A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded: Property Tax Edition

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Rachel Blakeman, writing in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a column entitled “Lower taxes as population driver: myth versus reality.”

Indiana is 20 years into its low-tax experiment as a driver of growth and prosperity. So this county property tax summary provides a nice table to compare taxes to population growth, especially since Indiana’s property taxes are based on market values.

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If the notion that low taxes create growth holds true, the counties with the lowest taxes should see the greatest growth, right? Wrong.

Of the twenty-four counties with the highest tax bills, only two lost population. The twelve counties with the lowest tax bills all lost people. To the extent people are voting with their feet, they’re going to higher taxed areas. Quality of life issues are more likely to determine where people want to live.

There are surely diminishing returns, but by and large, a community should be willing to invest in itself to improve its schools, roads, trails, arts, parks, museums, and in all of the other stuff that make life worth living.

 

2023 West Lafayette Community School Corporation Referendum

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West Lafayette Schools will be putting their school tax rate referendum on the November ballot. If you are a voter in the District, please vote “yes.”

Introduction

West Lafayette Schools get 18% of their current funding through a referendum approved property tax rate. Voters in the district need to renew this rate periodically or it goes away. Of the 290 school districts in Indiana, West Lafayette ranks 288th in support from the State under the State School Funding Formula. To maintain the kinds of schools we want, we need to renew the referendum property tax rate.

The State changed the way schools were funded in 2009. The new funding mechanisms put West Lafayette at a disadvantage.  In response, to adequately fund our schools, the community took advantage of the new (in 2009) referendum tool, adopting a tax rate in 2010 and again in 2017. Absent money from the referendum tax rate, our schools would not  be able to provide the quality of education our community wants. The rate is up for renewal again in November 2023. Non-renewal would mean an 18% reduction in funding, fewer teachers, larger class sizes, and fewer opportunities for our students.

West Lafayette gets less education funding from the State than just about any other school district, even as our district has the highest expectations and ambitions for the quality of education in our community. Renewal of the referendum means that we leave the current tax structure in place and can maintain our excellent schools. The tax rate will remain the same as it has been since the first referendum was approved in 2010. When the time comes, please vote “yes” to approve the referendum.

Vote “yes” to continue the excellence of West Lafayette’s schools. The tax rate will stay the same. State law requires that we vote to renew it periodically.

School Funding in Indiana

In 2008, the Indiana General Assembly substantially restructured its property tax laws. This was in response to an Indiana Supreme Court decision which required the State to change the way it handled real estate assessments. For a variety of reasons, this led to a politically unpopular level of real estate taxes and prompted the State to shift away from real estate taxes in favor of a greater reliance on other types of taxes such as income taxes and sales taxes. This had a significant impact on how schools are funded.

Each school district has three main funds: the education fund, the operations fund, and the debt service fund. School districts like West Lafayette which have adopted a referendum tax rate also have a fourth, referendum fund.

Education Fund – funded by the State through sales taxes

As part of this transition away from real estate taxes, because schools had relied so heavily on such taxes, the State took over the bulk of school funding and increased the statewide sales tax to pay for it. Money provided by the State goes into each school’s “Education Fund.” This is the fund that pays for expenses allocated to student instruction and learning.

The State uses a per-student formula to determine how much money it will put into a school’s Education Fund.  This formula is revised every budget year. But, generally, there is a base (foundation) rate which is the same for every school district. Added to this is a “complexity” rate which is tied to a district’s socioeconomic condition. (The number of students eligible for free and reduced lunch subsidies are pretty well correlated with the size of a district’s complexity rate.) (Edit 7/12/2022: I believe I’m out of date on the “complexity rate.” Starting in 2020, the base amount is supplemented with a special education grant, a career and technical grant, and an honors grant — West Side’s supplemental funding above the base rate remains small compared to other districts.)

Because West Lafayette is in better shape economically than most of the rest of Indiana, our supplemental funding from the state above the base rate is small. Consequently, our school district gets the third least amount per student. In 2022, the State contributed $6,470 per West Side student; an amount which ranked 288th out of 290 school districts in the State. The median rate is around $7,250 and the highest per student rate is IPS with $11,281 per student. West Lafayette has approximately 2,420 students meaning the State’s contribution to the Education Fund under this formula would be around $15.6 million. There are some other State contributions that add to this fund and, for 2023, the certified Education Fund budget was $17.5 million.

West Lafayette is nearly last in per pupil funding received by the State. We need to renew our local referendum rate if we want to maintain the quality of our schools.

Operation Fund – funded by local real estate taxes

The school Operation Fund is funded by revenues from local real estate taxes. Schools are inevitably going to have non-classroom operational expenses (e.g. buses, administration, utilities, and a lot of other things needed to support the classroom operations). These sorts of expenses are paid for using the Operation Fund. The 2023 certified budget for this fund was $5.8 million.

The revenues in this fund come from local property taxes which are subject to Indiana’s tax cap laws. (Generally, the total local taxes assessed on a property cannot exceed 1% of the assessed value for residential property, 2% for rental property and agricultural property, and 3% for other kinds of commercial property.)

