A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Roob & changes at FSSA

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Ken Kusmer has a good article on Mitch Roob and the changes at the Family & Social Services Administration.

My sense before the article has been that no part of state government was more need of change than FSSA. I’m not sure that Roob’s approach is the best one, but it might be worth a try. He wants to change FSSA’s role into one of merely paying for assistance to the needy, privatizing the analysis of who qualifies and delivery of services to private contractors. At the moment, I think the problem with the approach is that Roob and the Daniels administration are the ones attempting to implement it. With the recent Richard Rhoad scandal, we’ve seen that Roob & co are not above using privatization as a pretext for padding their cronies nests while firing and cutting the compensation of frontline workers.

One of the greatest challenges to privatization, particularly in the area of social services, is the need for absolute trust that safeguards will be in place to ensure that tax dollars are being used to provide services to those in need and not to enrich those who are already well off. Mitch Roob and Richard Rhoad have violated that trust. No matter how well implemented their privatization scheme may be in reality, citizens can not feel secure that their money is being well allocated as long as those two have a role in the allocation. (And that already diminished sense of security is in no way enhanced by the fact that FSSA allowed public input into the privatization scheme only under pressure. Initially, a public hearing on the privatization contracts was not going to be held until after the contract had been awarded — similar to the process used in the Toll Road privatization. Now, the public hearing will be held 5 days before the contract is awarded. I leave it to the reader to decide how much influence public comments will have on the award of the contract.)

Toll Road lawsuit

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The Associated Press has a story on yesterday’s lawsuit over the toll road privatization. The hearing was primarily on the issue of whether this was a “public lawsuit” and therefore whether the State Defendants could possibly seek to have a bond imposed that would be so prohibitive as to prevent the suit from being heard on its merits.

The AP story focused on arguments centering around a semi-colon in the statutory definition of “municipal corporation.” The Indiana Law Blog does a good job of laying out the relevant statutes.

IC 34-6-2-86 defines a municipal corporation as:

(1) a:

    (A) local subdivision of the state; or
    (B) public instrumentality or public corporate body created by state law;
including but not limited to cities, towns, townships, counties, school corporations, special taxing districts, conservancy districts, and any other local public instrumentality or corporation that has the right to sue and be sued;

The “local subdivision” portion doesn’t apply, and really, I think the rules of statutory construction let you drop off the “including but not limited to” clause. So, really the crucial question is whether the Indiana Finance Authority is “a public instrumentality or public corporate body created by state law.” The Indiana Finance Authority is created by IC 4-4-11-4 which says:

There is created for the public purposes set forth in section 2.5 of this chapter a body politic and corporate, not a state agency but an independent instrumentality exercising essential public functions, to be known as the Indiana finance authority. The authority is separate and apart from the state in its corporate and sovereign capacity, and though separate from the state, the exercise by the authority of its powers constitutes an essential governmental, public, and corporate function.

It’s a close call, but it sounds to me like the State went out of its way to make the Indiana Finance Authority a non-public instrumentality, making it instead an independent instrumentality that exercises public functions. And that’s if you disregard the “local” parameters one would naturally be inclined to require of something designated a “municipal” corporation.

Even so, if the Indiana Finance Authority shoe horns its way into the definition of “municipal corporation,” then the judge has to go on to the question of whether the Finance Authority can meet the standard that would be required to be granted a preliminary injunction — essentially: likelihood of success on the merits and the harm to the State of not granting the injunction outweighs the harm to the Plaintiffs of granting the injunction. If the Finance Authority meets that standard, then the judge would have to impose the bond.

Camp Bayh

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I received an interesting mailer from Evan Bayh’s All America PAC. I’ll just cut and paste it as a public service announcement:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Evan Bayh will visit Indianapolis on Saturday, May 13th, to host Camp Bayh, a training session for people interested in working on political campaigns, building interest in local politics or running for office themselves. The two-and-a-half day training session will consist of a number of workshops led by Indiana and national campaign experts who will teach the nuts and bolts of organizing winning campaigns. On Saturday, Senator Bayh will meet with participants and speak with them about the importance of public service, his experiences in grassroots politics, and how he hopes Camp Bayh will help put Democrats in a position to win this fall.

The Indianapolis Camp Bayh runs from Friday, May 12th, through Sunday, May 14th, and will be held on the IUPUI campus. The Camp will include three separate training tracks, for those who want to work on a paid position in a campaign, for local party leaders and activists, and for candidates running for office this year. A second Camp Bayh will take place in South Bend from July 7th – 9th.

