A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Increased Responsibility But No Money for Local Government in Criminal Reform Bill

by 6 Comments

Maureen Hayden has a column entitled Criminal Code reform legislation will need funding to work. She notes that there is a major piece missing from the criminal code reform bill still pending before the General Assembly: money to make it work.

One of the bill’s original goals was to divert low-level, non-violent offenders out of state prisons, where the worst offenders belong, and into community-based programs proven to reduce recidivism.

But with just days to go before the session’s end, nowhere in the legislation or the $30 billion budget bill are the dollars for local jails and community correction facilities to run the drug rehabilitation programs that criminal justice experts say are needed to make a real dent in crime.

One of my critiques of the State’s budget balancing is that it has been done on the backs of local governments – cutting or freezing local funding while continuing to mandate certain services. This has the look of more of the same. You can’t have state legislation that has state court judges sentencing offenders to local programs without also providing funding for those programs.

State Budget: Indiana’s Largest Christmas Tree

by 1 Comment

I wanted to give credit to the AP for introducing its readers to the legislative notion of a Christmas tree. It’s a bill with a strong central legislative goal from which legislators can hang lesser pieces of legislation that were unable to stand on their own. The article cites the budget bill as the prime example. (But, then, it goes on to repeat that old chestnut about how the budget is the one bill they “must pass.” Yeah, there would be hell to pay if they didn’t pass the state budget; but, contrary to popular belief, there is no constitutional provision that makes passage mandatory before sine die.)

The article mentions “ornaments” from years past — the Planned Parenthood defunding, a mobile home tax credit, tax increases to pay for Lucas Oil Statdium. This year, potential candidates include financial consideration for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, gambling expansion, state voucher expansion, Common Core education standards, and review of the Rockport gas contract.

The advantage of the “Christmas Tree” approach is that, if you can manage to get your pet project tacked on to the budget or other major legislation; it’s less likely that other legislators will vote against it even if they don’t much care for the substance. (And they have a lot more cover and plausible deniability if they’re simply embarrassed to vote for the substance.)

SB 323 – Battle Flags

by Leave a Comment

SB 323 expands the scope of the Indiana Civil War flag fund to include restoration and preservation of any Indiana battle flag and not just civil war flags. (Battle flag preservation is currently also one of the permitted uses of funds in the souvenir fund.) The money from both funds is administered by the Indiana War Memorials Commission which consists of nine members, one from each of Indiana’s Congressional districts, appointed by the Governor.

Pence: We have plenty of money for stuff I like

by 11 Comments

Brian Zimmerman, writing for the Palladium-Item has an article entitled Pence: Tax cut, spend is possible. Gov. Pence made a speech at my old stomping grounds – Forest Hills Country Club.

Seriously, I spent a ton of time there. My folks were avid golfers, so when I was too young to golf, I was at the pool with my sisters. One of my best friends’ dad’s was the golf pro there before my uncle became the pro. My two brothers and I worked in the pro-shop at various times. (I worked there for 5 years – washing the clubs of, among others, the father of a current state Supreme Court justice and the father of a PGA pro.) For many years, most summer days seemed to consist of golfing there, working there, or hanging out with other kids who golfed and worked there.

But, I digress. Gov. Pence gave a speech there. In that speech, he apparently told the crowd that we can have our cake and eat it too. He characterizes Indiana as having “the largest surplus” in the state’s history. No doubt you have to squint and tilt your head just right to see it; selectively ignoring inconveniently large obligations of the state – unemployment insurance fund bail out money from the feds we have to pay back and underfunded state pensions come immediately to mind. Anyway, the surplus is so large, he says, that we can afford his promised 10% tax cut and, at the same time, spend more on roads and education and address Indiana’s 8.7% unemployment and 22% of Hoosier children living in poverty.

It’s a fine line to walk, trying to simultaneously brag about the fruits of sound fiscal policy for the last 8 years while also saying we don’t have enough money for the stuff you don’t happen to like; e.g., we have enough money for tax cuts, but not enough for Medicaid expansion (unless we use Indiana’s more expensive, less effective health care model).

So, what I’m really trying to say is that this winter is dragging on too long, and I’d really rather stop reading about politicians and go golfing. Also, you can see why my natural political inclinations are, pretty literally, those of a country club Republican.

71st Anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo

by 9 Comments

Today is the 71st anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo (named after the mission commander, Lt. Col. James Doolittle). I heard a story on NPR about how the surviving Raiders get together each year on the anniversary of the raid. There are four who currently survive, three of whom could make it to the reunion. And this will be the last reunion.

The raid was more symbolic than practical. But symbols matter. It showed Americans that we could fight back, and it showed the Japanese that their acts of aggression would have negative consequences.

The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan only hitting non-military targets or missing completely, but it succeeded in its goal of helping American morale and casting doubt in Japan on the ability of the Japanese military leaders. It also caused Japan to withdraw its powerful aircraft carrier force from the Indian Ocean to defend their Home Islands, and the raid contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s decision to attack Midway—an attack that turned into a decisive rout of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the U.S. Navy near Midway Island in the Central Pacific.

And, because I’m GenX and, therefore, incapable of proper, unalloyed sentimentality, it reminds me of a scene in Starship Troopers:

We’ve got one of their brains now. Pretty soon we’ll know how they think, and then we’ll know how to beat them. One day it’ll be over, and everyone will forget that this was the moment. This is when it turned. And it wasn’t the mighty Fleet, it wasn’t any fancy new weapon, it was a cap trooper named Zim who captured a brain[.]