Debt Service Fund – funded by local real estate taxes

The Debt Service Fund pays for capital expenses, usually bonds and long-term leases for building construction and renovation. Construction costs are an inevitable fact of life for school corporations. Buildings only last so long and sometimes schools need greater capacity. Indiana’s municipal funding rules do not generally permit schools to accumulate taxes in order to save up prior to doing major construction. Therefore these expenses are usually paid for through bond issuances or (for arcane historical reasons) long-term leases with a municipal building corporation (which are functionally the same thing as bonds.)

The 2023 certified budget for WLCSC’s debt service fund was $6.2 million. Revenues in this fund are not permitted to be used for non-capital purposes such as teacher salaries. Occasionally when school funding is discussed, people argue that teachers could be paid more if the school buildings were not so nice. Leaving aside the fact that kids don’t learn well in squalor, taxes imposed for the debt service fund are not permitted to be used for operational purposes such as increasing teacher pay.

The taxes levied to support the debt service fund are also subject to Indiana’s tax cap laws. (1% cap on owner-occupied residential, 2% cap on rental and agricultural property, and 3% on other commercial property). In Indiana, debt service on bonds is usually protected. Therefore, if the tax caps cause a shortfall in revenues, bonds will get paid and the shortfall will be taken out of the other funds. For West Lafayette, this means that the Operation Fund bears the brunt of these “circuit breaker” credits. Due to tax caps, the Operation Fund  gets reduced by approximately 31% of what would otherwise be generated.

Referendum Fund – funded by local real estate taxes

The Referendum fund consists of money from a referendum approved tax rate. This is the rate that will be on the ballot because the State requires it to be renewed by voters periodically. This rate is not subject to the tax caps. In 2010, when the district first approved the rate, the voters approved a referendum tax rate of up to $0.43 per hundred dollars of assessed value. Even though the rate was approved at up to that level, in practice the school board never approved a budget imposing a tax rate that high. The approved rate ends up being a maximum. The actual amount is based on the budget approved by the school board each year.  Between 2010 and 2017, the budget approved by the school board each year never included a referendum rate that exceeded $0.37 per hundred dollars of assessed value. Therefore, when it came time to renew the tax rate, the maximum referendum rate on the ballot was lowered by the school board from $0.43 to $0.37 per hundred dollars of assessed value. (This did not stop the Journal and Courier from running a headline at the time suggesting that the School Board was trying to raise taxes.)

Money in the current referendum fund (approved, as it was, via the process in place in 2017) can be used for any lawful school expense. Historically money from that rate has been used in West Lafayette for student instruction and learning. In recent years, the State created certain incentives making it beneficial for the schools to spend less State money on non-instructional operations. (As a political matter, it’s more popular to declare that money is spent on instruction rather than on the more mundane administrative expenses that make instruction possible). So, West Lafayette removed some operational expenses from the Education Fund and began paying for them from the Referendum Fund and moved some educational expenses from the Referendum Fund to the Education Fund.

Changes in the referendum process since 2017 require the school to specify the uses in the referendum question. The upcoming referendum will likely specify that revenues will be used “for the purpose of retaining and attracting teachers and staff and funding academic programming and operating expenditures.” Functionally, this would appear to permit paying for expenses that would otherwise be payable out of the Education or Operation funds but not for expenses that would be payable out of the Debt Service fund.

Referendum funds make up 18% of the School’s total budget. If the referendum rate goes away, so does 18% of the school’s funding and, with it, manageable class sizes and many of the programs that make West Side great.

The Property Tax Bill

The referendum tax rate has an impact on local real estate tax bills. Those can be confusing, so it might be useful to look at how the tax bill works.

A real estate tax bill for a homeowner starts with the gross assessed value of the home. In rough terms, this should be something like the market value of the home. That assessed value is reduced by a series of deductions (most commonly, the homestead deduction, the “supplemental standard” deduction, and a mortgage deduction). The gross assessed value minus the deductions results in the net assessed value. The net assessed value is multiplied by a tax rate to generate the amount of tax owed. The tax rate consists of the combined tax rates of the taxing jurisdictions in which a home is located – generally, the city, the county, the school district, the township, the library district and the solid waste management district. If the resulting tax bill exceeds (in the case of an owner-occupied home) 1% of the gross assessed value, then the tax caps kick in and generate a “circuit breaker” credit in an amount sufficient to lower the tax bill to the cap amount.

I know, I know. This stuff gets confusing.

Let’s take as an example, a home with a $200,000 gross assessed value. That property is entitled to a homestead deduction of $45,000. It is also entitled to a “supplemental standard” deduction of 35% of the assessed value (after the homestead deduction). That would be another $54,200 deduction. A mortgage deduction of $3,000 would result in total deductions of $102,200 and a net assessed value of $97,800. (The $200,000 gross assessed value minus the combined deductions.)

