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Fox: Henhouse Reform Should Focus on Hens, Not Foxes

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According to an article in the Indianapolis Star by Daniel Lee, a spokesperson for WellPoint says that health care reform shouldn’t focus on health insurers. Their bureaucracy, profits, advertising, and lobbying expenses apparently aren’t fat that needs to be cut out of the system. Rather, we should trust health insurer’s promises that really this time they are pretty much fixing things on their own.

Abdul had some pretty good coverage on this one. He reports that the WellPoint spokesperson said that “individuals with pre-existing conditions can be pooled with other high risk customers.” It would be like an insurance ghetto for sick people!

She complains about the sort of competition that would be in place if there was a public option. The problem right now is that the incentives are not in place for insurance companies to compete to see who can provide the best coverage for the lowest premiums to the most people. Rather, the incentive is to see who can cherry pick the most healthy people, deny the most claims, and avoid the most “medical loss” (i.e. actually paying for health care with premium dollars received). The medical insurance industry has zero credibility at this time. Their operations are opaque, their bureaucracy is byzantine, and their track record is horrible.

Gov. Daniels Sends Out Furlough Letters

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The Indiana Barrister has the text of furlough letters sent to state employees by Gov. Daniels. The man just can’t help himself.

According to the letters, he is blameless. In fact, if anything, he went too far in trying to assist the General Assembly in passing a budget. His magnanimous concessions in this regard were “foolhardy.” State employees should make clear in their voice mails and e-mail responses that it is the General Assembly’s failure (not the Governor’s) that the government shut down. Rather than simply advising that the state employee’s office is closed until a budget is passed, the employees are directed to specify that the offices are closed “due to the failure of The Indiana General Assembly.” This seems like kind of a dick move. So, does this tie his hands on a veto – since that would mean the General Assembly did, in fact, pass a budget?

Indiana and the Chrysler Bankruptcy

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Some of my fellow Hoosier bloggers (h/t Abdul and Josh Claybourn) have been following the Chrysler bankruptcy, particularly with respect to Indiana’s unexpectedly prominent role in the matter. Josh, in particular, has strong feelings on the issue, calling the proposed reorganization (presumably with some degree of hyperbole “The End of Capitalism as We Know It.”)

For those who haven’t been following the matter, Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock has been spearheading objections to the reorganization plan because of its affect on approximately $42 million nominally owed to the Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund, the Indiana State Pension Trust and the Indiana Major Moves Construction Fund for investments these funds made in Chrysler. This represents about 0.6% of the $6.9 billion in first priority liens against Chrysler’s assets. However, despite Indiana’s very minor position among this class of creditors, it is the one raising the biggest stink and trying the hardest to derail the process. Chrysler smells politics. So do I. Under the proposed plan, Indiana will receive a return of about 29%.

This is an issue that journalists and Indiana politicians should probably be familiar with going forward. Maybe I’m wrong, but this has the smell of Mourdock and, potentially, Gov. Daniels trying to set themselves up politically as champions of the marketplace and defenders against Obama’s nefarious economic plots. If the bankruptcy court’s description (pdf) of the evidence presented bears any resemblance to what was actually presented, Indiana’s pursuit of these claims looks like a waste of taxpayer money – first there is no apparent alternative that would yield more money to the Indiana funds than the one being approved by the court; and second Indiana invested in Chrysler subject to an agreement that requires the Indiana funds to go along with the decisions of fellow investors that control a vastly greater share of the funds invested. Those creditors have consented to the deal with Fiat for a New Chrysler.

Much more after the jump.

[Read more…]

I didn’t see that coming

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First off, if you aren’t regular readers, I wanted to point out that Abdul at Indiana Barrister did a fine job blogging about the last day at the General Assembly. They apparently passed the unemployment insurance funding bill, punted on the C.I.B. fix, and did not pass a budget. The budget failed in the House on a 27 – 71 vote.

As I digest the reports out of the Fort Wayne, Louisville, and Indianapolis papers, I think the failure boils down as follows — the House Democrats and Senate Republicans had reached an agreement they could live with. The Governor changed course near the last minute and insisted on a budget that spent $100 million less, leaving a surplus of $1.4 billion instead of $1.3 billion. This led to the Senate making the cuts in a way that caused significant House Democratic defection. Neither the Governor nor the Senate Republicans could persuade a single House Republican to make up the gap. And so the bill failed, and we will have a special session.