For World War II, Doolittle’s Raid may have been the moment it turned.

Consideration of WWII also feeds into my skepticism of the cult of individualism that seems to be ascendant in the U.S. just about now. As an individual, I don’t really want others controlling my behavior or limiting my liberty. But, wars between nations demonstrate that an individual’s survival often depends on allowing one’s self to be incorporated into a larger organism. An individual can’t do those things necessary to create and project munitions across the Pacific to do damage to the Empire of Japan. Doolittle and his raiders were the tip of the spear. But the shaft of the spear and the body wielding it was the rest of the nation. Eleven of the raiders were heroically killed or captured in service to our nation.

Update This is also the 70th anniversary of Operation Vengeance where Admiral Yamamoto’s airplane was shot down. Naval intelligence had intercepted and decrypted a message revealing the admiral’s tour of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.

Remembering the Anarchist Bombings of 1919

by 12 Comments

The ongoing coverage of the Boston marathon bombs has reminded me of Luigi Galleani and the anarchists of the late 19th / early 20th century. We don’t know what was behind these bombs, and I’m not going to speculate; but it’s worth remembering that there was a period of time when these sorts of bombings were more of a common problem.

1919 was apparently a very bad year.

In late April 1919, at least 36 booby trap dynamite-filled bombs were mailed to a cross-section of prominent politicians and appointees, including the Attorney General of the United States, as well as justice officials, newspaper editors and businessmen, including John D. Rockefeller. Among all the bombs addressed to high-level officials, one bomb was notably addressed to the home of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (BOI) field agent once tasked with investigating the Galleanists, Rayme Weston Finch, who in 1918 had arrested two prominent Galleanists while leading a police raid on the offices of their publication Cronaca Sovversiva.

These bombings fed into the Palmer Raids, the Red Scare of 1919-1920, persecution of immigrants, and contributed mightily to the rise of J. Edgar Hoover and all of the civil rights abuses he stood for.

VanOuse on Medical Transparency

by 4 Comments

Mike VanOuse, writing a column for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has a good column complaining about the lack of transparency in pricing medical services and insuring medical services. When he buys a loaf of bread, it says $1.49, he turns over $2, gets $0.51 back; end of story. Nobody telling him being vague about the price and telling him they’ll work with him based on income or being quoted one price, paying it, and then getting hounded by collectors after the provider decides whether or not they like what the insurance company’s done.

The first thing we need, particularly in the case of non-emergency medical procedures and services, is price transparency. What does it cost? The Indiana Supreme Court has recently decided that when you sign up for medical services; unless your contract says something different; you might well be bound by the prices in the hospital’s chargemaster. This is notwithstanding the fact that these chargemaster prices are largely works of fiction and very probably won’t be shared with you just for asking.

Eric Bradner on Rockport Gasification Legislation

by 1 Comment

Eric Bradner, writing for the Evansville Courier Press has an outstanding article describing the current state of legislation concerning the Rockport Gasification plant.

Rockport is a project that will convert coal into synthetic gas. The plant is an expensive, $2.8 billion project. Its financer, Leucadia, is trying to hedge its bets and get help from Indiana to make sure the financing is secure.

After Indiana Gasification’s negotiations with state utilities fell through, former Gov. Mitch Daniels directed his administration’s Indiana Finance Authority to negotiate a deal to help the company secure financing – a controversial move itself, since the company’s Indiana project manager is Mark Lubbers, a former aide and close friend of Daniels.

The 30-year contract would have Indiana serve as the guaranteed buyer of 80 percent of the Rockport plant’s product, at a pre-negotiated price.

The state would buy that synthetic natural gas and then resell it on the open market. If those market rates are lower than the price the state negotiated, Hoosier gas customers would pay for the difference – and opponents, including Vectren Corp., estimate that those costs could be sky-high in the deal’s early years.

The contract has been tied up in legal battles for months. Late last year, the Indiana Court of Appeals voided state regulators’ approval of the deal, ruling that a 37-word provision needed to be removed. Both sides have asked the Indiana Supreme Court to take up the case.

Opponents of the deal want legislation that beefs up ratepayer protections. Proponents of the deal have been working to weaken such legislation and preserve financial incentives for the project.

Bradner’s piece outlines potential conflicts of interests for legislators who are trying to preserve the Rockport deal. Featuring prominently is Rep. Matt Ubehlor, a legislator from Bloomfield who is a coal mine manager for Peabody Energy “which owns five of Southwestern Indiana’s biggest mining complexes – including Bear Run, the largest surface mine east of the Mississippi River.” Also featured is Senator Jim Merritt who is “the vice president of corporate affairs for the Indiana Rail Road Co., which spent $17 million to build a spur to Peabody’s Bear Run mine and negotiated an exclusive deal to haul its coal.”

Boston Massacre

by 3 Comments

I’m sure I don’t have anything original to say about the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Two people are dead, dozens are injured, and we don’t yet know why. What we know at the moment is that some people are psychopaths, some people are heroes, and most of us are neither or both depending on the circumstances.

HB 1102 – Executive Sessions

by Leave a Comment

HB 1102 tweaks the open meetings law. Current law allows a governing body to hold executive sessions (outside the view of the public) to discuss strategy about pending, threatened, or initiating litigation. HB 1102 specifies that “litigation” means “any judicial action or administrative law proceeding under federal or state law.”

It also exempts from the definition of “meeting” “collective bargaining discussions that the governing body of a school corporation engages in directly with bargaining adversaries.”