Indiana's place in America matters, so act like it

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 5 April 2015


Congratulations, Indiana! You matter. The firestorm that you find yourself in surrounding the RFRA began locally, quickly spread nationally and is now international. While some think what others think shouldn’t matter and are annoyed at the negative attention, the fact is Indiana matters now to a lot of people beyond your borders. This has not always been true.


I moved to Indiana almost 30 years ago and as an outsider, it was clear there was tension between those who didn’t care what outsiders thought (especially those in Washington, New York, California and especially Illinois) and those who did. When I first came here, those who didn’t care were in charge. But Gov. Bayh was different: He cared what outsiders thought and focused on education and economic development. Gov. Daniels continued bringing Indiana more in line with the world beyond the borders. Recall, his first action was to move Indiana onto daylight saving time.

Indianapolis has transformed in these almost 30 years. Despite Indianapolis hosting an NBA and NFL team, the city seemed backwards and wasn’t in the same league as major cities like Chicago, New York and Atlanta. This is no longer the case. It’s hosting another Final Four this weekend; it will, no doubt, host another Super Bowl before the end of the decade. It has become a major destination city and it is not because of its bustling waterfront or mile high mountains or unpolluted air. It’s the welcoming attitude, world class facilities, operations and people.


Hosting events like Super Bowls and Final Fours, major conventions, and hosting major businesses like Angie’s List (a new tech service industry), Lilly, NASCAR and the NCAA come with the price tag of success, that is, Indiana matters because people care about stuff that happens here. And while the ardent supporters of RFRA might try to hide what RFRA is about, to outsiders, it is clear what RFRA is about and it doesn’t fit with a city/state that only has one thing going for it: Being a world-class host. RFRA clashes with the image and expectations (think of Indy as a brand) of a world-class host.


Over the past few years, I’ve talked with travelers about Indianapolis. I’ve never heard a negative thing. I hear stories of the fantastic waiter, Martin, at a well-known steakhouse; the pioneering owner of a restaurant that is quietly doing a hard business in a sustainable fashion; and near world-class entertainment and a growing hub of culture and creativity. My best and longest friend, a Chicagoan, recently visited me in Indianapolis. He adhered to the former image of Indy and after a weekend, left most impressed. Far from a hinterland, whether you like it or not Indiana, you matter to a lot of people who do not call Indiana home.


Let’s not kid ourselves. If a caterer doesn’t want to cater a gay wedding, or a pizza joint doesn’t want to provide pizza for a gay event, all they need to say is “Sorry, we’re booked that day.” This is what myriad other bigots do every day in the housing, restaurant, transportation and other service industries. It’s not right, but it happens and it’s typically unknown to the would-be customer. But some extreme Christians, who think their business is also a ministry, want to tell the gay customer why they won’t serve them. This is the reason why this bill was passed into law. This is the freedom that its supporters want. After all, as your legislative leaders said, there is no law in Indiana against discriminating against gays and lesbians. RFRA would just “cover” those who want to pretend they are acting morally.


Anyone who manages a brand knows how hard it is to establish a brand and how easily it can be hurt. Make no mistake, Indiana; you’ve hurt your brand. When the hometown conservative newspaper in a bold front page editorial says “Fix This Now,” you’ve screwed up. And damage control won’t work with a brand; you have to act in a way that reflects the brand. Dodging and weaving, stuttering and stammering, does not befit this brand. Take a cue from the Visit Indy website and get back to the brand: Indiana is Welcome to All.


PS. Stop blaming the media for your woes. It is news when big companies express themselves like this.


PPS. Indiana Democrats, you need a better candidate. Mayor Ballard will take care of Governor Pence. Who do you have to run against Ballard?

In education battle, Dems need different approach

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 22 February 2015


 Indiana’s political juggernaut to lead the nation in charter schools is breathtaking. Who says government is broken? Some Republicans have worked for many years on this across two administrations and despite some serious setbacks such as Tony Bennett’s stunning defeat and the “cheating” scandal involving changed letter grades for some charters, they are revolutionizing K-12 education in Indiana.




Glenda Ritz, a political novice with a quintessential grassroots campaign, was elected overwhelmingly, garnering more votes than even Gov. Pence. I voted for Ritz and what I recall of her message was “slow down” and assess the changes already made. I’ve lived in Indiana for nearly 30 years and that message of “slow down the change” seems as much a winning political strategy as is appealing to “Hoosier values.”

For Democrats and “friends of education” it seems like it’s an outrage a day.  The most recent outrage regards a bill that just passed out of committee on a party-line vote regarding required accountability assessments that charter schools use. ISTEP, even a shortened one, is onerous and seemingly unforgiving. And so far, though time is still short for an appropriate assessment, charters aren’t demonstrating superior performance, perhaps not even as good, as the bureaucratic laden, unionized public schools.