Niki Kelly of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is always good choice for in depth reporting on legislative issues. Her report on the budget failure is entitled “Split vote kills hope for budget.” The failure to pass a budget will lead to the first special session since 2002. Years of the General Assembly managing to pass a bipartisan budget has lead to a sense of complacency on my part, I guess. I did not think they would fail to get it passed this year.

A last-ditch effort to pass the state budget failed in spectacular fashion late Wednesday when the House defeated a proposed spending plan by a 71-27 vote – a move that will lead to the first special session since 2002.

The Senate passed the measure 37-13, but the issue was moot.
. . .
The key argument was over how to cut $100 million more out of a likely $30 billion spending plan propped up by nearly $2 billion in federal stimulus money.

Senate Republicans wanted the cuts to come from K-12 school funding so that the state reserves at the end of the biennium were left with at least $1.4 billion.

House Democrats wanted to preserve the education funding and give Daniels a $1.3 billion surplus.

But there was fear that Daniels would veto either of the plans.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener’s report for the Louisville Courier Press is entitled “Special Session Looms over budget impasse.” Her report paints a picture of the House Democrats and Senate Republicans at a stalemate, each waiting for the other to blink — while the House Republicans essentially threw spitballs at them both. (I’m paraphrasing here – the House Republicans irritate me. The Senate Republicans and the House Democrats seem to make good faith efforts to govern responsibly. The Senate Democrats are mostly silent. But the House Republicans seem nothing more than noisy.)

House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, was struggling to find enough Democratic votes to pass the plan created by the Senate, which would spend $100 million less on public schools than the proposal written by Democrats.

So Bauer was looking to House Republicans for help. As Democrats headed into an evening caucus meeting, Bauer said he might allow a vote on the Senate plan because Republican members could provide the support needed to get it passed.
. . .
[The House & Senate seemed to have a compromise last week, but as] the state’s revenues have continued to slow, Republicans have grown increasingly concerned their plan spent too much. So under pressure from Daniels and in the middle of final negotiations, Kenley insisted on slicing $100 million more from the budget, all of it from funding for public schools.
. . .
That set up a showdown with Democrats, for whom education funding is sacrosanct.

The dispute came despite a number of earlier compromises.

House Democrats had already given up on their plans to spend $200 million in state reserves to try to create jobs and fund just a one-year budget rather than the traditional two.

The Governor couldn’t broker a compromise and the House Republicans would not come along without cuts above and beyond the Senate version.

Mary Beth Schneider and Bill Ruthhart report for the Indianapolis Star. According to that report, Speaker Bauer blamed the failure, at least in part, on the Governor’s indecision and wavering.

“The governor told us this morning that he would sign the (Senate) Republicans’ budget, and then he changed his mind when he thought it would pass,” he said, adding:

“Many of my members felt if the Republicans wouldn’t vote for a Republican bill, then why should they? We wanted a bipartisan vote. They’re the party of no.”

Right now, my sympathies go out to the folks at the Legislative Services Agency. If history is any guide, these employees have been burning the midnight oil, likely for weeks if not months. They don’t typically receive additional pay for these extra hours, but they accrue comp time — comp time which is usually redeemable in the form of some pretty extended vacation time; which works out for the agency when the General Assembly is out of session and things slow way down. But now much of that vacation time will have to be delayed or canceled due to the uncertainty over special sessions. I’m sure the unemployed and the folks who live and die based on what is in the budget aren’t exactly going to cry them a river. But, still, it’s a hassle for them, and if no one else on the outside is remembering them, I am.

Local Government Restructuring

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It looks like the push by the Governor for local government restructuring is on. A year ago, a commission led by former Governor Kernan and Chief Justice Shepard released a report (pdf) with suggestions for restructuring local government. My analysis of the report is here.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article on Governor Daniels’ press conference pushing many of the remaining items. I see that he is veering from the recommendations by suggesting that Sheriff remain an elected position instead of an appointed one.

