A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

SB 25: Termination of Local Government Defined Benefit Plans

by Leave a Comment

SB 25, introduced by Senator Boots, would require that a political subdivision’s defined benefit plan (pension plan) be terminated if the political subdivision fails to make the full, actuarial determined contribution to the plan for three consecutive years. The fiscal impact statement makes this seem like maybe not such a great idea.  The note indicates that plans are subject to IRS rules for termination, is skeptical that plans would have sufficient funding to provide the required member benefits and annuities, and suggests that litigation would follow. On the upside, the 2016 Local Pension Report indicates only two political subdivisions that have not made the required payments in the last three years. (Unfortunately the fiscal note does not indicate which two political subdivisions.)

I suppose the intent is to add some pressure to political subdivisions to make sure they don’t get too far behind on their pension obligations. But, this seems like a Procrustean solution that would ultimately do more harm than good if it was ever triggered.

SB 7: School Calendar

by 26 Comments

No school before August 24th

Put away the book, nerd. It’s only August 20th.

Sen. Leising seems to have a thing for schools and “the good old days.” Her perennial windmill is, of course, attempting to have the State government mandate school curriculum relative to cursive writing for what I regard as a combination of nostalgia and specious reasoning. (This year, she submitted her cursive bill as SB 8.)

With her SB 7, which would prohibit schools from starting earlier than the last Monday in August, I also detect a strong whiff of nostalgia. I’ve also heard it characterized as a response to lobbying efforts from the amusement park industry. Whatever the lobbying background of this proposal might be, my sense is that more generalized support for this initiative is going to be from people with a sense that back in the good old days, we had longer summers. When I was a kid, and my birthday rolled around in early August, I still had a few weeks of vacation left. I seem to recall my parents talking about school not starting until after Labor Day.

Aside from the general idea that school corporations are perfectly capable of organizing their calendars without dictation from Indianapolis, West Lafayette’s superintendent, Rocky Killion, had a column in the Journal & Courier a few weeks ago discussing some of the problems with this proposal.

?  Indiana code requires 180 days of instruction for all public schools.

? If public schools cannot begin school until the fourth week of August, then students will be attending school through mid-June.

? Students and staff members involved with advance placement tests would not be able to participate in the national testing schedules.

? It is better for high school students to finish their first semester finals before winter break rather than having to take several weeks off and then come back and finish first semester at the end of January.

?  Seniors who plan to graduate early will now have to return in January to finish their first semester and may possibly be prevented from enrolling into college until the fall semester.

?  All three public school districts in Tippecanoe County serve students whose parents are associated with Purdue University.  When Purdue University ends classes in early May, many parents will be forced to choose between staying in the area through mid-June or taking their children out of school before the end of second semester.

?  High school athletics would begin nearly a month before school starts.

Even though I’m not immune from grumbling about “back in my day” when my kids go back to school in the heart of August, the fact is that the scheduling works out o.k. And I trust that our local officials have decent reasons for implementing the schedule the way they do. They have lives and families outside the schools, just like we do, and I doubt they are any more eager to cut summer short than anyone else. But, there are competing considerations involved. And the General Assembly may not know how to appropriately weigh those considerations for each community.

SB 1: Sunday Alcohol Sales

by 1 Comment

Indiana's liquor laws will drive you to drink

All we need is a ten and fiver; a car and key and a sober driver. B double-E double-R U-N: Beer Run!

Senator Alting has introduced SB 1 which would permit package liquor stores, grocery stores, convenience stores, or drug stores to sell alcohol from noon until 8 p.m. on Sundays. This bill was recommended by the Alcohol Code Revision Commission and is obviously an improvement over the current law. However, the hours permitted on Sunday contrasts noticeably with the 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. permitted the rest of the week.

As it happens, my preferred time of the week to do my grocery shopping happens to be Sunday morning. I don’t have to be at work, and the crowds are usually pretty low. But, it also happens that I don’t really mind all that much making a separate trip for a beer run. Ultimately, treating Sunday differently from the rest of the week for alcohol sales just seems like an anachronism without a lot in the way of legitimate public policy reasons to recommend the distinction. Still, half a loaf is better than none.

On Taxation, Social Spending, and Happiness

by 10 Comments

Idea: Conversing with people of diverse opinions can lead to thought.
(Note: This is not the same as putting up with disagreeable people who like flinging their feces over the Internet.)

I was having a pleasant back-and-forth on one of my more conservative friend’s Facebook page which led to a probably overly-long-for-Facebook comment on my part. But, it seems like a good enough basis for a blog post. Also, a periodic reminder to seek out people of good will who have different opinions. Try not to get mad at each other. The discussions will be good for you.