Portions of Camp Bayh will be open to the media, including Senator Bayh’s remarks to the Camp participants.

Saturday May 13 at 5:00 p.m. ET
IUPUI-Cavanaugh Hall, corner of Michigan St. & University Blvd.

Media interested in covering additional portions of Camp Bayh should contact the All America PAC at 202-326-0450.

This is not your father’s Republican Party

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I think Andrea Neal is engaged in some wishful thinking in this column. She suggests that the primary defeats of Senator Garton, Rep. Budak, Sen. Borst, and Sen. Johnson were cases of “voter imposed term limits.” In other words, she thinks that these legislators were removed primarily because they had served too long and lost touch with their constituency. If you look at their defeats, I think there is a different story to be told. I don’t know much about Budak, but Garton, Borst, and Johnson were all economic conservatives, but were reasonably moderate (by Indiana standards, anyway) with respect to social issues. They were taken down by social conservatives in primary fights where highly motivated and well-organized right-to-lifers can control the show.

The Republican Party in Indiana is becoming less and less friendly for social moderates and libertarians. If you are in favor of a government that stays out of your pocketbook *and* out of your bedroom, today’s Republican Party is not for you. This is not the Republican Party in which I was raised. This is not the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Rockefeller. It’s not even the Republican Party of Goldwater or Reagan. It’s something else. The theocratic wing of the party is taking over. They want an end to abortion. They want their version of Jesus Christ in the classroom, the courthouse, and the State House. If science conflicts with their preconceived notions, they want it out of the public discourse. Evolution must be diluted and placed along side Bible-friendly pseudoscience. Medical opinion on the beginnings of human life must be put aside in favor of religious dogma. Sex education must be abstinence only, even if it’s ineffective. Gays must be condemned, not tolerated, and certainly not treated as equals.

Ms. Neal’s theory that Garton, Borst, and Johnson were ousted because constituents regarded them as legislative deadwood that needed to be cut out in favor of fresher ideas ignores the politics of Walker, Waltz, and Drozda who defeated them. All of them are part of the so-called “Christian” right. (Though most of the social policies coming out of the “Christian” right seem more in line with select bits of the Old Testament than with the Sermon on the Mount.) Whereas the mantra of Goldwater  Republicans was “smaller government,” with the current batch it has morphed into “government small enough to fit into your bedroom.”

In today’s Indianapolis Star we see one of Senator Drozda’s efforts at social engineering cropping up again:  prohibit orphans from being adopted if they’re being adopted by the wrong sort of caring, competent parents, i.e. unmarried and/or gay ones.  Advance Indiana’s Gary Welsh was featured prominently in the Star article:

Gary Welsh, a family law attorney and Republican who worked in the 1980s for the Illinois House speaker, said the adoption issue could become politically charged if the case ends up before the Indiana Supreme Court and justices issue an opinion before the election.

Impact: While preventing gays from adopting is important to many in the “Christian right” and would spur them to vote, he said, other, more moderate Republicans might be turned off.

Comment: “A lot of people just see it as mean-spirited,” he said, “particularly if they know of a (gay) couple raising a child. Gay couples often are adopting very hard-to-adopt children. Often they are children no one else wants.”

So many of these social policies seem counterproductive to me. They steadfastly oppose abortion, and they discourage informing young women about birth control. Inevitably this is going to lead to more unwanted pregnancies and, presumably, children in need of adoption. Then they turn around and actively try to reduce the number of potential qualified adopting parents.

This is part and parcel with a “right to life” agenda that seems to envision only a right to life without rights except before birth and after brain death but not in between. That may explain why the United States has an infant mortality rate almost three times as high as Japan’s and on par with Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Judging from the comparative efforts of the Christian right to improve access to healthcare for citizens or improve the lot of impoverished citizens generally versus efforts to make sure they don’t get accurate reproduction information from their doctors or have the ability to obtain an abortion, the theory seems to be that it’s important to get them out of the womb alive (even if only just barely) and the heck with them after that.

There are more angles and links to this issue that I’d like to add, so I may end up updating it, but for now, suffice it to say that Andrea Neal’s suggestion that the victory of Walker, Waltz, and Drozda over Garton, Borst, and Johnson is merely a sign of “voter imposed term limits” is to miss the big story, in my opinion. This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. More and more, the Republican Party is the party of the social conservative with economic conservatism being an afterthought instead of vice-versa as it used to be.