The net assessed value is multiplied by the tax rate to determine the amount of tax owed. Each parcel of real estate exists within the jurisdiction of multiple taxing units. Most (but not all) real estate in the West Lafayette school district also exists within Tippecanoe County, the City of West Lafayette, the West Lafayette Library District, Wabash Township, and the Tippecanoe County Solid Waste Management District. Each of those jurisdictions impose a tax rate. Tax rates are expressed in terms of dollars per hundred dollars of assessed value. For 2022/pay 2023 (taxes in Indiana are assessed in one year and paid the following year), those tax rates were:

  • County 0.4156
  • Township 0.0026
  • School 1.2555*
  • City 0.8729
  • Library 0.1768
  • Solid Waste 0.0503
  • Total: 2.7737

*Of the 1.2555 School tax rate, 0.37 comes from the referendum, 0.5375 comes from the debt service fund, and 0.3480 comes from the operations fund. Because the referendum fund is not subject to tax caps, only 0.8855 of the school tax rate and 2.4037 of the total tax rate is subject to the 1% tax cap. That becomes important in a moment.

The $2.7737 per $100 of assessed value is multiplied by the $97,800 net assessed value ($978 * 2.7737) to generate a tax bill of $2,712.68. There is yet another tax deduction having to do with a local income tax imposed in Tippecanoe County for the purpose of providing property tax relief. That provides another deduction which amounts to about $223 and a tax bill of $2,489.68. Now the tax caps kick in. For an owner-occupied residence with a gross assessed value of $200,000, a 1% — $2,000 – cap applies.

Recall that $361.86 from the referendum ($978 * .37) is outside of the tax cap. The remaining $2,127.82 ($2,489.68 – $361.86) is governed by the cap. Because of the cap, the taxpayer gets an additional “circuit breaker” credit of $127.82 resulting in a total tax bill of $2,361.86. If the referendum rate were not in place, the total tax bill would be $2,000.

West Lafayette’s Need

The referendum fund will generate approximately $7 million or about $2,900 per student for West Lafayette Schools in 2023. This represents approximately 18% of the school’s $39 million annual budget. Reducing the budget by 18% would have a severe impact on our students and on our community. It would mean fewer teachers, larger classes, and a reduction in art, music, and extra-curriculars.

The referendum question that is likely to appear on the ballot would specify that money from the referendum rate would be “for the purpose of retaining and attracting teachers and staff and funding academic programming and operating expenditures.”

A variety of factors make West Lafayette a good candidate for the referendum rate:

  • Low State funding. West Lafayette gets the third lowest per student funding in the State.
  • Landlocked District. The State funds schools on a per-student basis. West Lafayette already has the highest population density in the State. There is not a significant opportunity for further development in the school boundaries that is likely to add substantially more students.
  • High real estate values. The “supplemental standard” tax deduction is a percentage of a property’s value, meaning that addition of this deduction by the General Assembly removes more assessed value from the West Lafayette school district than average. High values also mean that, in general, the residents of West Lafayette have greater wherewithal to fund a referendum rate.
  • TIF Districts. A TIF District is an economic development tool that (more or less) sets a base assessed value for a specified geographic area at a particular moment in time. When that assessed value grows, the additional tax revenue is used for economic development rather than for other tax purposes (such as for school funding.) More of West Lafayette than average is locked up in TIF Districts. In West Lafayette, 39% of the net assessed value is in TIF districts compared to a statewide average of 9%.  This means that growing assessed value does not assist the operations fund or the education fund. Referendum rates are not subject to the TIF limitations.
  • Rental properties. West Lafayette has more rental properties than usual. They are subject to a 2% tax cap rather than the 3% cap that applies to other types of commercial property.
  • Textbook and curricular fees. A new wrinkle in State law this year is that schools are prohibited from charging fees for textbooks and other curricular materials. The State will provide some funding to compensate for the lost revenue, but at the time I write this, it seems likely that state funding will fall short of the lost revenue.

Conclusion

As Caleb Mills said on the subject of Indiana education in 1848, “There is but one way to secure good schools, and that is to pay for them.” But there is a related quote from Dr. Mills that is even more relevant to the referendum question: “Awaken the public mind, and concentrate it on the question, ‘Am I not interested in the proper education of all that are socially and politically connected with me?’” 

A good education is not just a benefit to those students who happen to be in the school district at the moment. Quality schools benefit the community generally. They attract people who want the best for their children. They produce adults who are productive, creative, and give back to the community. Whether you have students in the schools or not, our great schools make West Lafayette a better place to live.

The State provides West Lafayette with less education funding than other school districts in Indiana. By voting “yes” to the referendum question, we will ensure that the tax rate remains the same and our schools will continue to be funded adequately.

(I drew a great deal of information from Dr. Larry DeBoer’s May 22, 2023, presentation to the West Lafayette School Board. His power point is available here.)

RDP! Vote “Yes” and keep our schools strong.

 

From Satanic Panic to Elective Transgender Surgeries for Minors

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I don’t care if this makes me unpopular. Unlike SOME in our country, I am FIRMLY against burning kittens.

