Matthew Tully has a column on a dust-up between Logansport mayor Michael Fincher and Mishawaka Representative Craig Fry.  Fincher broke ranks with fellow Democrats by sending a letter to every state legislator asking them to support Toll Road privatization.

Politically, this was probably stupid of Fincher. Fry wrote to him, suggesting he was a traitor.  At a purely self-interested policy level, Fincher’s desire for Toll Road privatization makes sense. The money used from the multi-generational lease will be used to pay for the continuation of the Hoosier Heartland Highway which runs from Fort Wayne to Logansport and which is scheduled to continue on through Delphi to Lafayette.  With privatization of the Toll Road, the people of Logansport get the people of Mishawaka to pay for a highway benefitting Logansport. That’s a no-brainer from the Logansport perspective (a no-brainer from the Mishawaka perspective too — why would they want to pay more tolls and get nothing much in return?)

This highlights one of the reasons behind Indiana’s prohibition against special legislation (typically legislation specific to a particular area of the state). While I’m reasonably confident the Toll Road privatization does not run afoul of the prohibition legally, I think it runs afoul of the same policy concerns. It’s unjust for one region of the State to be taxed at a higher rate for the benefit of the remainder of the State, popular as taxing someone else may be in those other regions.

The Indy Star has an editorial which brought to mind one of the issues that frequently comes to my mind. I only read the headlines on the original article, and I won’t have time to expound this morning, so my apologies for my slipshod methods.

Anyway, the editorial is in response to a recent report on “the latest and largest federal study of cancer risk from air pollution show an intolerably high level of vulnerability for all of Indiana, especially Marion and Lake counties and their older, industrial neighborhoods.”

While Indiana’s average level of risk was 33 in a million (more than 1 in a million is cause for concern), Marion County’s was 51 in a million and Lake’s 64 in a million. Marion ranked 87th among 3,000 counties, Lake 38th. Those are “honors” that must be stripped, starting yesterday.

Pollution highlights one of the inadequacies of the free market. I suppose it’s nothing more than the tragedy of the commons. But, where you have pollution, you have a situation where the price of a transaction doesn’t reflect its costs. Some of the transaction’s costs are externalized onto the public at large. Say you’re making a widget and part of the widget making process involves pumping pollutants into the air. The manufacturing process involves costs that take the form of people in the area breathing in the pollutants and suffering adverse health consequences. Those costs are not reflected in the price the buyer pays the seller of the widget. Instead, the people in the area subsidize the widget maker by paying for the resulting health problems themselves.

You have a forced subsidy by the people in the community that allows the widget to be sold at a lower price. Subsidies corrupt the market. If prices do not accurately reflect costs, the market receives the wrong signals. It encourages inefficient market activity. So, to make sure the market works well, you have to make sure that manufacturers are forced to incorporate all of the costs of manufacturing into the price of the product. To me, that means regulation requiring manufacturing processes that do not allow the public to be exposed to pollution. Obviously such methods are more expensive, but that is to be expected — the public is no longer subsidizing the process by ingesting pollutants.

As a philosophical matter, I think this is consistent with my libertarian leanings. It involves government regulation, which obviously makes libertarians squirm. But, libertarians are also fiercely devoted to protection of property rights. That means they should be very much opposed to a manufacturer corrupting the atmosphere in and around someone else’s property and causing harm to someone else’s body. The idea that “your right to swing your arm freely stops at my nose” is something that most libertarians I know are comfortable with. A strong aversion to pollution is consistent with this idea. Maybe there are better ways than preemptive government regulation to incorporate the cost of pollution into the price of the product, but I have not seen them. Any solution that relies primarily on post-injury litigation to enforce the rights of a member of the public against a polluter is going to be extremely inefficient and probably ineffective.

Updated material in bold based on an Indy Star article.

