an abortion thing?