First, let me disclose my bias. I’m a local government guy. I work with local government officials and watch them doing quality work day-in and day-out. I also see out of touch state officials blundering in from time to time without a clear notion of how local government functions. (Federal government intervention, it must be said, is orders of magnitude worse.) So, I’m a little skeptical when I see state officials holding forth on what local government must do to adapt to the 21st century; particularly where there is no apparent effort to look at what State government must do to improve its own operations. On the other hand, I recognize that if the State doesn’t push the issue, local government will not restructure in a uniform way.

The general thrust of the recommendations are to consolidate and to replace elected positions with appointed ones. The three county commissioners would be replaced with a single county executive. The unitary executive would also appoint the formerly elected assessor, treasurer, recorder, surveyor and coroner. The county council would have expanded legislative powers instead of being solely a fiscal body.

In addition, school districts with fewer than 1,000 students combine their district central-office operations with another school district. Townships, including the office of the township trustee, would essentially be eliminated. Poor relief, cemeteries, and fire protection responsibilities would apparently be shifted to the county.

Niki Kelly’s report suggests that the divisions on this issue will likely be more rural versus urban rather than Republican versus Democrat. Presumably the urban legislators will be more likely to support the restructuring. In a lot of ways the restructuring looks like Unigov in any case.

Abdul challenged anyone who did not work for local government to make a case against the restructuring. Here are my thoughts:

Diffusion of political power is a hedge against tyranny. I’m sure it’s wasteful. A despotism is probably the most efficient form of government (under the proper despot). Mussolini made the trains run on time and all of that. Will we all become enslaved if the township assessor is consolidated with the county assessor? Very doubtful. But, at some point there is a line where wasteful democracy becomes more valuable than efficiency.

With this in mind, I am glad the Governor is backing off on the appointment of the Sheriff rather than keeping it an elected position. I think it’s a good idea to keep the guy in charge of the guys with the guns an elected position, separate from the unitary county executive.

Palin Roundup

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Sorry for the all-Palin, all-the-time around here, but her story is a little like a car wreck you feel compelled to rubberneck. I just posted a comment over at Indiana Barrister that felt like it summarized Palin’s problems nicely. Abdul posted about how Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy was fair game to some extent due to the Family Values posturing

I responded that the pregnancy is the least of it; though, as he suggested, it’s put into play by the Family Values gambit — you can’t campaign on pretending to know how other families should conduct their affairs, then claim to be off limits when yours is examined.

But really, there are more important problems with Palin. She has apparently attempted to use her office to settle personal scores then fired another government official when he got in the way, then denied pressuring the government official before admitting to it. (We’ve seen this movie before; it has a crappy ending.) She apparently has a poor grasp of history, believing as she does that the Founding Fathers put “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance (a belief that’s so inaccurate, it’s hard to know where to begin.) She believes that abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape, incest, or a chance of serious injury to the mother exists; allowing it only when a doctor believes that the mother is going to die if the pregnancy continues. She believes that “Intelligent Design” should be taught as science in the classroom. And, she was apparently a member of a pro-secessionist political party which she still supports.

Her daughter’s pregnancy is a very minor issue and probably one of the most sympathetic with which she and the McCain campaign have to deal.

I didn’t mention in my comment at Indiana Barrister, but Palin also was a director for Ted Stevens’ 527 group. Stevens has recently been indicted on federal corruption charges. Palin was also for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was “against” it. She does not believe that human activity is a cause of global warming.

The bigger picture, of course, is what this says about McCain. Only after he made his pick has he sent a legal team up to Alaska to do a more thorough vetting by, say, going through Palin’s hometown newspapers to examine her tenure as mayor. This reflects an intellectually lazy, shoot first, ask questions later decision making process on the part of McCain. He rolled the dice on Palin and, while, his come-out roll looked pretty good, it doesn’t look like he’s going to make his number.

More on ACLU v. FSSA

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Abdul has a post on the latest lawsuit by the ACLU against FSSA claiming that people are being wrongfully denied welfare benefits as a result of FSSA’s automation and privatization efforts. Abdul’s post I believe misses the point of the lawsuit but probably accurately captures a lot of people’s opinions generally.

I hate to sound like the bad guy here, but someone needs to tell people who get government assistance that it is not a right, but a privilege. I cite the recent ACLU lawsuit against the Indiana Family Social Services Agency over the privatization of the agency.

The ACLU maintains the privatization of the eligibility portion of FSSA has resulted in thousands of Hoosiers being denied benefits they are entitled to. No offense, but the last time I checked, government benefits are not a right.

