A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Washington Post on the Political History of School Privatization in Indiana

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School Privatization Discussion (artist’s visualization).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Bonaventura Resigns from DCS in Protest

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Marisa Kwiatkowski, writing for the Indy Star, has an article on the resignation by Mary Beth Bonaventura from her post as director of the State’s Department of Child Services. She was a Pence appointee to DCS and, prior to that, had been a Bayh appointee as judge of the Lake County Juvenile Court. So, she’s been in the child welfare business for a long time, and it sounds like she’s either bipartisan or non-partisan.

Her letter of resignation outlines four reasons for her departure.  First, is the Governor’s choice of DCS chief of staff. (I had initially posted, incorrectly, that it was a very partisan Eric Miller, known for his campaigns in favor of socially conservative views. Turns out it was a different Eric Miller):

She said the governor’s office placed Eric Miller as her DCS chief of staff — someone with no child welfare experience — because he “was an asset during the campaign.”

Using the position and authority given by Holcomb’s office, Bonaventura argued, Miller has engineered his own hires, bullied subordinates, created a hostile work environment, exposed the agency to lawsuits, overridden her decisions, been ‘brazenly insubordinate” and made cost-cutting decisions without her knowledge. She said her attempts to “rein him in” haven’t been supported.

Second she says the works DCS has done to build a better relationship with child welfare providers and the work DCS been trying to do to update its rates and licensing is being undermined. A collaborative relationship is being returned to an adversarial one.

Third she says antiquated technology is threatening to wreck the Child Support Bureau and that the governor’s office has cancelled the plan for a new system despite years of work to secure federal approval and matching funds.

Finally, she says efforts to reduce or cap staffing levels of family case managers and child welfare attorneys “will lead to disastrous results.” She contends that DCS was permitted “to request only a fraction of the funding and staffing needed to protect kids.”

A lot of the complaints sound more or less like you could chalk it up to budgetary concerns. A good director is going to believe in the mission of his or her agency and will frequently chafe at budgetary constraints imposed from higher up where they are trying to balance a lot of different priorities. But, I doubt that can be the whole story. She managed under the Pence administration which, I don’t suppose was overly free with money when it comes to social welfare. So, it sounds like this might go beyond the usual penny pinching.

Social welfare spending can often seem like you’re pouring money into a black hole. The need is infinite, and it’s tough to see good results from the spending. At best, it seems like you are merely making bad situations less bad. But, at the end of the day, Ms. Bonaventura is correct that kids lives hang in the balance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terry Goodin selected as Indiana House Minority Leader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CBO: Tax Legislation is Worse than You Thought

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red States, Blue States, and Family Values

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These rings are not married. Their promiscuous side-hugs will lead to an unwanted pregnancy, a shotgun wedding, and an ugly divorce.

Nicholas Kristof, writing for the New York Times, has a column entitled “Blue States Practice the Values that Red States Preach.” I clicked through because it reminded me of a post I had written seven years ago with the ungainly title, “Red States: ‘Families form Adults;’ Blue States: ‘Adults form Families’.” That post was discussing a book by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s called Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.  Sure enough, Kristof mentioned Cahn and Carbone.

Liberals and conservatives don’t necessarily disagree, in broad terms, about some basic ideas like it’s a bad idea to get pregnant when you’re young and marriage should be entered into with the idea that you’ll stay married. Their approaches to realizing these goals are different, and this may have something to do with the underpinnings of those goals.

[Now is the time for a huge caveat. Any time you say red states this, blue states that or liberals this, conservatives that, you’re going to be engaged in huge generalizations riddled with exceptions. People aren’t monoliths, and we forget that at our peril. When we get in the habit of forgetting it, we end up abstracting and dehumanizing those in the “other” camp. To paraphrase, Paul McCartney & Wings, you’d think people would have had enough of it. That said, here I go again.]

Conservative thinking on marriage and sex seems more often to be tied up with their views on morality and/or religion. Liberal thinking seems more utilitarian. Cahn and Carbone said, “In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.” The expectation in red states is that people will have children early and the parents will grow into their responsibilities. The expectation in blue states is that people will wait to have families until their education and financial situation is more secure. Kristof quotes them when they say:

“Blue family values bristle at restrictions on sexuality, insistence on marriage or the stigmatization of single parents. Their secret, however, is that they encourage their children to simultaneously combine public tolerance with private discipline, and their children then overwhelmingly choose to raise their own children within two-parent families.”

Kristof notes the statistics that seem to show that blue states are doing better in terms of teen pregnancy and durable marriages. Kids in red states are also more likely to have had sex in high school. People in red states tend to get married younger and, probably because of that, divorce more frequently.

It seems to me that liberals are more likely to regard sex as problematic only in relation to negative consequences related to sex (e.g. disease, unplanned pregnancy). If you mitigate the consequences, then sex becomes less problematic. Conservatives are more likely to regard the act of sex itself (out of wedlock) as problematic, independent of the consequences. In fact, the purported liberal goal of “consequence free sex” was a buzz phrase hurled by conservatives to deride liberal values for a period of time. (Maybe it still is and has been for a long time. But I noticed an uptick in the phrase back in 2014 and not so much since then.)