I think we all have a soft spot for the moral panics of our youth. For me, that’s the Satanic Panics of the eighties. My small Indiana town was not at all unique in having a rumored Devil’s House somewhere out in the country. A kid heard from another kid whose aunt knew somebody who said that’s where Satanists worshiped the Devil. Back in the day, news outlets ran with lurid stories of sexual abuse and torture of children in the name of Lucifer. The evidence was always sketchy — recovered memories and so forth — but what a great story. As Fred Clark has discussed, there is a need among some in this country to believe that there are lurking hordes of would-be kitten burners in our midst.

A few years ago there was a particularly horrifying kitten-burning incident involving a barbecue grill and, astonishingly, a video camera. That sordid episode took place far from the place where I work, yet the paper’s editorial board nonetheless felt compelled to editorialize on the subject. They were, happily, against it. Unambiguously so.

I agreed with that stance, of course. Who doesn’t? But despite agreeing with the side they took, I couldn’t help but be amused by the editorial’s inordinately proud pose of courageous truth-telling. The lowest common denominator of minimal morality was being held up as though it were a prophetic example of speaking truth to power.

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But here was the weird part: Most of the commenters and letter-writers didn’t seem to notice that they were expressing a unanimous and noncontroversial sentiment. Their comments and letters were contentious and sort of aggressively defensive. Or maybe defensively aggressive. They were angry, and that anger didn’t seem to be directed only at the kitten-burners, but also at some larger group of others whom they imagined must condone this sort of thing.

So, maybe you’re too young for the Satanic Panics. Maybe your first moral panic has to do with an extensive but elusive network of the nation’s elite kidnapping, raping, and torturing kids in the Comet Ping Pong basement and elsewhere to get their adrenochrome fix. The specifics probably don’t matter that much, but some common ingredients seem to be sex, kids, abuse, and a poorly defined but surely very large group of people who derive profit and/or pleasure from such bad behavior.

Enter the gender affirming care debate. This one is a little weird because on the surface, there is the knotty issue of what kind of care is best for transgender kids. Puberty blockers and hormone therapy aren’t risk free propositions. But then, depriving kids with gender dysmorphia of such treatments is not risk free either. When do the risks of one justify the risks of the other? That seems like the kind of things you let kids, their parents, and their physicians sort out. The Indiana General Assembly has stepped in and forbidden families from getting this kind of treatment. SB 480-2023 is cruel. It helps no one and makes many people’s lives harder.

But the way the debate was framed was perplexing. Elective sex reassignment surgery for kids just wasn’t happening in Indiana. Indiana physicians and medical providers testified to as much before the General Assembly. (Nationwide: “56 youth between the ages of 13 and 17 had genital surgeries over the course of three years. Testimony has affirmed that surgeries on minors don’t occur in Indiana.”) And yet, legislators and even Gov. Holcomb fixated on this non-existent kind of surgery when justifying their actions.

Recently I was reading a message board (not focused on Indiana) where there was a discussion about treatment for transgender children. And, I have to say, the intensity of the focus on “genital mutilation” caught me off guard. That’s what triggered my memory of the Satanic Panic and the QAnon adrenochrome conspiracy, and I realized that I should not have been surprised. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. People want to believe that they are righteously standing up to the shadowy forces of liberals, atheists, communists, and other undesirables who are mutilating kids’ genitals when they get a break from comic books, reefer, Dungeons & Dragons, the knock out game, Tide pods, kitten burning and jazz music.

I don’t want to suggest that the right course of action for helping a transgender kid or a kid who thinks they might be transgender is necessarily straight forward. I think there are plenty of people who are legitimately concerned about the well being of children. But those kinds of concerns would presumably lead a person to support better funding for studying treatments. Maybe more robust supports for families striving to do their best for kids. Possibly even some additional regulatory hoops to jump through depending on the risks of the treatment being sought.

Something else is at work with the intensity of feeling among people eager to eliminate access to puberty blockers under the rhetoric of banning non-existent elective surgeries. It has a very Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition feel to it.

Kennedy and Marcus: From Property to Partner – Women’s Progress and Political Resistance

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Cover of book entitled "From Property to Partner: Women's Progress and Political Resistance" by Sheilas Suess Kennedy and Morton J. Marcus

Reading is Fundamental: Pick up a copy today!

I just finished a good book (From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance) on feminist history, economics, and future challenges. The authors are two of Indiana’s best scholars and academic voices: Sheila Kennedy and Morton Marcus. I’d urge folks not to shut down at the mention of “feminism” or “academics.”

The book is not an inaccessible meditation on postmodern alienation, performative social constructs, symbolic discourse, or whatever the kids are going on about these days. It’s a plain English discussion of social, legal, economic, and technological trends describing women’s progress from subordinates to (increasingly) equal members of society. It also describes the backlash we’re seeing to those developments.

