A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Phil Downs on the Cumulative Effect of Vouchers

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We’ll be better off if we make sure that our kids become smarter than we are.

Phil Downs, Superintendent of the Southwest Allen County Schools, has a column in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that very patiently works through some of the funding issues with the voucher system in Indiana. Generally, he says that overall state funding of education hasn’t kept up with inflation and, in addition, vouchers have an impact on your school even if none of the kids in your school district use a voucher to go to private school.

It is conventional wisdom that the voucher program only affects big cities. While voucher usage is higher in big cities, the financial effect is felt in every school district because the voucher dollars come out of Tuition Support, in effect reducing the dollars supporting students in all public schools.

Recall that vouchers were initially sold as a way for public school kids to get out of struggling schools. From that premise, it has grown to be one of the most expansive voucher programs in the nation. Now we have a system where it’s not necessary for a kid to have ever attended public school and it’s not necessary for the school to be struggling for the kid’s parents to divert money from the public school. (Downs says that, of approximately 35,500 voucher students, only 274 were used to leave an F-rated school). Now, we see it’s not even necessary for kids in your district to flee to voucher schools in order for your district to suffer from the voucher program.  He suggests that Peru Community Schools had no vouchers used within its system and, even so, the state’s voucher program cost Peru $321,000 in funding. This reduced funding does not, by the way, result in a better education for the voucher kids.

It’s no secret that I’m critical of the money-follows-the-child philosophy on which the voucher system is premised. People with no children pay into this system. We fund education to build our communities. We do this, in part of course, by educating the individual students. But our schools are also part of the fabric of our cities, towns, and counties. They help tie us together and make us a community rather than a mere collection of individuals.

Special Session Coming

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The Governor announced that he will call a special session after the General Assembly ended sine die with the clock having run out on some of his priorities. Indiana law provides that, for a short session, “The second regular session of each term of the general assembly shall adjourn sine die not later than March 14 in any even-numbered year.” (IC 2-2.1-1-3). The finish to the short session has been described as “chaotic” as time ran out, the clock struck midnight on March 14, and the session ended by law. This article in the Indy Star by Tony Cook, Kaitlin Lange, and Arika Herron has a great timeline.

In the murky days of yore, there are stories of the General Assembly literally stopping the clock in the chambers and continuing their work. This time, there was an aborted attempt of dubious legal affect to have the Governor sign an order keeping the session going. (As a former employee at the Legislative Services Agency, I cringed at the motion with “adjournment” misspelled and Sen. Long’s name crossed out and replaced with Governor Holcomb’s. I know that someone was ordered to produce that document in extreme haste. We had an unofficial saying, “if you want the document bad, that’s how we’ll give it to you!”)

Tim Swarens has what strikes me as an overly glib column on the supposed incompetency of the General Assembly. The Senate didn’t stay in session long enough! They knocked off early and spent too much time honoring themselves with resolutions! I think this probably ignores the underlying mechanics of the negotiations with respect to the legislation that didn’t get passed. As an initial matter, let me say that I have absolutely no inside knowledge of what happened. I’m just going on the news reports and some experience with negotiations generally. There was plenty of time to get everything done. But, there are some people who simply won’t negotiate in good faith until there is time pressure. They think they’ll get a better deal if they are stubborn and use the ticking clock. It sounds to me like someone miscalculated. Rep. Soliday was singled out for special mention by Sen. Long. Whether it was him particularly or not, it sounds to me like someone in the House was playing games and the early adjournment and lengthy resolution process was the Senate’s way of pushing back. To me, the moral of the story seems to be that you ought to (if at all possible) square away your negotiations earlier in the day, even if it means compromising a little more, and get your legislation locked down before the mad rush at the end.

The Governor’s priorities for the special session are reported to be “a funding boost for school safety, providing Muncie Community School Corporation with a one-time $12 million loan and matching the state’s tax code with the federal tax reform changes.” Those aren’t bad priorities, but our courts have held that the power of the General Assembly to legislate on any subject when convened in special session is not limited by the Constitution. The Governor says he’ll call the special session in mid-May. Per IC 2-2.1-1-4, a special session “shall continue for not more than thirty (30) session days nor more than forty (40) calendar days following the day upon which it is commenced.” It will be up to the General Assembly itself to determine whether to limit itself to the topics suggested by the Governor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the good folks in Americus have to spend the next month or two watching out for Rep. Ellington to see if he tries to slip any more language eviscerating local control over mining into whatever bill might be handy.

