An alert database in Fishers, Ind., provides police officers, firefighters and EMTs personal information, like whether there’s an elderly citizen who’s homebound or a child with autism who is upset by the sound of sirens, in advance of reporting to an emergency.
“As much information as we can gather prior to arrival, the better prepared we are for what situations may occur,” says Fishers Fire Department Captain John Mehling.
Through the Special Needs Data System, citizens voluntarily can provide first responders with specific information about disabilities or a medical situation, such as blindness or mobility issues. Dispatchers send details to the computers in emergency vehicles while they’re en route.
Mehling says that all personal information is protected: Only the responding personnel have access. And the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ensures data privacy and security for safeguarding medical information.
So far, a few hundred citizens have enrolled in the registry.
Still, some have mixed feelings about the database since it labels residents with certain conditions.
One downside could arise when a family moves and doesn’t update the information in the system to alert responders about the change, which would cause officials to prepare for a scenario that no longer exists at a certain location, says Denise Saxman, program director for the Alzheimer’s Association Greater Indiana Chapter.
“I can truly see the benefit to the families who are very worried about their loved ones, and I can see the benefit to the first responders,” says Saxman. “At least they seem to be coming at this from a, ‘Let’s make the best use of our time in an emergency situation with people who may be at more risk.’”
The idea developed out of a roundtable discussion held earlier this year in which the participants sought ways to make their community more accessible and inclusive and was implemented in March. A resident can choose to remove the information from the system at any time.
Other communities, including Bloomington, Ind., and the state of Illinois, have also implemented a similar database.
MORE: This Is What Community Oriented Policing Looks Like
Tag: Indiana
What Wives of Veterans Can Learn from Female Soldiers, How Doctors Are Saving the Lives of Gunshot Victims Before the Trigger Is Ever Pulled and More
What Army Wives Need to Understand About Female Soldiers, The Washington Post
Much is said about bridging the military-civilian divide, but as writer (and wife of a veteran) Lily Burana realizes, there’s also a distance between the women who proudly sport the uniform and those who are married to someone wearing it. Knowing that the military is full of inspirational females — including those now serving in the Ranger division — Burana set out to build a bridge the only way she knew how: by sitting down to lunch and having a chat.
Are Doctors the Key to Ending Philly Gun Violence? Philadelphia Magazine
Renowned for providing lifesaving medical treatment to kids, doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are focusing their efforts on reducing the cycle of youth violence that plagues the City of Brotherly Love. The hospital’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP) grew out of internal discussions about the Sandy Hill Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., and a shocking report from the city government, which found that 5,051 Philadelphia youth were shot or murdered between 2006 and 2012. It’s difficult to know for sure if the screenings, bully prevention lessons and intensive counseling sessions, which make up VIP, is reducing the number of gunshot victims, but the outlook is hopeful, considering most participants say they desire to be a normal teenager, not one packing heat.
The Power of Vision in Urban Governance, Governing
Every politician may have the goal of being dubbed a “visionary leader,” but Indianapolis’s former four-term mayor, Bill Hudnut, actually was. In order to bring forth the Midwestern city’s potential, Hudnut enlisted help from Indianapolis business and philanthrophic leaders and economic development experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together, these heavy-hitters combined their strengths, collaborating on a plan that eventually brought $1 billion to the local economy — proving that collective vision and use of community assets is key to long-term impact.
This Is a Smart, Nonpartisan Way to Improve Local Government
What is the ideal size of government? Should decisions be centered in a strong federal branch or diffused across thousands of municipalities? Liberals and conservatives have duked it out over these questions ever since Patrick Henry demanded a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberty from a tyrannical president. But there’s a retro, nonpartisan answer that’s been tested recently to add to the expected pull between local, state and federal governments: a regional body. The model first arose in the late 1960s as cities confronted the rise of suburbs, and it’s making a comeback as dealing with a new era of climate change — flooding, regional transport and open space — becomes a top priority. NationSwell looked at how this system of metropolitan governance has changed two cities and could impact a third.
Metro Council, Portland, Ore.
Leave it to Portland, Ore.’s biggest city, to come up with a new way of doing government. The area features the nation’s first and only elected regional government, which coordinates planning across Portland plus 24 neighboring cities and three counties along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. (Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, have another notable Metro Council, but their board is state-appointed and has been criticized for a lack of accountability.) The core of greater Portland’s government is a Metro Council consisting of six nonpartisan representatives who direct more than 1,600 government employees: rangers for 17,000 acres of park land, economists, climate scientists, urban planners, mapmakers, garbage truck drivers and even animal keepers who staff the zoo. Among the challenges it’s dealt with? Everything from the boundaries of urban growth to retiring old elephants.
The body’s emergence dates back to more than half a century ago, when Portland residents first recognized the need to safeguard outlying forests and historic neighborhoods from population growth — in essence, preserving the attractions that were making the city a destination. At the same time, community members also wanted to see efficient government services, not the “wasteful, fragmented and uneven” delivery that Portlanders witnessed in 1960, according to a League of Women Voters mailer. After a regional vote, the body was officially set up in 1979. “Places in the west — and Portland’s a good example of this — were growing rapidly. This expansion tends to get people thinking regionally,” Kate Foster, an expert in regional governance, tells The Atlantic’s CityLab. Residents cared about “these gaps in service delivery at the regional scale, things like water, sewers, and roads. These are things that weren’t really thought of in the same way in the east.” That concern led to a new model, but today, “it’s oft cited, never copied,” Foster adds.