I’m honestly a little late to the game on feminism. I never doubted women’s right to equal status. But, as a white male born in the seventies, I tended to regard descriptions of male privilege and female disadvantages as overstated. Those things were in the past. Looking around me anecdotally while I was an adolescent in the late 80s, early 90s, there wasn’t (from my limited perspective) a ton of evidence of either. Similarly, I regarded talk of the forces of patriarchy as something like conspiracy theory.

As I got older, the privileges of being a male started to accrue and my horizons broadened. I was better able to see the disparate treatment of men and women. And, of late, the forces of patriarchy have been frantically active and more difficult to ignore.

With that as background, this book was a good primer. It’s a plain-English read and not too long. While the social and legal efforts to obtain more equality for women shouldn’t be discounted, I particularly appreciated the discussion of the various ways in which technology has contributed to progress for women.

Industrialization meant brute strength was no longer as significant a factor for earning a living. The birth control pill allowed women greater control over their bodies and over whether and when to become pregnant. The knock-on effects of that control are difficult to overstate. Unexpected and unwanted pregnancies and the responsibilities of child care (which disproportionately fall on women) have a huge impact on a woman’s autonomy and her equal participation in society. Additionally, advances in household technologies (where women have traditionally been expected to do most of the labor) opened up time for women to make a living outside the home. The authors take a two-pronged approach. They alternate chapters and focus on their respective areas of expertise. Sheila Kennedy’s background is as a lawyer and professor of law and public policy. Morton Marcus is an economist. Together they’re able to cover a lot of ground.

The political backlash to women’s progress has become more pronounced in recent years. A lot of the red/blue, rural/urban divide, particularly on culture war issues, can be viewed as a fight over gender roles. State level gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the Senate’s arbitrary filibuster rules give the forces of tradition that favor a subordinate role for women more leverage.

Also, until recently, the political incentives surrounding abortion favored the political right. The issue galvanized white evangelicals while those on the left mostly ignored the issue in favor of other issues. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, the assumption was that Roe would continue to protect women’s right to bodily autonomy. After all, political activists had warned that Roe’s demise was imminent for decades. With the Dobbs decision and state legislatures (including Indiana’s) rolling back women’s reproductive rights, those political incentives may have shifted. Even in red states, abortion bans appear to be deeply unpopular.

The authors differ on how decisively they have shifted. Neither pretends anything like certainty. Kennedy tends to think that Dobbs may have awakened a sleeping giant in the form of women who, as it happens, enjoy having rights and who vote. Marcus seems less optimistic about whether the shift will have the longevity and the numbers necessary to restore what was lost.

In any event, it was a good read, and I can recommend it.

Hicks on Quality of Life and Economic Opportunity

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Economist Michael Hicks (who you should follow on Twitter if other aspects of that platform have not yet driven you away) has an eye opening column in the Muncie Star press on the connection of quality of life to economic opportunities entitled “Economic opportunity now in high quality of life places.” As I summarize this, any errors are my own, so you’d be well served to read the piece. But, in the past, quality of life was tied into other variables (e.g. housing capacity and availability of jobs that pay well) in terms of attracting population. In the Midwest, our housing capacity situation is better than what’s usually available in other locations. And jobs are more mobile than they once were — when manufacturing was booming, people had to come to the plant. The types of jobs that tend to be growing these days are easier to do remotely or to move to locations having a lot of qualified people. So, quality of life is the main thing attracting people.

And it seems to be those quality of life issues important to younger people which would be more significant; because they’re the ones more likely to move. The kinds of things that stand out: great schools, low crime, a welcoming social climate, and local recreational opportunities. Oceans, a warm climate, or mountains would probably help, but: a) we can’t do much about that; and b) they don’t seem critical. A business-friendly tax climate isn’t the make or break issue that a number of our politicians would like us to believe. In fact, if it’s a choice between low taxes or high quality of life, the smart money is spending it on quality of life.

A lot of this resonates with the points of emphasis in the Greater Lafayette’s “Good to Great” report from 2012. I haven’t tracked these things, but I’m sure it’s a mixed bag in terms of how well we’ve implemented the recommendations in the report. But having had the study and having moved forward on some of the recommendations probably puts Tippecanoe County ahead of the curve. I’ll surely be drawing on these resources when I start banging the drum again on West Lafayette school referendum which has to be renewed in the near future. Meanwhile, Indiana as a whole is shooting itself in the foot by adopting ever more restrictive social policies, eroding the quality of our schools with privatization schemes, and lowering taxes in the hopes that we can do “cheap” better than other places that are also racing to the bottom.

Western Wayne News: More on the Richmond Fire

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Per the Western Wayne News:

“It’s his fault.”

Mayor Dave Snow blames Seth Smith, owner of Cornerstone Trading Group LLC, for hazardous conditions at a three-property complex that burned for more than three days last week. Smith stored tons of plastics in six buildings that total nearly 255,000 square feet on the 13.8-acre complex.

The article indicates that Smith and Cornerstone ignored clean up orders. The city lacked the resources to undertake a multi-million dollar clean up on its own.