Anyway, the subject of taxes came up. I mused about the relationship between taxes and happiness indexes because high-tax areas often seem to be areas where people rate themselves happy. He correctly pointed out that those indexes are subjective and also observed that he and I are happy living in low-tax Indiana. Which led to this, from me:

I think a fair amount of my happiness comes from having located in the People’s Republic of West Lafayette. It’s not very high tax or liberal compared to your average college town, but compared to the rest of Indiana probably more so.

Part of what makes me happy about the community is that there isn’t a lot of (noticeable anyway) dysfunction in the people with whom I come into contact. West Lafayette is a bubble. Tippecanoe County is less so but still a bit of a bubble when compared to the rest of Indiana.

The question is whether spreading social services more broadly can, in effect, expand and strengthen that “bubble?” Or, to get out of using the mildly pejorative “bubble” characterization, can spreading social services more widely reduce the dysfunction in the general population? Can taxing the rich and spending it on the poor effectively improve education, improve health, strengthen families, make people more productive, and make communities happier places to live? How much can you tax before the good things produced by the spending is outweighed by the unhappiness created by taxing and taking peoples’ money?

Then you get to the moral question — even if you generate significantly more happiness through taxing and spending, is it morally justifiable to take from the few and spend on the many? On this point, I’m probably never going to have a meeting of the minds with the “taxation is theft” purists. But, as to the previous point, I think there is a lot to discuss and to be learned about what sorts of social spending is effective and about when you hit a point of diminishing returns with respect to taxation.

SB 65: Learning About Sex

by 1 Comment

Sen. Kruse has introduced SB 65 regarding instruction about human sexuality in school. Schools would be required to make available to parents any instructional material on human sexuality “including sexual activity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

In addition:

A school may not provide a student with instruction on human sexuality, including sexual activity, sexual orientation, or gender identity, unless the parent of the student or the student, if the student is an adult or an emancipated minor, has provided the school with written consent for the instruction. A consent form provided to a parent of a student or a student under this subsection must accurately reflect the contents and nature of the instruction on human sexuality that will be provided to the student.

I predict that the kids who are most in need of instruction on these subjects are probably going to be the ones with the parents who are least likely to consent to the instruction.

Washington Post on the Political History of School Privatization in Indiana

by 9 Comments

School Privatization Discussion (artist’s visualization).

Valerie Strauss, writing for the Washington Post, has an article with some of the political history behind school privatization in Indiana and the related defunding of public schools in the state. (Much of the article seems to come from Carol Burris.) Former Governor, Mitch Daniels, is mentioned prominently for obvious reasons. But, the article dates the movement back to a discussion at a 1996 event involving Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Steve Hilbert, Mickey Mauer, and Fred Klipsch.

Daniels asserted that there was no debating “the abysmal, atrocious failure of the public school monopoly.” Mauer was apparently told he was wrong when he tried to argue that the Carmel schools were doing o.k. Twenty-one years later, the result of that discussion would be described as:

[P]ublic schools were reeling from 15 years of relentless attack. I found public schools engaged in fierce competition with each other, charter schools, virtual schools and voucher schools for students and the “backpack funding” that came with them.

Entire public school systems in Indiana cities, such as Muncie and Gary, had been decimated by funding losses, even as a hodgepodge of ineffective charter and voucher schools sprang up to replace them.  Charter school closings and scandals were commonplace, with failing charters sometimes flipped into failing voucher schools. Many of the great public high schools of Indianapolis were closed from a constant churn of reform directed by a “mind trust” infatuated with portfolio management of school systems.

The article talks about much of the PAC funding of the political movement that resulted in a political environment where public schools could be attacked coming from Betsy DeVos starting in 2010. I think their dates are off a little. Back in 2006, I posted about Dick DeVos and his Amway fortune funding an organization called “All Children Matter” that was donating liberally to Indiana campaigns. Of “All Children Matter,” I wrote, “All Children Matter is devoted to privatizing our educational system through use of vouchers and similar schemes or, to use their characterization, offering “school choice.””

