A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

A common complaint is how dysfunctional Congress is, unable to get things done. I was having a discussion about it the other day with a friend. (A real friend – not a Tom Friedman cab driver “friend”). He was marveling at how gridlocked Congress seemed to be. I didn’t disagree, but I figured this was just a cycle in the interlocking checks and balances of Congress.

Currently the balancing is as between Republicans and Democrats. But, this stalemate opens up a new avenue to exercise power. With Congress checking itself; the executive branch has free reign to a large extent. So, you see Bush II and Obama expanding the power of the executive branch. Power and Presidents being what they are, the executive will continue to expand its reach (to a greater or lesser extent depending on the individual occupying the office) until one of the other branches stops it. Congress has the power; it just has to develop the will to use it. I think we saw this during the end and after the Nixon presidency. Eventually, the executive branch will push into the sphere of the legislative branch just a little too far for the legislative branch to tolerate

At some point, and I don’t really know where that point is, the prerogatives of the institution will override the interests of partisanship; and we’ll see partisanship fade enough to allow the institution to push back.

The Journal & Courier ran a USA Today story about a study showing that humans have more sympathy for abused dogs than abused humans.

A new study has found abused dogs — both puppies and adults — elicit more sympathy than abused adult humans.

From the Scientific Journal, “Duh!” I presume. Perceived innocence and defenselessness are going to trigger a more sympathetic response.

I once had a buddy, a complete misanthrope, who said that, if he was driving down the road and had to choose between hitting a puppy and hitting a kid, he’d let the puppy live because he knew the kid, while innocent now, would almost certainly grow up to be a jerk in one fashion or another. Dogs remain innocent.

Niki, reporting for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that the teachers unions and 27 school corporations (or at least involving 27 school corporations – I’m not positive who all of the Plaintiffs are) have tentatively reached a $14 million settlement of a lawsuit alleging that the Indiana State Teachers Association and the National Education Association defrauded Indiana teachers.

[The Secretary of State’s office] filed the complaint in 2009, saying the state’s largest teachers union violated the Indiana Securities Act when it offered a health care plan for school districts.

A news release said ISTA offered teachers and other school employees a medical plan that allowed school corporations to invest their excess balances to offset future health care costs. In the complaint, the office alleged that ISTA didn’t invest the money but instead used the money to cover significant shortfalls in its long-term disability plan. ISTA continuously issued quarterly and annual statements to schools misrepresenting fund balances.

The settlement apparently represents about 50 cents on the dollar.

The Northwest Indiana Times has a column from the Associated Press (the author of which didn’t jump out at me if that information is displayed somewhere) entitled “Inner Workings of Indiana Government Rarely Disclosed.”

I’m sympathetic to the message, but ultimately it seems a little superficial. It’s true that there are policy decisions and deals that are either ill-advised or self-serving or both. The column gives this abbreviated list (in addition to the Tony Bennett grade changing scandal):

The chief of staff to Secretary of State Connie Lawson has spent the last five months negotiating a job with lobbying powerhouse The Corydon Group. An ongoing Indianapolis Star investigation uncovered that a contractor hired by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, Elevate Ventures, had sent $800,000 in federal money meant for startup business to companies it had ties to. And the Indianapolis Business Journal uncovered a pay-to-play scandal at Indianapolis’ land bank program months before federal agents spent a day hauling records from the City-County Building and indictments were announced.

But then the column goes on to complain that lawmakers only issue press releases about the good stuff they do and don’t announce the bad stuff. Well, duh. But in a lot of these cases the information was available to a public or a press that was paying attention or was digging into the details.

As much or more than public malfeasance, this is an indictment of public apathy and the deterioration of journalism. I’m not sure what we can do about public apathy. I’m more of a public policy and state politics nerd than your average citizen, and I feel the apathy in myself. After a day of work, coaching soccer, getting in some exercise, washing the dishes, and reading to the kids at bedtime, my appetite for being a citizen watchdog is awfully low.

Which brings us to the journalists. There has been some excellent work – Tom LoBianco’s recent efforts in particular. But, do we even have a dozen journalists working the state government beat in this state? I can name maybe six off the top of my head (but I won’t for fear of inadvertently leaving out someone I should remember). Most of them are really good at what they do (there are one or two kiss-asses who seem to be primarily engaged in stenography), but they are simply outgunned. The State government is a billion dollar industry with thousands of employees. To effectively cover it simply requires more resources. But, long ago, newspapers seem to have made the decision that wire stories, opinion pieces, and fluff was a more cost-effective way to sell ad space than devoting resources to investigative journalism. But, that was like eating their seed corn, and that’s why (in my ever so humble opinion) the newspaper industry has been in such disarray in recent years.

So, I don’t disagree that State government has behaved badly in certain respects. But I can’t agree that the acts were hidden particularly well. We just weren’t paying much attention.

Maureen Groppe has an article about how the pending federal immigration bill would affect students in advanced degree programs. Current rules apparently let students study here and then pushes them out of the United States. So, on that end, the argument is that you are creating value and then throwing it out of the country to the detriment of the U.S. The proposed rules would make it easier for you to stay.

But, then you get into the murky business of guest worker programs and lowering the wages of Americans with these sorts of skills. The companies will tell you that there is insufficient supply. The workers will respond that the price needs to rise to attract the available talent.