Unigov, Indianapolis
Indiana, as we’ve written before, has an intricate set of laws regulating the structure of local government that can lead to some incredible results, including one county’s precipitous drop in income inequality. Back in the 1960s, cheap, flat land at the midpoint between Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville made Indianapolis a prime location for suburban sprawl. The result: 11 suburban towns popped up right outside the city’s downtown in Marion County. A state law passed in 1970 created Unigov, a unified structure that essentially consolidated most of the area’s municipalities under a city-county council with 25 seats. White flight in the postwar years led to a decaying urban core, but the new organization allowed tax dollars to flow regionally. (Nashville and Jacksonville took on similar unifications around the same time.) Some say that Unigov made Indianapolis “a city captured by its suburbs,” but others point to economic growth that resulted from cutting through the bureaucracy of 60 local governments, a population boom that rocketed it to the nation’s 12th largest city, increased clout on federal grant applications, streamlined services and created a revitalized downtown.
For all the positives, politics was never far from the decision to unify. Some insiders speculated Republicans had created Unigov to dilute the Democrats’ urban vote with conservatives in the suburbs (the GOP held power for 30 years). And to get the law passed, legislators settled on a big compromise: school, police and fire district borders stayed unchanged, allowing richer (and much whiter) suburbs to keep property tax dollars within their enclaves. “The spectre of racial integration … would have met instant death for the plan,” the head of the school board said at the time. That hasn’t changed much, but consolidation continues to have support, with the local police and county sheriffs joining forces in 2005 and the creation of a centralized fire department in 2007.
County Merger, Cleveland
After being a hot trend in the 1970s, the reorganization of local government had died down — until recently. On the shores of Lake Erie, Cuyahoga County residents are now debating how to merge the two cities, 19 villages and 38 townships around Cleveland. The change in thinking started slowly and has been discussed for more than a decade. Back in 2004, Cleveland watched Louisville merge with Jefferson County, Ky., as its own population packed up and left. It took notice and rewrote the county charter to switch from a three-member board to a more active 11-member council and a county executive.
But a full merger is still in the works. In 2012, engaged readers of the local paper, the Plain Dealer, sent in thousands of color-coded maps for how the county could be reorganized. If nothing’s done and things continue as they are, at least 10.5 percent of the region’s housing stock — about 174,900 homes — will sit vacant and abandoned. East Cleveland, a separate city, is looking at bankruptcy. Based on what the experts are predicting, Cleveland could be the next spot to try out a different system of government.
MORE: While Roads and Rails Crumble, These 3 Projects Are Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure
10 Outstanding Solutions of 2015
In a year when policing controversies, mass shootings and debates over immigration have dominated the headlines and discourse, there’s a group of inspirational pioneers at work. Not all of these individuals, policy makers and entrepreneurs are household names, but they all are improving this country by developing new ways to solve America’s biggest challenges. Here, NationSwell’s favorite solutions of the year.
THE GUTSY DAD THAT STARTED A BUSINESS TO HELP HIS SON FIND PURPOSE
Eighty percent of the workers at Rising Tide Car Wash, located in Parkland, Fla., are on the autism spectrum. Started by the father-and-son team of John and Tom D’Eri, Rising Tide gives their son and brother, Andrew, who was identified as an autistic individual at the age of three, and its other employees the chance to lead a fulfilling life. John and Tom determined that the car wash industry is a good match for those with autism since they’re more likely to be engaged by detailed, repetitive processes than those not on the spectrum. [ph]
THE ALLSTARS THAT ARE TACKLING SOME OF AMERICA’S GREATEST CHALLENGES
The six NationSwell AllStars — Karen Washington, Eli Williamson, Rinku Sen, Seth Flaxman, DeVone Boggan and Amy Kaherl — are encouraging advancements in education and environmental sustainability, making government work better for its citizens, engaging people in national service, advancing the American dream and supporting our veterans. Click here to read and see how their individual projects are moving America forward. [ph]
THE INDIANA COUNTY THAT HAS DONE THE MOST TO REDUCE INCOME INEQUALITY IN AMERICA
The Midwest exurb of Boone County, Ind., has reduced the ratio of the top 20th percentile’s earnings compared to the bottom 80th percentile by 23 percent — the largest decline for any American county with more than 50,000 residents and an achievement stumped county officials. NationSwell pieced together the story of how a land battle and a statewide tax revolt altered the course of Boone County. Find out exactly how it happened here. [ph]
THE TESLA CO-FOUNDER THAT’S ELECTRIFYING GARBAGE TRUCKS
Ian Wright’s new venture, Wrightspeed, is far less glamorous than his previous venture creating luxury electric sedans. But Wrightspeed, which is installing range-extended electric powertrains (the generators that electric vehicles run on) in medium- and heavy-duty trucks for companies like the Ratto Group, Sonoma and Marin counties’ waste hauler, and shipping giant FedEx, could have a greater impact on the environment than electrifying personal vehicles. Click here to learn how. [ph]
THE ORGANIZATION THAT IS TURNING A NOTORIOUS PROJECT INTO AN URBAN VILLAGE