The City had at least begun the process of securing an EPA grant to clean the place up and had entered into an agreement whereby Smith, as owner of the plastics, would remove the plastics and other materials and sell them.

“This was a multi-million-dollar undertaking, and for a city government to redirect millions of dollars away from city services and into cleaning up someone else’s mess is not a precedent we should ever set,” [Mayor] Snow said. “He was made very aware through various processes that this is his mess. He has a court order, and he disregarded these orders. He left the mess in place and everyone’s worst fears came to light, and he is responsible for this.”

Cost was just one factor in a possible city cleanup. The scope of clearing away the plastics would be incredibly large, beyond city capability; the plastics need a place or places for disposal, something Smith could provide with his overseas buyers; and First Bank Richmond had a security interest on the plastics inventory as loan collateral.

“We would have been taking materials technically owned by the bank,” [City Attorney] Sickmann said, adding there was a process with the bank to try and resolve the issue.

2019 Hearing on Richmond Unsafe Building is Prescient

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Richmond had a big fire yesterday at 358 NW F Street that has required evacuation orders as various kinds of plastic are burning.

I don’t pretend to know a lot about the situation, but I’m looking at the transcript of a 2019 unsafe building hearing, and it looks like they saw a lot of the risk. My understanding is that, in the interim, the property was sold at tax sale and the City acquired the property from the County. The City or the previous owner may have done work to mitigate some of the hazards since 2019, but clearly some (or all) of the risk remained!

From the 2019 transcript:

MR. GARDNER: So on the properties that’s listed (inaudible) today, they’ve done an incident pre-plan from the fire department’s perspective on resources needed.· Some of our concerns on these is access in and around the structures.· Let me back up here so you understand what I’m talking about. So in getting access around to the rear parts of the structure, this right here is a railroad track, which renders it impossible just about to come in the backside here.· This is Northwest F Street.· From this aerial photograph, there’s no access to the sides of the building.· And this is continued through all the properties. We look at fire flow, fully involved, gallons per minute needed, resources needed, water available, evacuation areas, depending on wind direction.· It’s a multi-agency possibility with, you know, the health department, emergency management, local departments outside the City of Richmond.· Looking at toxins and stuff like that. And the way we do this is by this and also in recent history of incidents throughout the country or around the world.· And in the  recent years — the past couple years, there’s been a fire at a storage recycling facility in Australia that had a lengthy fire ground operation upwards to close to two weeks of that. There was one in Parkersburg, West Virginia, that lasted for over eight days.· The one in Australia was June this year. We look at the after-effects and we look at runoff of contaminated water from the suppression efforts.· And then we also look at the lack of fire protection and fire detection.

In a situation like this with the 358 building, it was designed and intended with a suppression system and a detection system.· Those work to get ahead of the game if a fire did occur. With no detection system, that’s a delay in notification, meaning that it could possibly be through the roof, through the windows, or whatever before somebody called it in.· A suppression system is designed to suppress the fire and slow the spread of fire once detected.· So, therefore, with no detection system, we don’t have that or fire protection system and it allows that fire to grow more rapidly than (inaudible).

MR. HEETER:· So there’s nothing to contain it and then you don’t find out about it  very quickly, it sounds like?

MR. GARDNER:· Right.·

…

·MR. HEETER:· Are there other properties that are around it that you would consider in danger in that case?· I mean, it’s spreading, you know, to businesses or other properties?

MR. GARDNER:· Anything in the immediate area.· It’s weather-dependent, also.· You know, wind travel, wind speed, you know, that plays into it.· If it’s contained in the building or it’s on the lot, you know, all of that, it’s all taken into effect.· And depending on the size of the fire (inaudible) then would determine what we determine would be an immediate threat.

…

MR. JORDAN:· 358 is a Type 1 structure that’s been used as a business without any utilities.· I mean, the sprinkler system is down.· I mean, it’s got —

MR. HEETER:· That’s the one with the fire suppression system — that’s been gutted?

MR. JORDAN:· It has.· And, you know, by the rules of the commission, you know, for him to occupy that building, he should have electric power.


MR. HEETER:· It doesn’t have power at all?

MR. JORDAN:· It doesn’t have — any electric.· The sprinkler system should be up and running.· All the emergency — lighting should be on.

MR. HEETER:· It’s a safety issue for  the community, not just the neighborhood,

Again, that’s all from a hearing on September 24, 2019. (It was later filed as an exhibit in a 2019 case challenging the orders of the City’s Unsafe Building Commission.) My understanding is that the owner of the recycling operations had maybe acquired the property from an outfit called Hoffco Comet, which made lawn and garden equipment. Back in 2009-2010, they lost John Deere as a customer and shut their doors. According to information in the hearing transcript, they (or whoever owned the building at the time) had salvaged the copper in the building, including the sprinkler systems before abandoning the structure.

Nihilism Born of Pessimism

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I wrote the following in the course of a conversation on the WELL in a climate change thread. It seemed worth porting over here.