In the 12 key house races that Mary Beth Schneider called Hot races:

District 17, Steve Heim $1,000.00 from All Children Matter
District 20 Tom Dermody $53,000.00
District 21 Jackie Walorski $1,000.00
District 30 John Smith $4,500.00 on 10-13-2006
District 31 Tim Harris $1,000.00 on 10-03-2006
District 33 Bill Davis $1,000.00 on 10-10-2006
District 46 Vern Tincher report not online
District 52 Martin Stutzman report not online
District 64 Troy Woodruff $1,750.00 in three payments
District 69 Billy Bright $20,000.00 on 10-25-06……yes 20 grand!
District 70 Christopher Byrd $500.00 on 10-12-2006
District 86 Kathy Densborn $2,000.00 on 10-12-2006

In any case, the Washington Post’s telling of the tale of Indiana’s assault on traditional public schools is well worth reading. In the years since, we’ve discovered that private schools don’t yield better results and charter schools very often suffer from sketchy oversight. We need to re-commit ourselves to giving public schools the resources they need to thrive. In addition to educating our kids, our public schools provide an important focal point for our communities generally. They are part of what transform our cities and counties from a collection of individuals into a community — something that charter schools and private schools don’t do nearly as well.

 

Bonaventura Resigns from DCS in Protest

by 5 Comments

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.

In Which the Wall Street Journal visits Fountain County: A Village in the Interior of “Indiana”

by 10 Comments

In which our reporter travels to the interior of “Indiana.” The people there, known as “Hoosiers,”  call this a “farm.”

The Wall Street Journal has a good article by Michael Phillips about a woman who escaped Fountain County to go work in San Francisco then came back and reflected upon the differences between the places. It’s good in the sense that it’s well written and worth reading. I am frustrated by the genre, however.

There seem to be an abundance of newspaper articles and magazine features about indifferent coastal elites are who are too dismissive of flyover country and that’s how Donald Trump got elected. Too often, these pieces seem to be patronizing inasmuch as they do not examine the underpinnings of Trump country’s feelings and hold the people there to an expectation that their opinions be founded on facts that are more or less correct and their resentments directed in more or less the proper directions.

The pieces generally seem critical of big city types for being too dismissive of rural and Midwestern populations. They are less often critical of rural types for being too dismissive of big city types. The onus is on the urban populations to bridge the gap. I don’t think I’ve seen any pieces on the conservative, rural person from Trump country who goes into the city and discovers that city-people have value and that they have reasons for being fearful of Trump and supportive of the Democrats. And, I think the reason for that is, somewhat ironically, a condescending view of the mental and emotional capacity of red state and rural citizens. As if they are children and, therefore, we shouldn’t hold them to an adult’s standard of behavior.

For example, there is not much push back against rural voters who express sentiments such as:

The wife of her father’s best friend suggested Ms. Cronkhite wasn’t welcome back in farm country.

“We are too busy anyway working our asses off for 12-16 hours every day to feed you ‘coastal’ people and everyone else in this world and I know this may come as a surprise to you, but that even includes Blacks, LGBTs, Muslims, Women and on and on,” wrote Jahn Songer. She and her husband own a local bank, farm corn and soybeans and run a crop-dusting service.

“So keep your elitists’ rear ends in your little office cubicles while we handle the tough, physical things that keep you and your perfect friends alive,” Ms. Songer wrote.

As if it’s reasonable to think that people who do jobs in cities aren’t doing real, hard work. As if the mental work done in offices is less valuable than jobs with physical components. But the writers in these rural-America-as-undiscovered-country pieces seem content to give people like Ms. Songer a pass on opinions like this as if she’s from some benighted tribe who can’t be expected to know that the sun isn’t really swallowed up by a dragon every night.

Just an aside about the rural counties in this part of Indiana. I used to do a lot of collections work which would take me to the counties within a 60 mile radius of Lafayette. By the nature of collections, I was always dealing with poor, financially stressed individuals. And, other than maybe Tippecanoe County itself, these were fairly rural counties. Despite this commonality, there was often a different vibe from county-to-county. The way the process works, after you get a judgment, if the judgment isn’t paid, you drag people into court to testify about their income and assets and see if you can work out some kind of payment plan.

In Benton and White counties, for example, the people who couldn’t pay were generally fairly positive and polite. They didn’t have much money. I’m positive a fair number of them lied to me to one extent or another to keep some income, assets, or cash beyond the reach of my clients. But they were genial about it. In, say, Fountain or Clinton counties, there was more of an angry edge to the encounters. And this wasn’t based on just a couple of encounters. I went to these counties several times per year from 2000 – 2010. I never really figured out why the people in some of these counties were generally positive while other people were generally negative. But there seemed to be some sort of contagious cultural negativity or cultural positivity  from area to area which would fester or bloom as the case may be. Like I said, just an aside. I’m not sure if my anecdotal sense of this could be quantified in any real way.

To the larger point of this particular article, I’d like to see a counterbalance of articles wherein rural Americans go to the big city and find out that they’ve been too dismissive of city folks rather than just these anthropological pieces where city people go into the dark interior of America and Learn Lessons.