So, this problem will be “fixed” by letting the charters off the hook by picking their own test. This is a bold if transparent fix to rig the competition by changing the rules. It’s a master stroke, too, because parents trying to decide between charters and their public counterparts or other charters will now be faced with comparing apples, to oranges, to bananas.





The Democrats and “friends of education” response to this puzzles me. They don’t seem to understand that for those conservatives (and their corporate backers) pushing these changes, the test they want to decide the “quality” of a school and its services is the market, the same “test” we use for restaurants, car dealers, hair stylists, home improvement companies, etc. The market’s elegance is unparallelled. Plus no one is compelled to shop at Wal-Mart or Dollar General or Target. If you can afford it, it’s yours and you can pay a dollar, four dollars, or 14 dollars for the (seemingly) same thing — it’s your choice. The metrics used to demonstrate the quality of the charter’s product is vulnerable to the market, too. Parents may prefer a certain test or at least common tests so they can compare apples to apples. Of course, professional marketing plays into consumer evaluation. I mean, it’s not like slick advertising has any impact on people’s choices or price.





Democrats and other “friends of education” protest by arguing about “fairness” and allude to the corporate interests that are pushing the privatization of Indiana public schools. While I sympathize with these protests, politically they are ineffective as are threats about 2016 or running Glenda Ritz for governor.





Perhaps a more effective political response would be a jujutsu move. Jujutsu is a Japanese martial art form that developed in response to the formidably armed and armored samurai for an unarmed and unarmored opponent. In short, the idea is to use the advantages of the more armored opponent against them, to use their energy against them. It seems to me that the supermajority juggernaut might be vulnerable to political jujutsu.





I think it’s a mistake to assume the supermajority is all like-minded. I’ve seen fissures and I think the idea of “slow down the change” might resonate with some and if the argument for charters is to unburden them from all the bureaucratic red tape, then why not focus on reducing the bureaucratic tape on public schools? Let public schools choose their assessment tests, too. An equally bold move to stripping Glenda Ritz of her chairship of the state board of education would be to offer up a market reform in public schools:  Public school choice not just limited to failing schools.



I think this might cause some pause among the supermajority. Plus, if it got any traction at all, it would expose those cynically trying to undermine public education in favor of corporate education, and make targeting specific officials more effective in the next election. Use the arguments for market solutions, choice, and accountability against those who push this for charters and challenge them to introduce it into public education

New law takes wrong approach to conflicts of interest

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 3/25/2012

The new Indiana conflict-of-interest law, as described in last Sunday’s Tribune-Star editorial, “prohibits employees of local government units from serving as elected officials on the councils that oversee those units. The bill also forbids local government officeholders from directly supervising relatives.” There is no question legislation is needed here, but this law simultaneously goes too far and not nearly far enough.

At a time when it seems finding good people to run for any kind of office is getting harder and harder and legislature after legislature, beginning with Indiana, passes legislation making it harder for people to exercise their right to vote (funny how Second Amendment rights are so eagerly defended by politicians but not voting rights — the fundamental democratic right), we enact a law that requires entire classes of people, based on their employer, to give up their livelihood if they wish to serve their local community as elected officials.

Why is a fireman or police officer serving on the city or county council a worse conflict of interest than a local business owner influencing tax abatements, zoning, or infrastructure improvements that benefit their personal interests? A conflict of interest is a conflict of interest.

All laws are enacted in a context. The same governor who ended collective bargaining for state employees, who enthusiastically supported legislation to limit the collective bargaining rights of teachers, and who just signed into law “right-to-work” shares his unacceptable vision of a conflict of interest: “The conflict of interest when double-dipping government workers simultaneously sit on city or county councils, interrogating their own supervisors and deciding their own salaries, must end.”

And so the Indiana law creates an effective ban on public-minded public employees from serving their communities as elected officials. But why not other, just as egregious conflicts of interest, like a real estate broker serving and pushing through local legislation that clears the way for housing where that broker is the exclusive broker; or a contractor who has contracts with the city or county? Why is the animating horror of conflict of interest an employee “interrogating” his or her own supervisor? If it were not an employee in this situation, but a real estate developer, would this be interrogating or negotiating? And ending negotiations between employees and employers seems a recurrent theme in many Republican-controlled states right now.

The law doesn’t go far enough because a public employee’s spouse is not banned from serving. That, too, is a conflict of interest and the logic of this law, if it were extended, would require the elected official to divorce their public employee spouse before taking office. Why is the spouse of a firefighter or police officer “interrogating” their spouse’s supervisor not a conflict of interest?