 

Beer on Sundays: Emergency Legislation!

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Indiana's liquor laws will drive you to drink

B double-E double-R U-N: beer run. B double-E double-R U-N beer run. 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! (But not until noon on Sunday).

At long last, the people of Indiana can buy alcohol for carry out on Sundays. It’s a little amusing that, though the law prohibiting Sunday sales has been an anachronism for decades, the enacting legislation says “an emergency is declared for this act.”

The “emergency” language sounds funny under the circumstances, and so I’m not above poking a little fun. The explanation for the “emergency” language is that this is a bit of boilerplate that’s added when the General Assembly wants legislation to go into effect immediately upon passage. Without that language, it’s standard for legislation to go into effect on July 1 of the year in which it’s passed. (I guess I’m not certain whether there is a date prior to July 1 that wouldn’t require the “emergency” declaration.)

For some time, it’s been legal for restaurants and bars to sell alcohol on-site on Sundays. More recently, they passed legislation that lets craft breweries sell beer for carryout on Sundays. (And, as I now have three quality breweries within 4 miles of my house, this has been my go-to solution if I’ve felt like buying beer on Sundays.) The prohibition on retail sales has, therefore, been arbitrary for a long time.

It’s easy to carp about how long it took Indiana to make this move, but we should probably take victories where we find them. Still, at least one arbitrary prohibition remains: while retail sales of alcohol are permitted on Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m., on Sundays such sales are legal only from noon – 8 p.m. What’s the explanation for this? It looks like a church thing, but maybe there is something else about Sunday mornings that cries out for special treatment. (If it is a church thing, that raises some First Amendment questions. And, as a practical matter, it’s a fairly small percentage of the American population that goes to church on Sunday mornings. Many are members of faiths that have services at other times and other days. Many more just don’t go to any kind of service.) If the differential treatment of Sundays is not a matter of religious preference, the law still has to meet a rational basis test. This is a pretty low bar for laws to clear; but, even so, it’s not immediately clear to me what the rational basis might be for mandating reduced hours on Sundays but not on other days.

That said, this is positive legislation. Cheers!

SB 386: Nothing is Dead Until Sine Die – Eliminating Local Control of Mining Operations Resurrected

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Indiana General Assembly mining regulation legislation

If I want a strip mine in my backyard, the nanny state government shouldn’t be able to tell me “no.” It’s not my problem if the neighbors can’t sleep through the 3 a.m. blasting.

Rep. Ellington has proposed an amendment to SB 386 which has to do with funding flood control projects. Rep. Ellington’s amendment would roll the text of HB 1289 which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago into SB 386. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the scope of this language is breathtaking. When you break it down, it says that “a county, city, town, or township may not regulate the extraction of mineral resources on private property.” [Edited: Originally, I said that this would affect  things like the Carmel ordinance. I think it has been edited so that now it would not — it now says that a unit may not regulate the development of natural resources on private property outside the of the corporate boundaries of a municipality – a “municipality” is a city or town. So, the County couldn’t regulate your mine if it was just outside the city boundary, but it looks like the city may be able to regulate things inside the boundary line.] This means that citizens in unincorporated places like Boonville and Americus can’t go to their County Commissioners to ask for help if someone is blasting rock on their neighbor’s property at 3 a.m. or altering the flood plain with the spoil from their excavation.

I’ll take a moment to walk through the main portion of the text by way of explanation:

It adds a new IC 36-7-39, section 3 of which reads, “A unit may not regulate the development of natural resources on private property.” Section 1 states that “development of natural resources” includes “the extraction of mineral resources.” A “unit” means a county, municipality, or township. And, a municipality means a city or town. Put that all together, and it says that, “a county, city, town, or township may not regulate the extraction of mineral resources on private property.”

The original HB 1289 passed through in the House, in large part I believe, because legislators didn’t really understand what was being proposed. I think they thought this was just about some trees in Boonville and the legislation wouldn’t have a lot of statewide implications. When word started to get out about the scope of this thing, it seems that the Senate Committee on Natural Resources wasn’t inclined to give 1289 a hearing. So, you get maneuvers like this, where Rep. Ellington is trying to have it inserted in a bill that has already cleared the Senate. If successful, the bill would then be able to circumvent the regular committee process in the Senate, only having to clear a conference committee and the full Senate.