There’s a sense that nothing we do [not just with respect to climate change – in all aspects of life] ever makes anything better. So, why bother? No matter what we try, headlines and social media posts persist around the theme that we live in uniquely awful times. It’s bullshit. We don’t. But cynicism masquerades as wisdom, so try observing that we live in historically pretty good times. You’ll quickly get hit with a straw man to the effect of, “oh, just because things were shitty 200 years ago, we should pretend that everything is perfect now.” As if those are the only choices.

If any of the cynicism and nihilism is justified, it might well be in the context of climate change. But I think the flood of learned helplessness in other areas of life makes it tough for us to feel like we can deal with climate change in any meaningful sense.

Quote from Travels with Charley

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Today the weather in my neck of the woods was very pleasant. Sunny, 45, and low wind. I don’t trust that Spring is truly here, but that was a taste. I took the dogs for a nice long walk. (And, incidentally – do not underestimate how much good the simple act of going for a walk can do for mind and body.) As I walked, I was listening to an audio book of Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley,” written based on a journey Steinbeck took in 1960, and this passage amused me:

We have inherited many attitudes from our recent ancestors who wrestled this continent as Jacob wrestled the angel, and the pioneers won. From them we take a belief that every American is a natural-born hunter. And every fall a great number of men set out to prove that without talent, training, knowledge, or practice they are dead shots with rifle or shotgun. The results are horrid. From the moment I left Sag Harbor the guns were booming at the migrating ducks, and as I drove in Maine the rifle shots in the forests would have frightened off any number of redcoats so long as they didn’t know what was happening. This is bound to get me a bad name as a sportsman, but let me say at once that I have nothing against the killing of animals. Something has to kill them, I suppose. In my youth I often crawled miles on my belly through freezing wind for the pure glory of blasting a mudhen which even soaked in salt water made poor eating. I don’t greatly care for venison or bear or moose or elk except for the livers. The recipes, the herbs, the wine, the preparation that goes into a good venison dish would make an old shoe a gourmet’s delight. If I were hungry, I would happily hunt anything that runs or crawls or flies, even relatives, and tear them down with my teeth. But it isn’t hunger that drives millions of armed American males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don’t quite know how. I know there are any number of good and efficient hunters who know what they are doing; but many more are overweight gentlemen, primed with whisky and armed with high-powered rifles. They shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might, and their success in killing one another may well prevent a population explosion. If the casualties were limited to their own kind there would be no problem, but the slaughter of cows, pigs, farmers, dogs, and highway signs makes autumn a dangerous season in which to travel.

Somehow it’s refreshing to know that skepticism of hunting as a masculine endeavor was held by one of our greatest writers 60 years ago. Like Steinbeck, the killing of animals isn’t something to which I object in particular. And I don’t even have any specific problem with hunting. My grandfather was an avid hunter – I suppose I imagine he was one of the capable people. I think it’s the unearned condescension I’ve seen from hunters toward non-hunters which make me raise an eyebrow.

I have this notion that, if I’m going to throw my idle musings online, should try to do more of it here on a site that I own rather than onto one of the social media conglomerates with their fussy algorithms. We’ll see how that goes. Also, I’m trying out a plug-in that should auto-post to Mastodon for me.

Satanic Temple Sues Indiana Over Abortion Ban

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Tenet III – One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
Tenet V – Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.

I used to regard the Satanic Temple as sort of the merry pranksters of religious rights activism. They have produced things like the Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities and a giant statute of kids looking up to a seated Baphomet which they offer to state capitols that seek donations of religious statues. But reading their complaint and the attachment, what they’re doing seems a little less frivolous. With respect to Satan, they say, the Satanic Temple “venerates, but does not worship, the allegorical Satan described in the epic poem Paradise Lost – the defender of personal sovereignty against the dictates of religious authority.” They also cite their Tenets III and V in support what they describe as their “ritual of abortion.” Tenet III says, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” Tenet V says, “Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.”

With respect to the “Satanic Abortion Ritual,” the attachment to their complaint says:

The Satanic Abortion Ritual is a destruction ritual that serves as a protective rite. Its purpose is to cast off notions of guilt, shame, and mental discomfort that a patient may be experiencing due to choosing to have a medically safe and legal abortion.

…

This ritual is intended to alleviate some of these stressors and empower the patient to be guided by the Third and Fifth Tenets when pursuing their decision. The purpose of the ritual is not to persuade someone to have an abortion if they are undecided. Instead, the ritual serves to assist in confirming their decision and to ward off the effects of unjust persecution, which can cause one to stray from the paths of scientific reasoning and free will that TST members strive to embody.

The ritual itself is described as consisting of looking at one’s reflection to remind the person of their personhood, reciting the third tenet prior to the abortion and reciting the fifth tenets.

The lawsuit is brought on behalf of unnamed “Involuntarily Pregnant Women” who seek to remain anonymous for fear of violent retribution from domestic terrorists motivated by animosity to proponents of abortion. The complaint describes zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses, and clarifies that Indiana law deviates from the medical literature by describing all of these as “fetuses.” It then challenges the law as an unconstitutional taking of the Involuntarily Pregnant Women’s property rights in their uteruses without just compensation.