Because the liberal view of sex is more utilitarian, they are more likely to try to mitigate the negative consequences through things like sex education and birth control. There also isn’t much in the way of public opprobrium about sex out of wedlock. That enables teens and young adults in blue states to have sex without getting married and without getting pregnant until they’re ready. That, in turn, results in later pregnancies, fewer unwanted pregnancies, later marriages, and fewer divorces.

Conservatives who view sex out of wedlock as wrong in and of itself, regardless of the consequences, don’t have that flexibility. Humans being what they are, relatively few are going to maintain the discipline necessary to avoid having sex into their late 20s or early 30s. Making it forbidden probably makes it even more appealing and, consequently, more difficult to forego. Sex education and making birth control readily available are non-starters because that sends the message that something other than abstinence is acceptable. Repeatedly telling kids not to have sex is a little like telling someone not to think of a pink elephant — probably makes the undesired behavior more likely. Birth control is used less. Pregnancies happen more often at younger ages. Marriages happen younger and tend to be less successful. Divorces become more prevalent. But, if God has decreed that sex out of wedlock is immoral, what, really, are your options?

My intent wasn’t to make this a “blue states rule, red states drool” kind of post. But, I suppose to a religious conservative, it will probably come off as condescending and one-sided. That said, I don’t know how you get to the desired results without either what I regard as unrealistic standards of discipline and/or getting rid of the idea that out-of-wedlock sex is inherently bad regardless of whether you mitigate the consequences.

Department of Corrections Inmate Populations Down. County Jail Populations Up.

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Counties bear the brunt of shifted costs of incarceration.

A memo from LSA on Department of Corrections inmate populations was provided to the General Assembly’s interim study committee on Corrections and Criminal Code. It indicates that the Department of Corrections’ inmate population is down about 3,000 inmates for Fiscal Year 2017 as compared to Fiscal Year 2014. A lot of this has to do with changes in sentencing standards that keep Level 6 felons in the local jail rather than sending them off to the state prison. (Increased levels of drug addiction play into this as well.) If I’m reading the bottom line numbers correctly (and there is a decent chance I’m not), it looks like this has resulted in the state spending about $30 million less per year than it did back in 2013.

There has been an increase in payments to the County to deal with this population, but I’m not convinced that those payments equal the increased expenses to County governments. Even if the operating expenses are accounted for, at a certain level of increase, counties have to start making capital improvements if jail populations increase. And that tends to be a quantum leap in expense.  You have to build a new jail or new wing or something. And that isn’t cheap. I know there have been stories out of Vigo County where they seem to be having an awful time trying to increase the capacity of their jail.

Additionally, counties have less control over jail populations than the state does. Sentencing decisions are being made by state officials (the trial court judges). If jail populations get too expensive, the state has options (e.g. revised sentencing laws). Counties more likely have to just absorb the cost (e.g. raise taxes or reduce other services).

There seem to be decent penological arguments for keeping low level felons close to home. But, I definitely hope the General Assembly is keeping an eye on the shifted expenses and make sure counties are given sufficient resources to fund this additional burden without having to pave fewer miles of road or undertake fewer drainage projects.

Thirteen Years

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My posting has been pretty light in recent years, but I felt like I should at least commemorate another anniversary of this blog which dates back to November 15, 2004. Recently, I listened to an episode of Dan Carlin’s Common Sense podcast. I forget exactly how he phrased it, but he felt adrift in the current political climate which had caused him not to feel comfortable making the show. Under the old framework, he felt knowledgeable and felt like he had insight into what was going on that he could share. In a political landscape with Trump and all that comes with him, that feeling wasn’t there.

I can’t blame my light posting entirely on that feeling. This blog was started with a focus on state government. But, frankly, it’s hard to focus on what the study committee has to say about cold beer sales when confronted with the spectacle of ostensibly moral people going into contortions trying to defend a pedophile to save a Senate seat for “their” side or the President’s son incriminating himself in the Russia scandal or whatever the dumpster-fire-of-the-day might be in D.C. Sometimes I can’t resist blogging about that stuff, but the bright shiny national stories are generally pretty well covered.

Besides that, since Facebook and Twitter came around, blogging has always felt a bit like running into a headwind. There’s the immediate gratification of pounding out 140 characters with something pithy and immediately getting likes or replies. And, of course, there is work, family, coaching soccer, community involvement, etc. etc.

On the other hand, I do like having a place where I’ve been able to collect some thoughts over the years; and I’ve made a lot of friends through this effort. And, bill season is always fun. So, I’ll keep at it, and see if I can add any value with Year 14.

Indiana Supreme Court on maintaining both respondeat superior and negligent hiring actions

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Indiana Supreme Court on respondeat superior and negligent hiring

Respondeat superior or negligent hiring? Why not both?