A superior law would be one where dual roles are identified (if an elected official stands to personally (financially) gain from a policy they are about to make because of another role they play in life, they should be barred from making that policy. This would include spouses and immediate family members). A mechanism must be in place that if a particular individual refused to recuse themselves from hearings and voting, to force recusal upon them. Conflicts of interest are fairly easy to identify, at least the most obvious ones, and once a good law is in place, norms of practice emerge, and conflicts of interest will be reduced.

Conflicts of interest are also about undue influence. Gov. Daniels apparently sees it only as a problem when an employee is “interrogating” a supervisor or double-dipping, but a supervisor can place undue influence on an employee, too, to vote for and support certain policies. But when a viewpoint privileges one side of the employment relationship and diminishes the other, those concerns fade into the background.

Hence, this is a bad law and likely will not reduce the conflicts in the long run, because it is construed too narrowly, conceiving of conflicts as only a problem with public sector employees and not citizens in general. The law doesn’t define conflicts of interest, it only offers a draconian remedy for those with conflicts that the current Republican view cannot tolerate. It does not address conflict of interest as a serious problem per se.

Rather than bar otherwise good people from serving their local communities, bar all elected officials from making policy and voting in areas where they have a conflict of interest.

More to labor issue than basic economics

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star (1/22/2012)

Right-to-work (RTW) is another of Gov. Daniels’ crises of the season. From daylight-savings time to leasing the Indiana Toll Road, to privatizing (and substituting computers for people) welfare offices, overseeing significant rollbacks in governmental services (BMV), property tax caps, and school reforms, Gov. Daniels isn’t afraid to lead the state into political turmoil.

To be fair, Gov. Daniels didn’t want the RTW fight. But he couldn’t find any traction among Republicans for his reform agenda (sentencing reform and local government reorganization), so he’s following the Republican lawmakers instead. Nevertheless, he has made RTW his number one issue and will no doubt take credit for this dubious “job-creating” policy. Indeed, almost everything Gov. Daniels has done has been justified as economic development. How is that going anyway?

For the record, I have made public statements at academic conferences that I do not favor “closed shops.” I understand the free-rider problem (non-members receive the benefits of collective bargaining without having to financially support the costs of achieving those efforts). I’d think Republicans would understand that, too, as they are quick to point out free-riders all the time (welfare recipients). I think closed shops lead unions away from continually making their case. Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.

I’m disappointed in both the unions’ and Democratic Party’s response to RTW. By focusing so narrowly on pay, they miss so much more about the impact of unions on the Indiana workplace. I’d like to see them reframe the question from right-to-work to “rights-at-work.”

Indiana, as most states, is an “employment-at-will” state. This legal doctrine essentially states: a person employed for an indefinite period is employed “at-will” and either the employee or the employer may terminate the employment relationship at any time for any reason or no reason and without notice. Those who work under a contract are not subject to “employment-at-will.”

There is not enough room here to go into the intricacies of how the law has evolved around employment-at-will, but think of it this way: the legislature (or Congress) and the courts can make public policy exceptions (law) to the doctrine. The broadest exceptions are in the area of demographic discrimination and for when an employee refuses to do something that is illegal (perhaps immoral). Indiana is known as one of the least fettered by public policy exceptions employment-at-will state. Stated another way, Indiana is a state where an employer is the freest to fire employees “at-will;” or, a state where employees have the fewest rights at work.

Over time, the Indiana Supreme Court (ICS) has preserved the employer’s right to fire in cases that, in my experience, really open the eyes of lay people. For instance, the ICS ruled that an employer was free to fire an employee for marrying someone the employer did not approve of. Unless a whistleblower is protected by a very narrow statute, even an employer engaged in illegal activities can legally fire a worker for informing authorities about it. One exception to “employment-at-will” is for an employee exercising their constitutional rights, such as filing a lawsuit against their employer. Indeed, the ICS reinstated an employee who was fired for filing in small claims court over travel expenses. The employee prevailed in the suit but was fired again when he tried to collect his claim.

Back to the ICS. It found that while the employee had the right to sue, he had no right to collect. It is safe to say that suing an Indiana employer for wrongful termination is very, very hard.

Hence, I wish the opposition to RTW would point out how union workers are not subject to the capricious will of employers. And this is becoming a bigger issue as employers mine deeper into their employees’ off-work activities, especially as it relates to health care. Employers are firing employees who they deem too expensive for their health-care plans or who engage in otherwise private behavior they disagree with. Should an employer be able to dictate an employee’s diet, their preferred form of recreation, their political affiliations?

More than just higher pay, union employees can’t be fired for such nonsense. Why? Because their union negotiates a contract on their behalf to protect them from such things. RTW is about undermining collective bargaining and thus those protections.

It may be that most employers respect “boundaries” and would never fire an employee for such ridiculous reasons as not liking who they married. But unless you are working under contract, they can.