The uterus of an Involuntarily Pregnant Woman is a tangible thing in which she has
property rights, including without limitation, the property right to:
A. Have her uterus removed for any purpose, including without limitation, changing
her sex; or
B. Rent it out to a third party as a gestational carrier; or
C. Retain any blastocyst, embryo, or nonviable fetus in her uterus; or
D. Exclude any blastocyst, embryo, or nonviable fetus from her uterus;
E. Remove any blastocyst, embryo, or nonviable fetus from her uterus.

Citing the commercial value of gestational surrogacy, it challenges Indiana’s abortion ban as involuntary servitude in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

I don’t expect those property/servitude arguments to fly. But the complaint gets more interesting when it states that Indiana’s abortion ban impermissibly discriminates between those who become pregnant by incest or rape versus those who become pregnant by accident.


73. All women have the fundamental right to use contraception and engage in sex just for the pleasure and intimacy it brings and without any purpose or intent to become pregnant (“Protected Sex”).

74. The Involuntarily Pregnant Women engaged in Protected Sex but became pregnant without their consent due to the failure of their Birth Control.

75. The Indiana Abortion Ban imposes criminal penalties on anyone who provides an abortion to an Involuntarily Pregnant Woman.

76. The Indiana Abortion Ban does not apply to anyone who provides an abortion in the first ten (10) weeks of EGA to a pregnant woman who is pregnant due to rape or incest. Indiana
Code § 16-34-2-1(A)(2)(a).

77. The Indiana Abortion Ban discriminates between two different classes of women who are pregnant without their consent – women who are pregnant by accident and women who are pregnant by rape or incest.

It also challenges the disparate treatment between women who become pregnant by protected sex versus those who are pregnant by in vitro fertilization, citing IC 16-34-1-0.5 as excluding in vitro fertilization from the Indiana Abortion Ban.

Finally, the complaint argues that the state’s abortion ban violates Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. (IC 34-13-9). (Unfortunately, later on – in paragraph 96 – they cite something other than the Indiana Code, section 73-401 et seq. A quick Google search suggests that this is a reference to Idaho’s RFRA.) Indiana’s RFRA is worded very broadly. Religious exercise is defined as “any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” I don’t see that the chapter actually gets around to defining “religion.” I have not done a deep dive, but I don’t think Indiana courts have grappled directly with this question. And, I think federal courts have grappled with it to a degree, but mainly focused on whether the religious belief was “sincerely held.” When you get into it, today’s “religions” are yesterday’s “cults.” And courts have not thought it their place to police whether any particular person is correct about how they are practicing a religion. So, even if the thinkers and the leaders say that Religion X dictates one thing, they aren’t going to dismiss a practitioner who sincerely believes that Religion X dictates a different thing. And even if you can argue that the Satanic Temple started as something of a joke, the longer it sticks around the greater chance that some of the people who support it will be utterly sincere in embracing its tenets.

I’m not optimistic that they’ll win this lawsuit, but it throws a bit more sand in the gears of the Indiana General Assembly’s efforts to take away the reproductive rights of Hoosier women and girls.

Update: People a lot more knowledgeable than me pointed toward an interesting law review article that’s relevant: “Forced Labor, Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion.” (One of the people observed that, “enslaved women were *literally* the means of production of valuable assets, and part of the legislative history of the 13th Amendment is that it covers their forced pregnancies as forced servitude.”) And, look, I get it – the argument that pregnancy is slavery is jarring. But, as the author notes, that’s largely because we view pregnancy through the lens of women who want to be mothers. I doubt the argument that state compelled pregnancy amounts to involuntary servitude will carry the day, but it’s worth reading (if even only to reject it afterward) rather than simply rejecting the argument out of hand.

The author dismisses the argument that women assume the risk of pregnancy by engaging in sex by making the analogy to a worker who is subjected to compulsory service under the guise of a contract. “A contract for service (already a pretty strange characterization of her “consent”) is consistent with the Thirteenth Amendment only if the contractor ‘can elect at any time to break it, and no law or force compels performance or a continuance of the service.'” I was happy to see the author engaged with the critique that family obligations were not the same as economic obligations. He replied, in part, “Child support obligations do not raise Thirteenth Amendment concerns because they do not require specific bodily labor from anyone; one can raise the money any way one likes, just like any other contractual obligation.”

For my part, I see this argument lost in the same morass that makes the rest of the abortion debate challenging: when and why is human life entitled to greater moral consideration than other kinds of life? People can and have written books wrestling with these questions. I’m not even going to scratch the surface with a blog post. The closer the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus is to a self-sufficient child, the more likely it is that have some moral duty at least not to go out of our way to let it die. This is obviously in conflict with the compelling rights of the individual mother. Whatever you think of the textual grounding of Roe, its practical balancing of these interests on the trimester model was fairly sound.