23% of Republicans want to lead the Senate

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According to the Indy Star, Senator Brent Steele wants to throw his name into the ring to lead the Senate. So far, I’ve heard Steele, Long, Kenley, Delph, Young, Merritt, and Miller as possibilities to take the President pro tem position. The Republicans hold 33 seats, but we know that Garton and Harrison won’t be coming back (any other retirements coming?), bringing the count down to 31. That’s 7/31, or 22.5% of the caucus.

The Senate Dems are a pretty passive bunch, but I wonder if there is any way they can take advantage of the chaos of this leadership free-for-all.

IN-08: Hostettler – Immigration #1 issue; Ellsworth – Gas prices, health care, Iraq more important

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Mara Lee, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article entitled “Ellsworth, Hostettler differ on top issue.” Incumbent John Hostettler says that immigration is the most important or second most important issue to voters. (I didn’t see what he viewed as the other possible #1). His challenger, Brad Ellsworth, views immigration as an important issue, but down on the list. Ahead of immigration, he would put the issues of energy costs, the war in Iraq, and health care costs.

I view immigration as something of a Republican manufactured issue that is being hyped with the hopes that voters will forget about everything else. What’s more, it seems like they’re eager to try to take all the problems in America and blame them on illegal immigration. Low wages? It’s the fault of illegal immigrants, not poorly conceived trade policies that reward capital but crucify labor. Government fiscal problems? It’s all those illegal immigrants on welfare not paying taxes, not lower taxes for the rich, unchecked deficit spending, and a disastrously expensive war of convenience.

And nevermind the facts by the way. Illegal immigrants do pay taxes and, by and large, don’t get welfare. But, as Stephen Colbert noted recently, facts have a liberal bias.

Can you hear me now?

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Yesterday’s newspapers had several stories with the theme being that Hoosiers are mad at Republicans because they simply did not listen on issues Hoosiers felt strongly about such as Daylight Saving Time and Toll Road privatization.

Gov. Daniels response: “I listen . . . *a lot*.” (O.k., so I added the punctuation, but that’s still a stupid statement — on par with George Bush’s debate standard, “this job is *hard*” and his more recent “I’m the Decider.”)

The South Bend Tribune covered the issue in a political notebook type article. The Tribune noted that Rep. Tim Neese drew just 2,862 votes in his primary victory, a far lower number of votes than “scores of other legislative candidates, opposed or unopposed, incumbent or nonincumbent.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indy Star, had an article entitled Republicans could feel voters’ ire.

Democrats say the GOP did not listen to the majority of voters who were saying no to daylight-saving time, no to the leasing of the Indiana Toll Road and no to a budget that cut education spending and forced local property tax increases.

This appears to comport with what Sen. David Ford (R-Hartford City) has been hearing from his constituents.

[Ford] said even he is hearing from a cranky electorate about issues lawmakers voted on in the past two years — and some they have no control over at all. “I still hear about daylight-saving time, the Toll Road thing, the war, the gas prices,” he said. “There’s a general feeling out there that people aren’t happy. They’re not exactly sure what they want. But they’re upset.”

I think voters know what they want: Don’t screw with the clocks, don’t sell off the Toll Road, don’t get into unnecessary wars. In short, Hoosiers are pretty comfortable with the principle of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Gas prices are a different story — there is too little oil and too much demand, we have to figure out how to use less, either through conservation or alternate energy sources. That, in my opinion, is a legitimate area of activity by the General Assembly.

An abbreviated version of the Mary Beth Schneider story was included as an AP story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

In the blogosphere, Taking Down Words covers the issue in a post entitled “Party On, Dudes: Republicans Grokking that their enemy this year is in the mirror”.

Gov. Daniels is trying to put a positive spin on the situation by noting that the legislators who were challenged on issues like Daylight Saving Time won by comfortable percentages of the primary vote. He utterly ignores the fact that the vote totals were small compared to primaries past. And that’s the problem Republicans face in the fall — not so much that Republicans will vote for Democrats in protest, but rather that their erstwhile supporters will simply stay home on election day. The timing is pretty bad for lawmakers on the Daylight Saving Time issue. Voters will have to change their clocks on October 29, 2006 and then head to the polls on November 7, a mere 9 days later.

Troubling signs for Congressional Republicans

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Sylvia Smith has a column for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette crunching the numbers for Congressional Republicans Mark Souder and Chris Chocola and the signs look a bit discouraging for them.