The Senate overhauled HB 1008 on the 75 year Toll Road lease. The Senate Committee on Appropriations adopted a committee report that stripped everything out of the version that passed the House and inserted its own language. When I drafted legislation, I had mixed feelings about the “strip and insert” method of drafting amendments. Mainly, I tried to avoid it, but occasionally it was the best way to get the job done.

The biggest problem with writing an amendment that way, instead of the more traditional method of directing the printer to strike or insert language at particular page and line numbers, is that when you totally strip the original bill, it’s difficult to tell exactly how the new version differs from the prior version. Where you’re putting something entirely different in, that’s not a problem. But, where you’re replacing the original with something similar, it’s useful to be able to quickly pinpoint the changes.

The advantage of writing a strip and insert amendment is that it’s a lot easier to tell what the actual law would look like if it’s adopted in its amended form. The page and line editing instructions of the typical amendment make for slow reading.

In any case, on this bill, I do not have time for an exhaustive reading, but some provisions of note:

1. Some protection for Public Employee Retirement Fund rights of state employees displaced because of privatization.
2.  A tax credit (for any taxpayer, I believe) of up to $300 for tolls paid.
3.  A different distribution scheme  with Toll Road Counties getting the biggest share.
4.  A “Next Generation Trust Fund” that is to be held in trust until it reaches $1 billion. After that, the interest on the billion is to be distributed to the “Major Moves Construction Fund.” The initial “seed” money from the Toll Road proceeds is $400 million. The transportation building lobby seems a little piggish about this amendment, complaining that they’re afraid the Next Generation Trust Fund will be raided for non-transportation purposes, even though the legislation specifies that the interest is to go to the Major Moves Trust Fund and the principal isn’t allowed to be touched. The only more certain alternative would be to just blow the money all at once, beneficial to the construction industry certainly; the next generation, not so much.
5.  A provision of which I do not know the import which prohibits termination of a tollway route “along any part of a highway that has at least 4 lanes and is located in a township having a population of at least 80,000.” This would effectively prohibit the construction of a stretch of I-69 through Perry Township on Indianapolis’ Far Southside. The provision is meant to shore up support from some area lawmakers who support the governor’s plan but oppose the proposed I-69 route.
6.  Prohibits solicitation of a future public-private agreement allowing an operator to impose tolls unless the General Assembly first adopts a statute authorizing the imposition of tolls.
7. Allows a 75 year lease — Sen. Meeks (I think) had mentioned a shorter time span, but that would have scotched the offer on the table.
8. The terms of losing bids aren’t to be made public until termination of the RFP process or after closing takes place on the winning proposal.
9. Allows installation of “automated traffic law enforcement systems” to enforce collection of the private operator’s tolls.
10. Removes provisions in the original bill that provided for the Governor to enter into future transportation privatization agreements.

Blog activity was slow today because I went down to Indy for a CLE on estates. I will say this — apparently estate practice is not a young man’s game. I’d put the average age of the attendees of that seminar at about 65.

Indiana Barrister’s Abdul Hakim-Shabazz got himself a lecture from Rep. Dan Burton  when Mr. Shabazz had the audacity to ask tough questions about Rep. Sodrel’s court-stripping scheme.  He has a good post up on the day’s events. I noticed other blog entries at Advance Indiana and The Howey Report.

In addition to some relevant analysis of Judge Hamilton’s decision, Abdul wishes we could have an Eleventh Amendment: “Thou shall not grandstand and use my name in the process!” Moses didn’t offer any such commandment, so we have to rely on the New Testament instead:

And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love
to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets,
that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received
their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and
having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy
Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.

And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

Mark 6:5-8.

Just have to add my love for Lazy Muncie, a brilliant rip-off of the Saturday Night Live “Lazy Sunday” rap (and the “West Coast” response)  with a refreshing Midwest sensibility — bragging about, say, Bob Evans instead of some New York cupcake shop I’ve never heard about. The coup de grace: Garfield creator Jim Davis flashing gang signs.

Rabbi John Adland’s e-mail assisted at least in some part by blogospheric efforts spearheaded by The Daily Pulse, resulted in an apology from Speaker Bosma for his comments to the Jewish Community Relations Council.