Terry Goodin selected as Indiana House Minority Leader

by 4 Comments

“House Democrats selected a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat as their new leader Monday in a private caucus.”

The leader of the Indiana House Democrats, Scott Pelath, announced that he will not be seeking re-election and stepped down from his leadership position. The House Democratic caucus picked Terry Goodin, from Austin, Indiana. He is the Superintendent of the Crothersville Community School Corporation in Jackson County.

The other main contender was reportedly Phil Giaquinta out of Fort Wayne.

For years, Pat Bauer controlled the House Democrats. After a couple of walk-outs and electoral shellackings, the Democrats ousted Bauer. Rep. Linda Lawson served as an interim leader before the House Democrats picked a more permanent leader in Pelath who served in that position since 2012 (but there hasn’t been much in the way of an uptick in Democratic fortunes during that time.)

I don’t know much about Goodin. (I’ve never been that well versed in the State House power dynamics, and I haven’t been paying as much attention to the legislature in recent years as I once did.) But, he seems to have been a Bauer loyalist. The only blog entries about him that I can find indicate that he proposed legislation in 2007 and 2008 regulating the sale of “sexually explicit products.” That legislation was struck down as unconstitutional by Judge Barker in the Southern District.

On social media, the Hoosiers on the left that I follow seem pretty uniformly disappointed in the choice. (See, e.g., the Indy Democrat Blog). The main theme I see about the reason for the disappointment has to do with his opposition to same sex marriage. From what I can tell, morale hasn’t exactly been high among state Democrats for years. (In the House, I believe they are outnumbered 30 – 70.) This doesn’t seem to be helping. At the moment, it looks like there is an anti-Trump wave building for 2018. From the grumblings on social media, I’d say Goodin probably isn’t the best choice to energize state Democrats to take advantage of that wave. But, I’ll hurry to add that I’m no political strategist, and the grumblings of the voices I hear aren’t necessarily representative of anything.

It’s a judgment call: are political parties most successful when they focus on their most loyal members . . . or when they focus on shifting toward the other major party to try to pick off its supporters? My guess is that the Democratic calculus here is that, with only 30 seats, Hoosiers have spoken, and they like what socially conservative Republicans have to say. If that’s what they’re thinking, I’d call it a mistake. I think voters dislike inauthentic even more than they dislike policies they’re opposed to. Maybe it’s a political analog of the uncanny valley. But, like I said, I’m no strategist.

CBO: Tax Legislation is Worse than You Thought

by 5 Comments

The Washington Post has an article entitled, “Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds.” It increases the burden on those with incomes of less than $30,000 in 2019, those with incomes of less than $40,000 in 2021, and those with incomes of less than $75,000 in 2027. Those making over $100k tend to do better and, of course, those with incomes of more than $1 million per year are making out like bandits.

Senator Hatch complains that the burden on a lot of these people is just in the form of increased health care costs, so it doesn’t really count. If you squint and turn your head just right, poor people are actually better off. As Win Moses, former lawmaker out of Fort Wayne, put it:

Tax cuts for the highest incomes by taking health care away from the lowest incomes is not fair or good for America. And we’ve proven several times that “Trickle Down” economics doesn’t get to the working middle class.

I always get grief from my conservative friends when I say stuff like this, but reducing wealth disparities in the country isn’t just a matter of bleeding-heart, feel-good liberal mumbo jumbo like fairness and equality. Concentration of large amounts of wealth in a few hands distorts markets and democratic processes. The system can tolerate — even thrives under — certain amounts of inequality. It creates incentives that fuel the economy. But, beyond a certain point, things start to break down.

Conservatives like their own appeals to “fairness” to promote tax restructuring for this. Assuming, usually without saying, that money acquired is the same thing as money earned, they’ll say it’s unfair for money to be taken from the people who have it and given to people who don’t have it. But, I find appeals to fairness used on behalf of the wealthy about as persuasive as appeals to fairness on behalf of the poor. I’ll not shed a tear if Paris Hilton or Donald Trump, Jr. make less so that the poorest among us can get that nagging cough looked at without having to skip a mortgage payment.

Ultimately, I’m more of a utilitarian, I guess. How much wealth disparity do we need in the system to maintain the incentives that fuel the economic engine? What kind of a baseline standard of living do we need to provide the poor to minimize civil unrest, reduce crime, and — as best we can — promote a healthy, productive, broadly educated populace instilled with the kind of civic virtues that make our communities good places to live? In short, for me, it’s not so much about fairness as about striking a balance that’s as functional as possible. This new tax law isn’t it.