I am all for helping people and think there should be a safety net for the neediest of the needy, but there is nothing that says the state has to do anything. We made a decision as a society to help people out of the kindness of our hearts and the money in our wallets. However someone needs to tell the 1.1 million people who are getting the benefits that as long as someone else is paying the bill and the day is coming where some of us may decide not to do that anymore.

As I posted in his comments, the problem is that FSSA doesn’t get to unilaterally decide who receives benefits and who does not. If FSSA is denying assistance to people who meet the criteria set by the people controlling the money (the Indiana General Assembly and the United States Congress, I believe), FSSA is violating the law.

If no welfare programs had been created at all, I don’t think the ACLU would have a leg to stand on trying to compel that a program be implemented. However, once a program has been implemented there is a duty to implement it in a non-arbitrary fashion and there is an obligation by an administrative agency to administer the program consistently with the dictates of the legislative bodies.

Blog Fight!

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O.k., nothing serious. Abdul has a post criticizing Thomas’s criticism of the latest Daniels ads. I’ll butt in, just a bit – I don’t have time for thorough analysis.

I’ll just note Abdul’s paragraph:

Daniels’ claim is that he balanced THE STATE’S budget without a tax increase, which is accurate. The Governor did not raise state taxes. His adminstration held the line on spending. Daniels’ opponents argue that he did that by balancing the state’s budget on the back of local governments by holding back property tax replacement revenue which led to the massive increase in last summer’s tax bills. Actually that was only part of it, fundamentally what led to the increase in tax bills was the assessments and local government spending, which is where 99 percent of your property taxes go anyway. And that sales tax increase was to help pay for property tax relief and the state’s assumption of a number of levies such as child welfare and police pensions.

My hackles go up whenever I hear the property tax blamed primarily on local government. Because:

Only about 25% of the 24% average increase (6% then, I suppose) has to do with local tax levies. The remaining 18% of the average increase has to do with a shift in the tax burden (from State to Local and from Business to Residential).

Professor Abdul

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The New York Sun has a column by Patrick McIlherhan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Indiana’s Voter ID law. It contains arguments I view as specious. But, that’s not why I’m writing this. That battle is over, the good guys lost. No help for it now but to elect different legislators and change the law, preferably to impose a duty on the government to actively work to get ID into the hands of its citizens.

No, the reason I write is to congratulate Indiana Barrister’s Abdul for his recent apparent promotion. That’s Professor Hakim-Shabazz to you! (Though, I confess, I haven’t checked his identification or other credentials to verify his elevation to a professorship at the unspecified Indianapolis law school.)

“There’s always some incidental costs to voting — you can’t come to the polls naked,” an Indianapolis law professor, Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, who served on the task force that wrote the rules, says. The remarkable thing is that for all the talk of disenfranchisement, Indiana has had seven elections since, and those challenging the law have yet to turn up a plaintiff who credibly can say the law stymied him, Mr. Hakim-Shabazz says. (A dozen nuns, give or take, notwithstanding — Doug)
. . .
There is a decent trade-off to be made between access and security, and Indiana seems to have found it. “I never thought Indiana would be the model for the country of how to do anything,” Mr. Hakim-Shabazz says. It isn’t, not yet at least, but it ought to be.

More seriously, there was a task force for this? On which Abdul was a member? I missed that completely.

EARTHQUAKE!

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Ok, the allcaps may not be appropriate in the title. Looks like there was a magnitude 5.2 earthquake about 26 miles southwest of Vincennes at 5:30 this morning.

Update Wow, I hadn’t checked the blogs this morning, but it looks like the local blogosphere is abuzz about the earthquake:

Fort Wayne Observed.
Marc Rust.
Berry Street Beacon.
Advance Indiana.
Indiana Barrister.

Update 2 I had thought I’d slept through the earthquake entirely, but Amy reminded me of an incident during the night that must’ve been the earthquake, but which I had forgotten. We have a bookshelf next to the bed with some sliding doors that rattle when the bookshelf is jostled. At some point, I remember thinking that one of the dogs was up against the bookshelf and scratching because the doors kept rattling and rattling. I vaguely recall noticing that none of the dogs were there and trying to move the door into a position that wouldn’t rattle, then laying down and zonking out again. Clearly I wasn’t fully awake.