I enjoyed reading your article on “The right man for a tough job.”
I compliment the Governor on his creation of the Commission and also on the diverse composition. I appreciate his bipartisanship in this effort. But, to think he has always been bipartisan in his management is not completely accurate.
My personal experience with Judge Payne speaks directly in contrast to this philosophy. I gave testimony on behalf of the Governor’s appointment of Jim Payne. I had worked with Jim at the Juvenile Court when NCJW was heavily involved in the Guardian Ad Litem program/CASA. I thought he was very committed to the health and safety of young children. After he received the official appointment, I went to see him and offered to assist him, in a voluntary role, to bring the democrats on board with his future initiatives. He told me straight – “We don’t work with Democrats.” And that was the end of my relationship with the Department of Children’s Services. He was aware that it was under my leadership in FSSA that we developed Healthy Families Indiana – the diamond in the crown of abuse prevention. Getting the public private funding to put HFI in every county in the state took working the Rs and Ds.
And my experience with Mitch Roob also speaks in contrast with bipartisanship. When Mitch looked across the table from me with high level professionals of IUPUI schools of law, health, business research council, Solution Center and Fox 59 in attendance and told me that I was no longer in the majority and my work was not going to be supported by him. It was after that meeting that The Stein Group contract was taken off the table of the Bureau of Child Care.
Perhaps the Governor has learned that we must work together. But, in truth it was not always his operative style.
Keep writing your great articles. You and Morton Marcus certainly make the IBJ an exciting paper to read.
Thanks,
Carole
The article written by Mr. Maurer in the IBJ is below:
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| IBJ Staff | ||||||
| Mark Miles returned to Indianapolis last year to take over as CEO of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership because he sees this as a city where leaders “can get things done.” That’s what Miles told reporter Peter Schnitzler in a profile that ran in IBJ last week. We hope the city doesn’t disappoint. Much has changed here since 1990, when Miles left Indianapolis and a 16-year career in politics and business to lead the men’s professional tennis tour. There’s plenty to brag about, no doubt. The transformation of downtown into a magnet for residents, tourists and convention-goers took off with the opening of Circle Centre mall and continued with more than one convention center expansion and millions of dollars in hotel and residential development. The NCAA moved here, the city’s sports star continued to shine, and the country’s largest publicly traded health insurer (WellPoint) and retail developer (Simon) now call the city home. Universities are collaborating to help build our life sciences economy. We have a lot to be proud of. Yet the seeds for much of what Indianapolis accomplished while Miles was away were sewn in a different era. Maybe this is still a city where leaders can get things done, but bold achievements have been in short supply in recent years. No one has been able to both propose and sell solutions to our most vexing problems:  Our city has grown to cover a nine-county region, but the competing interests of local governments pit counties and neighborhoods against one another and stifle our ability to efficiently and fairly fund government services that people region-wide depend upon. Only strong leadership can persuade people to look beyond their narrow interests. Our region lacks the public transportation infrastructure most cities take for granted. Economic isolation and clogged roads are the result. The problem has been studied and restudied, but leadership on the issue is in short supply. Public education, especially in Indianapolis Public Schools, has continued its downward spiral. Perhaps the district is too far gone and needs to be merged with its neighboring districts, but no one of influence is willing to champion such a controversial endeavor. It’s likely the city’s inability to solve big problems is a result of today’s more divisive political climate. The gogo days of the 1970s and ’80s were nothing if not politically bland. The mayor’s office and City-County Council were both solidly Republican the entire time and the governor’s office was in GOP hands over most of those two decades. A lack of political opposition gave the leaders of that era more freedom to pursue ambitious agendas. Maybe the problem is that today’s challenges are more problematic than building state-of-the-art sports facilities. Poor public education and the high crime rates that follow are the result of myriad social ills that have stumped problem solvers nationwide. It’s clear we need leaders now more than ever. We hope Miles and other leaders get things done here in the years to come. If they do, it’ll be because of the bridges they build to get beyond politics and paralyzing self-interest—obstacles that barely existed here when Miles left. • |
1 comment:
Come to Minnesota and look at our bridge; we saved allot of money on bridges these past few years.
What do our bridges, schools, health care, and safe city streets have in common?
Yesterday, Cathy and I walked the tenth avenue bridge to get a sense of the scale of the collapsed freeway bridge.
It is the biggest disaster I have been face to face with in my lifetime.
As we walked I felt a sense of reverence for my community and a great sadness for the dead and injured. It was a moving experience to walk the quarter of a mile of twisted steel and concrete laying in the river.
This is OUR city, we deserve safe streets, good schools, and bridges that don't fall into the river.