On October 31, 2017, the Indiana Supreme Court decided the case of Sedam v. 2JR Pizza Enterprises. The background was that a Pizza Hut driver negligently caused the death of a person operating the scooter. The legal background was that the estate of the scooter operator wanted to hold the employer liable for the death. It sought to do so under two legal theories: 1) respondeat superior and 2) negligent hiring. Respondeat superior stands for the proposition that, if an employee negligently injures someone while acting in the course and scope of the employee’s employment, then the employer is liable for the damages caused. I have less experience with negligent hiring but, generally, the idea is that the employer isn’t being held vicariously responsible for the employee’s negligence but,  instead, the employer is being held responsible for its own negligence in employing the person. This employee was a bad or reckless person who hurt someone because the employer put the employee in a position where the employee had an opportunity to do so.

The challenge here was to case law holding that, if an employer admits that the employee was acting in the scope and course of his or her employment, the victim cannot pursue both a respondeat superior and negligent hiring action. There is one injury and, if the employee was negligent, the employer is vicariously liable for it. Pursuing a negligent hiring action adds nothing to it.

So, if the victim is going to collect on the injury anyway, why pursue a negligent hiring claim? Or at least why do you care so much that you go to the Supreme Court seeking an opportunity? Or, from the other angle, if you’re the employer and you are going to be held liable anyway, why do you care which route the victim comes from?

I’m not involved with this case, so I can only speculate. But I think it has to do with the amount of damages that are ultimately awarded. The legal fiction is that compensatory (as opposed to punitive) damages are determined based solely on the injury sustained. The character or wealth of the person who caused the injury should have nothing to do with it. In this case, there was a death, and the damages should be based on that. The legal presumption is that it shouldn’t matter whether the person who caused the death was a sinner or a saint, a billionaire or a pauper. The injury is the same and the jury should calculate the damages the same regardless. (Plaintiff’s ability to collect on the damages is a separate matter.) Lawyers don’t really know what any given jury is going to do. But, the common wisdom of lawyers seems to be that, even with the same set of damages, a jury that’s mad at the tortfeasor will put a higher price tag on the damages than a jury that isn’t particularly mad at the tortfeasor.

In this case, if the jury mostly just hears that the employee worked for a pizza place and got into an accident, the damages awarded will probably be lower than if the jury hears about what a bad person the driver was and maybe hear some big numbers having to do with the profits Pizza Hut makes by reason of its cut-rate hiring practices. From reading the case, I believe the Plaintiff could pursue just the negligent hiring claim without the respondeat superior claim. But negligent hiring is tougher to prove, so I assume most plaintiffs will stick with the bird in the hand they have with respondeat superior.

Interim Study Committee Recommendations for Short-Term Rentals

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The Interim Study Committee on Commerce and Economic Development is entertaining proposed findings as to “short term rentals” (e.g. Airbnb type rentals). The draft findings are as follow:

PROPOSED FINDINGS:
(1) The Committee finds that there is an increasing demand for short term rentals from travelers of all types, and that it would serve the people of Indiana well to ensure the availability of short term rentals throughout the state.
(2) The Committee finds that current tools exist within local governments in the form of ordinances or other actions that apply to long term rental homes and traditional residential homes (e.g., noise, parking, and trash ordinances) that can also be applied to address any issues caused by a short term rental.

(3) The Committee finds that short term rentals often offer accommodations in neighborhoods without
traditional lodging options resulting in positive economic impacts and important opportunities for tourism development.
(4) The Committee finds that short term rentals provide additional income opportunities for Hoosiers that participate.
(5) The Committee finds that the residential use of one’s home is a basic property right and that participation as a short term rental host does not impact the residential character of the home.
(6) The Committee finds that short term rental platforms and short term rental hosts acknowledge that
applicable taxes are owed on short term rentals and the Committee defers to the work of the Interim Study Committee on Fiscal Policy on the issue of taxation.

The recommendation would be that the policy of the state be to prevent “undue restrictions” on the use of a person’s primary residence as a short-term rental.

I don’t have any particular expertise on this issue, but it seems to me the proposed findings pass the buck (almost literally) on the issue of how to make sure these folks pay the proper amount of income tax, innkeeper’s tax, or whatever the case may be.

Additionally, the finding about local government having the tools to address noise, nuisance, and parking problems might be a little optimistic. Anyone who has had to deal with bad neighbors knows how inadequate these tools can be. That said, I don’t know that “short term” rentals are any worse than long term rentals. My suspicion is that I’d rather live next to an owner-occupied residence where the owner rents out a couple of weeks a year than a residence that is solely used as a rental. To the extent this becomes the basis for actual legislation, I guess I’d like to see some sort of ratio of days leased versus days owner-occupied in the definition of short-term rental. If the turn over is too frequent and too rapid, it becomes a business better suited in a commercial zone than a residential zone.  Also, this is an issue where the best implementation might vary from place to place, so the State should defer to the locals and avoid trampling on home rule.