She is not at all ready to conclude that the Democrats will pick up those seats, but Souder and Chocola, while winning their primaries by comfortable margins, received significantly less support this year than they did in 2004.

So what’s the message Republicans are sending? It could be any of these, or a mix of them all:

•George Bush (50 percent disapproval) and Mitch Daniels (even worse): BOO!

•Incumbents of any stripe: BOO HISS!

•Iraq war, immigration, gas prices: UNPRINTABLE!

Hostettler against anti-price gouging law

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John Hostettler is an odd duck. There are plenty of policies he is for that I’m against. But every so often, he does something politically tone deaf with which I sympathize on the policy level.

A month or two before the big tornado that hit the Evansville area, Hostettler voted against Katrina relief (citing, I believe, inadequate cost oversight and possibly rebuilding in flood prone areas). Today’s example is the anti-price gouging law considered by the House. As I understand it, the bill is mainly symbolic and ineffective as well as possibly redundant.

Hostettler likens the bill to price controls and claims it would lead to gas shortages and gas lines like in the 70s. His opponent, Brad Ellsworth took the opportunity to label Hostettler as a defender of Big Oil profits. I don’t think Hostettler is particularly concerned with Big Oil. I think he’s an idealogue who thinks that the “free” market is infallible. Of course, there is very little about the oil industry that resembles a free market.

Ellsworth takes the politically expedient route, given his district, of endorsing ethanol and biodiesel. Personally, I think we’re going to have to have a Manahattan Project/Apollo Program level commitment to developing effective hydrogen fuel cells.

Everything that’s not nailed down (Pt. 2)

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Niki Kelly has an article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette with more on the exploits of Richard Rhoad, the FSSA, and the cronyism of the Daniels administration.

A small detail that made me chuckle. Rhoad signed a contract as an independent contractor to perform the same duties as he had already been performing as a state employee — getting an $80,000 per year pay raise in the process — on the last day of his state employment. So, he was still an employee when he signed on as a private contractor. The date of his signature and the last day of his employment: Friday, January 13, 2006. Maybe he should have been more superstitious.

What I wonder most about at the moment is all the money Rhoad was getting as a state employee for lodging in Indianapolis and traveling to work. The official line at the moment seems to be “it was o.k. for awhile, but then it wasn’t.” My guess is that it was never o.k., and there should be some effort in place to get the money back from Rhoad.

Some good passages:

“(Rhoad) clearly is not the right man for the job if we have to reward him for coming here,” Parker said. “Indianapolis is the state capital. The job is here. He must make a sacrifice to do the job.”

Gov. Mitch Daniels declined to comment Wednesday.

Rhoad has not returned numerous messages left at his work and home the past three days.

. . .

“The governor is certainly running Indiana government like a corporate executive would run a corporation,” said David Patterson, spokesman for AFSCME Council 62. “Executive pay goes up while hard-working employees get the shaft.”

The AFSCME union has fought against privatization efforts within the Family and Social Services Administration.

“Hard-working employees live and work under a set of rules. Apparently the same rules don’t apply to Gov. Daniels and his political cronies,” he said.

And remember, this was the *more ethical* contract with Rhoad. An earlier one signed off on by Rhoad and Mitch Roob but not by a couple of the other necessary parties would have paid Rhoad $2 million for 2 years of work.

Update Niki Kelly has another article in which Gov. Daniels defends his administration by arguing that the ends justify the means. Oh, and it’s Joe Kernan’s fault.

Ken Kusmer, writing for the Associated Press, is sticking with the story as well.

Disclosure this week of both contracts [the $1 million per year 2 year contract which was never fully executed and the subsequent $180,000/year contract, up from $100k/year] has drawn criticism from outside the Daniels administration as a sign of the cronyism and the wasteful spending that Daniels had campaigned against while running for governor two years ago.

Gee, ya think?

Meanwhile Taking Down Words has some advice:

Psssssst. Hey, guys. Cancel the contract. Cancel it now. Say you made a mistake. Renegotiate. Let Rhoad go, if need be. But this issue is starting to really and truly make the administration look like out-of-touch executive goofballs who honestly don’t understand why paying a public servant $180,000 a year might not go over well with the average, hard-working Hoosier.

Aww c’mon TDW, you know that pay cuts and firings are only for the little people. Rhoad is a crony. Cronies get taken care of.