Kennedy Turns Concrete Into Abstract
Let’s say you’re running for Mayor in a big city. And while the political demographics of the town tend to work in your favor, you still have some major challenges. For example you just polled and you found out your opponent has a double digit lead and an approval rating in the 70 percentile range. Your previous talking points about jobs, crime and education have gotten a little traction, but haven’t really stuck. So what do you do? Figure out a way to combine all three, use money designated for other purposes and call it a vision, even if that vision has myopia.
On Friday Melina Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for Indianapolis Mayor, unveiled a “major policy speech” at the downtown Kiwanis club. Kennedy called on taking $150 million from the city’s transfer of its water and waste-water facilities to Citizens Gas and instead of using it for roads and infrastructure as originally planned, she would create an endowment fund and use it for early childhood education, job training and crime prevention. Melina’s logic is pretty simple; instead of spending the money on roads, which she says will only last seven years, the city should invest in projects that yield more long term benefits, thus her three areas of focus. The problem with Melina’s argument is that, upon closer inspection, it is full of fallacies. I’ll walk you through them.
First, it’s not just $150 million the city is spending on roads and infrastructure. The number is potentially closer to $255 million because the city takes the money from the water transfer and uses it to levy federal dollars for other road projects. Currently the federal government will match local governments up to 70% for certain road projects so that $150 million could potentially yield and additional $105 million in federal road money. So one could argue Kennedy’s would cost the city an additional $105 million and it hasn’t even been implemented.
Secondly, Melina makes the claim that the construction projects and street repaving will only be good for 5-7 years before the streets have to be repaved. That would be true if the Department of Public Works did repaving the same way the Peterson administration did. When the former folks in charge repaved the streets they would only go a quarter-inch deep which meant the roads would have to repaved sooner. Currently DPW goes deeper than that so the roads can go between 15-20 years before repaving, depending on usage. In addition the way the city does sidewalks now means they can lat 20-30 years before having to be redone. So fixing roads aren’t the “short-term” projects she labelled them as.
Third, not to bring up the past but Melina was part of the administration that caused the water company deal to be necessary in the first place. Remember it was the Peterson administration bought it nearly a decade ago and not only overpaid on the deal but also used variable rate bonds which added an additional $500 million in debt service which could have been used for streets and road repair but instead was part of the debt transfer. And I won’t even bring up the state of DPW vehicles and snow plows prior to 2008. So if we couldn’t trust them then with the water company, why do it now?
Fourth, Melina says early childhood education will reap long-term benefits for the city. That sounds good, but is not necessarily true. The data also shows many of the gains made in early childhood education are lost by the 3rd and 4th grade unless schools and parents stay engaged and keep up the pace of learning. And even in IPS, the problem isn’t at the elementary school level, the district actually performs relatively well, it’s the middle schools and high schools (as evidenced by a possible state takeover) is where the problems lie.
If Melina wanted to offer a suggestion she should have taken a page out of Governor Mitch Daniels playbook and recommended some of the dollars from the sale be put in a trust fund so that the city could use the interest for road repairs and have a steady source of revenue so the city won’t have to dip into its general revenue fund. Maybe had she attended one of the numerous pubic hearings on road projects she could have made that suggestion. Speaking of which, if the city followed her plan and diverted the $150 million, whose neighborhoods would continue to be neglected? Who doesn’t get their streets fixed and who doesn’t get the abandoned home in their neighborhood torn down? As her campaign staff found out the hard way recently at a church function on the near east-side the people there actually like having their streets and sidewalks fixed because they had been neglected for so long. And aren’t paved roads and a solid infrastructure crucial to economic development and home values? She was the Deputy Mayor for economic development, right?
I do believe Melina’s heart is in the right place and I can respect wanting to address issues of job training, early childhood education and crime prevention; of course I could argue there are numerous programs already in place addressing these issues. If she wants to implement her idea use her bully pulpit and start up her own endowment fund and encourage citizens, companies and her donors to give freely. However, what she proposes is tantamount to robbing Peter to pay Paul. And not only is Paul getting robbed, the money is being spent on vague ambiguous concepts that may sound good but Melina never provided a lot of details on how any of this would work. I’m sure she will over the course of the campaign (granted she won’t speak to me) but right now I don’t see how taking money from concrete projects and spending it on abstract ideas is a smart thing to do.
And yes, you can argue I have a bias toward the incumbent, but you can’t argue with the facts. And as critics of the water deal and parking meter deal like to say, “a big idea is not necessarily a bright idea”.