The WISH-TV article on the apology doesn’t really describe the original comments in any detail. Rabbi Adland described the exchange as follows:

Speaker Bosma, defending the prayer issue [Christian prayer as part of official business of the Indiana House of Representatives], asked, “How many Jews are there in Indiana? About 2%? There are at least 80% Christians in Indiana.” The implication of this statement was
that our minority community doesn’t and shouldn’t have any say or any voice. It is about the majority and what the majority wants.

The WISH-TV article describes Speaker Bosma’s apology this way:

It all stems from a discussion
regarding prayer in the Indiana House where it was pointed out that two percent of the population is Jewish and 80 percent is Christian.

“I asked the group what percentage of the population in Indiana for demographic purposes was of Jewish tradition and faith and it was them who provided me with the two percent,” said Bosma.

Rabbi Adland saw that as disregard for minority rights and said as much in an email sent to his congregation, which is now posted on several blogs.

On
Monday afternoon Bosma held a second meeting with the rabbi and other Jewish leaders “and I gave a heartfelt apology if the implication of my words were offensive to him,” said Bosma.

Of course, this isn’t really an apology by Speaker Bosma for having made the statement or for believing in what the statement implies. He has only apologized for the fact that the Rabbi was offended by those things. From the record available to us, it does not appear at all certain that Speaker Bosma believes the Constitution has a role to play in protecting the minority from the passions and preferences of the majority.

(Hat tip to Taking Down Words for the WISH-TV story.)

William Larsen was kind enough to post a comment to the blog earlier in which noted some of the beliefs upon which he is campaigning. He said:

I am for smaller government, restoring our personal freedoms, actually creating an Energy policy that works, working on identity theft, pension reform, tax reform, not only balancing the general budget, but begin paying down the national debt, restoring our country borders and repealing the Social Security Act pertaining to old age benefits.

His blog is here. If you’re a Republican in the 3rd District but don’t like  the thought of another term for Rep. Souder, you have alternatives.

Having said that, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to federal government spending is to have gridlock in the federal
government. Even if Mr. Larsen is a deficit hawk, I do not think he will be able to be very effective in controlling the drunken spending that seems to be the inevitable consequence of one party rule. But certainly every little bit helps.

The Journal Courier has a very loving editorial for Senator Meeks and his curmudgeonly addiction to honesty.  He called the pork in the Toll Road bill “pork.” He said that those who support the fireworks legalization bill only for the fees were only interested in the money.

I’m from outside his region, so I don’t know a great deal about him. But, from a recent entry at Indiana Parley and a related press release from the Drug Policy Alliance, I gather that he is not a small government conservative.

Souder was apparently incensed that representatives of the Marijuana Policy Project were involved in a discussion on drug policy at a Conservative Political Action Committee conference. I don’t know what the best policy is, but small government conservatives should at least acknowledge that the War on (Some) Drugs is imperfect — in part because it requires a lot of government money (taxes), a large government bureaucracy, and significant government infringements on our civil liberties– and that, among America’s list of problems, marijuana use is way at the bottom. On top of that, it’s not entirely clear that the War on (Some) Drugs is particularly effective for all its expense and infringement on our liberties.

But, Mr. Souder is apparently not willing to entertain discussion of a smaller government solution to the problem, such as it is or a reordering of our priorities to use tax dollars where they can do more good. 

Students of the Drug War might recall that Mr. Souder is the author of a provision that prohibits individuals with a prior conviction of smoking marijuana from receiving financial aid for college.  Under Mr. Souder’s law, Governor Daniels wouldn’t have been eligible for financial aid after his marijuana bust, and former Gov. Kernan wouldn’t have been eligible had he been caught when he was smoking marijuana. Small government conservatives should at least consider the possibility that, if government resources have to be used, it might make more sense to spend more money educating our population, even if they have a marijuana-related conviction, and less money messing with some of the less harmful drugs.