Community infrastructure is important. If our bridges are failing, it's probable that our schools, court systems, child protection, and health care systems are getting the same mistreatment. As a CASA child protection volunteer, I believe this to be true.
As a long time student of public policy, business person, and pragmatic human being, I am convinced that listening to experts and completing their minimal maintenance recommendations is exponentially more cost effective than gambling on the savings of not doing the maintenance.
The following few paragraphs should provide a logical arguement for this thought. First the facts:
Minneapolis City Pages September 5th Economy in Freefall article quoted Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as estimating the additional costs of gas and extra miles due to the bridge collapse at $400,000 per day, or $146,000,000 over the next year.
Any accurate calculation of additional costs to drivers must include at least a fair minimum amount for the 144,000 cars per day that used this bridge each day that now must find other routes.
Forty eight cents per mile is the IRS allowance for automobile deductions and this does not include the headache factor of clogged traffic and longer commutes that I seem to be experiencing.
Assuming an average of ten additional miles for each car each way (some of us take the longer 694/494 route around town (which is depending on east or west between thirteen and eighteen additional miles bypassing the city on freeways, others drive fewer extra miles through downtown city streets or the 280 detour).
Multiplying an average ten miles each way for 144,000 cars per day equals 2.8 million miles per day times the IRS 48 cents equals $1,382,000 per day, or almost four times the governor's estimate.
Hoping that it only takes one year to finish the bridge, multiply 1.382,000 times 365 and it adds to a little over five hundred million dollars in hard costs to drivers for these detours. Eighteen months bridge construction time would equal over seven hundred and fifty million dollars in hard driver costs.
With no extra consideration for the extra ten to twenty minutes at each end of our commute we can honestly call this the hard cost of the bridge collapse.
Add this to the approximately two hundred million dollar estimated cost of a new bridge, and the sure to be substantial lawsuit settlements for wrongful death and injury from the victims of this disaster, and some minimal value for the businesses that are failing because of their new inaccessibility, and a billion dollars becomes a realistic estimate of the total hard costs of not maintaining our bridge.
New York's 20 year veteran bridge engineer Samuel Schwartz (NYT OP-ED 8.13.07) estimated that 178,000 dollars annual maintainance per year per bridge would keep all of his states bridges in pristine condition ("all bridges guaranteed never to collapse", MINE).
Compare 178,000 dollars to the 1,000,000,000 dollars cost of not maintaining this bridge and you can begin to see the actual cost of our anti tax policymaking that has won the hearts and minds of so many Minnesotans.
It appears to be up to five hundred times more expensive to ignore the advice of qualified people (real engineering experts paid high salaries) than it was to gamble on the small savings to be gained by ignoring their advice. Even if we had spent $178,000 each year for twenty years, the total is $3,560,000 (far less than a billion dollars).
Similarly, in the case of human beings it is much more cost effective to attend to the needs of a child than waiting until disaster strikes. Trying to resurrect a criminalized juvenile or adult with ten to twenty years of serious mental health problems is extremely difficult. A similar financial calculation for failing to help children in child protection systems to receive the help they need to make it in public schools. Traumatized children cost our community a fortune when we ignore them and wait until they are mentally unstable adults to deal with them. Experts will tell you that the time to help abused and neglected (traumatized) children is when you first have the opportunity. It is exponentially less expensive than waiting until they hurt someone.
Our bridge failed the majority of its safety inspections over the last twenty years. Early and sustained annual maintenance would have been the way to save money, lives, and trauma.
Bridges are designed to a factor of ten times their estimated strength needs. Ask any engineer about the significance of a bridge failure.
It is not the engineers that ruined the bridge. It's not the teachers that wrecked the schools, or social workers that are not taking care of children in child protection.
The bridge collapse was the direct result of the people that made the policies, the same people that have been ignoring the engineers and the experts that know what is needed for systems and infrastructure to stay in working order.
The same policy makers that are responsible for the declining conditions of our schools, transportation, courts, bridges, child protection systems and safe city streets.
Policy makers that point fingers and blame others instead of admitting their own failures and especially those that are not working for long term workable solutions to our infrastructure problems should be tarred and feathered (at least run out of office).
Would someone please print a large "YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK" sign and post it on the tenth avenue bridge to be seen by the thousands of us poor dumb saps as we drive by the billion dollar fiasco that to this point hasn't been any policymaker's fault?
Who voted for that person anyway? Would you please vote for someone else next time?
And would someone please tell the anti tax people to stay home and count their money at least until the bodies are buried and the wreckage is cleared?
Mike Tikkanen
I am also a spokesman for Invisible Children
www.invisiblechildren.org
www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog
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