Hopefully House members will be a little more skeptical of the implications of the mining language if this Amendment receives a floor vote.

Firearms: Tool versus Cultural Totem

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The choice of a new generation.

I doubt this is in any way original to me, and I’ve not thought it through very thoroughly, so take this for what it’s worth. But, it seems to me that there are some people who own firearms as tools, some who own them as cultural totems, and there is probably a fair amount of overlap between the groups.

The gun-as-tool is clear enough. It’s what we’re talking about when the discussion turns to hunting and home protection. It’s pretty easy to have a discussion about appropriate regulations for guns when they’re tools. You look at the functions they serve, weigh the costs and benefits, and legislate appropriately. The emotional component is pretty minimal in that discussion.

The gun-as-cultural-totem is a much more emotional issue. A totem is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people. So, when firearms are serving this purpose, the gun control issue bleeds into a person’s identity and their view of what it means to be an American. It becomes a marker for who is “Us” and who is “Them.” Real Americans versus The Other. Those who wish to preserve the culture of the country they love versus those who are contributing to the cultural decay in these Fallen Times. When you enact firearm legislation, you aren’t regulating the proper distribution of a tool. Rather, you’re empowering the forces of rot and ruin while emasculating the morally upright who embrace the true values of this country. With respect to this group, you can’t do a lot in the way of regulation without stabbing at the core of who they are.

In this respect, I think the NRA and other agents of gun manufacturers have probably taken a marketing cue from the likes of Coke and Pepsi. It’s tough to develop loyalty and move product when you’re selling sugar water.  But, when you’re selling an image or a lifestyle, you can transcend the utility of the underlying product by creating an emotional connection to the product. This emotional connection to firearms makes the discussion about appropriate regulations much more difficult. And, when the discussion centers on the firearm-as-tool, the discussion will ultimately miss the point since the utility of the object really isn’t at the heart of objections over that regulation.

SB 65: Opt-In to Sex Education

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Sex is a significant aspect of life. People should be educated on the subject. The consequences of not understanding the subject can be significant. I understand that some people have religious concerns surrounding the issue. But, the default should be that we educate our kids on human sexuality. So, SB 65 is definitely a move in the wrong direction. It prohibits schools from educating students about human sexuality unless parents specifically opt-in to the instruction. This means we’ll have a population that’s more ignorant than it needs to be on this important subject and schools will have more administrative work to do. The best case scenario is that they’ll have to handle the opt-in paperwork for the million or so kids who go to our schools.

The likely scenario is that they’ll still have to handle hundreds of thousands of copies of this paperwork and huge swaths of our population will go without proper education on the subject — not because of fierce religious objections but because of apathy or squeamishness over the subject. Sure, parents can teach their kids about sex. And they should. Even if schools teach the subject, parents should teach their kids too. But, lets face it. Our society is awful about talking about sex. We use mostly naked bodies to sell every product imaginable. The scope of sex jokes is boundless. With the Internet, there is a vast amount of readily available pornography. But, try to have a serious, straight forward conversation about sex and most of us Americans get incredibly awkward. We need schools to teach this stuff. An opt-out system sufficiently accommodates religious concerns over instruction of human sexuality.

SB 13: Administration of Overdose Intervention Drugs

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Sen. Glick’s SB 13 is, in my opinion, a good one. It gives Community Corrections and Probation officers similar authority and similar immunity as law enforcement officers currently have with respect to administration of overdose intervention drugs (e.g. Narcan/nalaxone). It requires those with authority to administer those drugs (EMTs, law enforcement officers, firefighters) to receive training in proper use and administration of the drug.

Those individuals are immune from civil liability for acts or omissions related to administration of the drug. This is, I believe, important because situations where the overdose intervention is necessary are likely to be situations where there will be a lot of second guessing if things go wrong. The governmental entities for whom the law enforcement, community corrections, probation officers etc. work have deep pockets. And, absent civil immunity, there’s a greater likelihood that those who were suffering a drug overdose are more likely to take a run at a payday. And if that’s a possibility, such officials might be more hesitant to administer the drug when there is a need.