All of this sounds fairly familiar; echoing the myth of the skills gap we see even in the non-immigration context. But, you also have a variation of the nativist sentiment in this country that really doesn’t care for immigration to start with. The talking points generally center on “illegal” immigration but proponents of these talking points are never particularly open to the idea of expanding legal immigration, thereby reducing the amount of illegality. (Always an option with these malum prohibitum crimes.) In this context, however, the nativist sentiments are muted a bit due to the high end skills of the potential immigrants in question. It’s hard to drum up specters of welfare moochers when you’re talking about people with Ph.Ds in astrophysics.

Maureen Groppe, writing for Gannett, has a story entitled “Report: Big Drop in Uninsured if Indiana Expands Medicaid.”

To recap, part of the healthcare reform effort was to expand Medicaid eligibility for people up to 138% of the poverty level (that’s roughly $27,000 for a family of three according to the news article). Originally, the expansion was more or less mandatory; but the Supreme Court said it had to be discretionary, state by state. Gov. Pence never liked the idea of health care reform and, one gets the sense that his opposition is as much political as it is policy-driven. And, so, Indiana is exercising its discretion not to expand Medicaid. Instead, as a fig leaf of sorts, Indiana is attempting to have the feds endorse the state’s Healthy Indiana plan as a Medicaid expansion substitute.

“Gov. Pence has made clear to Secretary Sebelius that any discussion on a potential coverage increase must start with the Healthy Indiana Plan,” Pence spokeswoman Kara Brooks said Wednesday. “As our current waiver expires at the end of this year, the first priority is to secure an extension of the current program.”

(“Must” — the feds love it when you try to dictate terms to them.) In any event the Healthy Indiana plan covers 37,000 with 53,000 on a waiting list. The Medicaid expansion, funded mostly by the federal government, would insure 400,000. According to the Kaiser Commission report cited by Ms. Groppe, the number of uninsured Hoosiers would be cut in half; reducing the state’s non-elderly, uninsured population from 17% to 8%.

Also, according to Aaron Carroll, aside from not covering as many people, the Healthy Indiana plan costs Indiana more than Medicaid expansion would. A lot more:

Indiana will save a lot of money by allowing the expansion to occur. In 2009, it’s estimated that we spent more than $150 million on the Healthy Indiana Plan. This would no longer be needed, as many would transition into either the Medicaid expansion or the private insurance exchanges. We spent $15 million on our high risk pool plan, which would no longer be needed, as those people would get insurance elsewhere, too. We spent more than $12 million on local tax credits for businesses buying insurance which would no longer be needed as they are replaced by federal tax credits. We spent more than $125 million on uncompensated care for the indigent which would no longer be needed, as far fewer people would be uninsured. And, finally, there was a hidden tax of almost $30 million put on Hoosiers to pay for uninsured care for others through cost shifting and higher premiums. This, too, would go away. We may even be able to save more money if we petition HHS to allow us to transition some children and families from CHIP to the exchanges. But even without that, if you add all the spending I just laid out together, Indiana could have saved more than $335 million in 2009 alone, compared to the $63 million the expansion would have cost if Indiana had covered 10% that year. The savings would more than pay for the costs of the expansion moving forward.

Let’s get back to basics. The rest of the industrialized world has figured this out. They provide health care to their people; they do it for less money; and they get similar if not better outcomes. We could do this too if we wanted to; we’re just reluctant to do so.

Scott Tibbs, at Hoosier Access, has a post about public meeting times that I wanted to flag, not so much to single out Scott, but to address this notion I hear occasionally about changing public meeting times to allow for participation by the public.

The state legislature should start by making it illegal for any local government elected body to meet before 6:00 p.m. Ideally, this should apply to boards and commissions as well, but the first priority should be to enable more public scrutiny of elected officials as they decide budgets and legislation. This does not need to be implemented immediately, as local government can be given a couple years to change their schedules to allow for more public participation.

The idea is that people will be more likely to go to these meetings if they are not during traditional work hours. It’s plausible on its face, but, in my experience, later meeting times do not result in a notable increase in public attendance of meetings. In addition, because you are holding these meetings after hours, the unit of government faces increased costs associated with employees working longer hours and keeping public buildings open later than usual. Finally, I tend to oppose the State telling local government how to run its business.

I’m not at all against the units of local government accommodating public interest. Sometimes there are issues that are contentious or capture the popular imagination; and where there is a great deal of public input to be had, the meetings should be held at times and places that are convenient to public input. But the truth is that the public, by and large, has little interest in the minutiae of government work; and has neither the time nor the inclination to investigate the details on most issues. The result of a mandatory post-6 p.m. meeting requirement would generally be empty meeting rooms, later at night.

I would suggest that, if work hours are a barrier to public participation in government, we start by expanding election hours or moving election days into times that are not traditional work hours. If that yields greater participation, maybe it would be time for serious consideration of a state mandate for moving meeting times.

The Urbanophile has a post that Libertarians can surely get on board with. He takes a swipe at the narrative of the fiscally conservative Republican governor. He argues generally that they’re no more frugal than their Democratic counterparts.

In particular, he takes aim at Ohio’s Governor Kasich who defunded Cincinnati’s plans to invest in street cars only to start spending piles of money on a bypass around the small town of Portsmouth, Ohio. On the way, he notes similar behavior by Indiana Governors Pence and Daniels for Indiana’s plan to spend $100,000 per foot on a highway in Kentucky.