More gas-soaked wood is not the answer to our fire problems

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Kerosene is not the answer.

Our cities used to have horrible problems with fires because of, among other things, how the buildings were constructed. Building codes were enacted and have reduced our problems with fires considerably.

The American people have a fundamental right to property. Sure, those codes infringe upon property rights to some extent. But the government did not take away all private property. Fires did not go away entirely. There are still arsonists. But fires are harder to start and don’t spread as rapidly.

As a society, we are much better at talking about what limitations on property rights are appropriate and necessary to a properly functioning society. Those discussions and the resulting decisions are not universally loved. People often chafe at zoning requirements and other limitations, but it’s a disagreement about where the line should be drawn — not (generally) a line about whether the government should have such authority at all. Our ability to talk about proper firearm limitations is much more dysfunctional. I think that has to do with firearms having become something of a tribal totem, the presence or absence of which makes a person a part of the In-Group or part of The Other. When The Other tells you how you must or must not define the boundaries of a right, it provokes a much more emotional response than when the discussion is just a disagreement among members of your group.

In any event, the right to bear arms is no more sacrosanct than the right to property. Firearms are causing a lot more deaths in our country than in others. You can point to things like mental health or evil as “the reason,” but for those to be the primary problem, you’d have to conclude that Americans are uniquely mentally ill or evil, which I don’t believe to be the case. We are unique in the ease with which our citizens can acquire firearms that are effective at killing many people rapidly. So regulation is necessary and appropriate. “Regulated” is right there in the Second Amendment.

We have a problem. It’s a problem other countries don’t seem to have. We need more and/or different regulation. The question is what that regulation should look like. (And, while there are some suggesting that “more guns” is the answer; to me that sounds like someone addressing those conflagrations in cities and — rather than building codes — suggest stocking up on more gas-soaked wood.) I don’t pretend to have particular insights into what would help. A first step is probably loosening the restrictions that have made it difficult or for the CDC to study the issue of gun violence. I have also suggested an insurance regime for ownership of firearms which might help bring market forces to bear on the problem. Of course, none of this is going to work if America’s gun owners are in a defensive crouch. There are a lot of them, and they know a lot more about firearms than I do. But, I don’t know how we persuade them to be part of the solution.

SB 11 – SNAP eligibility for drug offenders

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Indiana General Assembly needle exchange program

Everybody has to eat.

Sen Bohacek authored SB 11 which generally permits those who have been convicted of drug offenses to be eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. As I understand it, current law prohibits such offenders from getting SNAP assistance — presumably under the general theory that if they weren’t druggies, they’d get a job and be able to buy food. So, it’s their own damn fault. I think the pendulum is swinging these days such that we are starting to take a more nuanced view of addiction.

In any case, this bill has Indiana exercising its prerogative to extend benefits to such offenders so long as they have successfully completed their terms of probation or parole or, if probation/parole is ongoing, they are in compliance.

The fiscal note says that the federal government bears the cost of providing the additional benefits while the state picks up about 50% of the administrative cost with respect to administering the benefit program. So, there would be something of an increase to state expenditures but most of it would be federal expense.

SB 8 – Mandatory Cursive . . . Again

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Idea: Bring back the slide rule.

Sen. Leising’s mandatory cursive bill has cleared the Senate again and is now in the house. I’ve covered this ad infinitum, but, just a couple of quick hits:

  1. Let educators decide how beneficial, or not, teaching cursive is. If they think it’s helpful, then by all means, let them teach it. There is nothing that prevents schools from deciding they want to include cursive instruction.
  2. A huge chunk of cursive proponent’s rationale for demanding that kids learn cursive comes from conflating the benefits of handwriting generally with the benefits of cursive specifically. When they talk about improved motor skills and memory retention and whatnot, they are not at all careful to distinguish as to which of those benefits comes from teaching kids to print and/or write in cursive. No sense mandating cursive if the kid gets the same benefit from printing.
  3. So much of this is just nostalgia. We learned to write in cursive. The kids should have to too. This is just more evidence that we live in fallen times. Every generation has been worse than the one before it since Adam and Eve got thrown out of Eden. Which is nonsense. Life moves on. If cursive has real world utility that outweighs the cost of devoting finite instructional time to the subject, then teach it. If not, then don’t.

Anyway, I hope this dies in the House.