Los Angeles’s large, 700-unit public housing development Jordan Downs consists of 103 identical buildings. Entryways to the two-story beige structures are darkened with black soot and grime, and the doors and windows are crossed with bars. Soon, the dilapidated complex will be revitalized by Joseph Paul, Jr., and his outreach team from SHIELDS for Families, which provides counseling, education and vocational training services. Read more about the plan, which calls for recreational parks and retail on site and would double the amount of available housing with 700 more units tiered at affordable and market rates. [ph]
THE HARDWORKING GROUP THAT’S RESTORING THE SHORELINE OF AMERICA’S LAST FRONTIER
Chris Pallister and his small, devoted crew are leading the largest ongoing marine cleanup effort on the planet. Since 2002, Pallister’s organization, Gulf of Alaska Keeper, has been actively cleaning beaches in Prince William Sound and the Northern Gulf Coast. The nonprofit’s five boats, seasonal crew of 12 and dozens of regular volunteers has removed an estimated 2.5 million pounds of marine debris (mostly plastic items washed ashore from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) from more than 1,500 miles of coastline. [ph]
THE STATE THAT’S ENDING HOMELESSNESS WITH ONE SIMPLE IDEA
Utah set the ambitious goal to end homelessness in 2015. As the state’s decade-long “Housing First” program, an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, wraps up this year, it’s already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by early next year. Read more about the initiative here. [ph]
THE RESIDENT THAT’S REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS’S MOST DEVASTATED WARD
New Orleans native Burnell Cotlon wants to feed his 3,000 neighbors. So he’s turned a two-story building that was destroyed by catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (along with most of the Lower 9th Ward community) into a shopping plaza. Already, he’s opened a barbershop, a convenience store, and a full-service grocery store in a neighborhood that has been identified as a food desert. [ph]
THE MAN THAT’S GIVING CAREERS TO UNEMPLOYED MILITARY VETERANS
“They had our backs, let’s keep the shirts on theirs” is more than just a motto for Mark Doyle. It’s the business model on which he built Rags of Honor, his silk-screen printing company based in Chicago that provides employment and other services to veterans. In the three years since its inception, Rags of Honor has grown from four employees to 22, all but one of whom are veterans at high risk of homelessness. [ph]
THE PRESIDENT THAT’S PRESERVING OUR ENVIRONMENT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
After promising to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal our planet during his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama has faltered on environmental legislation during his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But the 44th president’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions. Here’s why. [ph]
The Remarkable Story of the County That Has Done the Most to Reduce Income Inequality in America
In the immediate wake of the Great Recession, as 4 million homeowners lost their houses to bank foreclosures while risk-taking executives took home $32.6 billion in bonuses, the glaring disparity between rich and poor ignited a debate about income inequality. Occupy tents unfolded in public squares, and the Tea Party protested bank bailouts. Since then, the financial markets have recovered and there’s a decrease in measurable unemployment, but wage disparity continues to capture headlines.
“Millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and yet all the new income and wealth are going to the top one percent!” Sen. Bernie Sanders declared at the Oct. 13 Democratic debate, a viewpoint that the presidential candidate has voiced for years. Republicans once derided these arguments as “class warfare,” but this campaign season features the populist rhetoric from both parties, with Republican Donald Trump saying that the middle class is “getting absolutely destroyed” at the same time hedge fund managers “are getting away with murder.”
For all the posturing this election season, there’s been little serious discussion about how to effectively reduce inequality or which cities are models of success. With assistance from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, NationSwell dug into the data to identify the municipality that has done the most to reduce inequality since the latest financial downturn. Surprisingly, it isn’t a major city or even a minor one that’s made the greatest strides toward egalitarianism; it is a Midwestern exurb.
A half-hour’s drive northwest of Indianapolis, Boone County, Ind., has reduced the ratio of the top 20th percentile’s earnings compared to the bottom 80th percentile by 23 percent (the largest decline for any American county with more than 50,000 residents), an achievement that stumped Boone County officials. In government and business alike, no one realized the county had become a national leader in reducing inequality, let alone how exactly they accomplished this feat.
Over the last month, NationSwell pieced together the story of how two towns — an upper-crust enclave and its scrappy, younger neighbor — battled for land and altered the course of the county’s growth. There was no redistribution of wealth in this red state, but financial pressure from a statewide tax revolt forced these localities to reinvent themselves or risk becoming ghost towns. Unexpectedly, amidst all the turmoil, the middle class moved in.
Boone County’s evolution over the past decade may read as a bureaucratic string of annexations, civil suits, tax caps and government restructuring, but it’s really a story of how small-town America is redefining itself to attract young Americans. After World War II, the suburbs were a place of radical equality, where cheap subdivisions offered middle-class families a home and a driveway. As time passed, the price of home ownership continued to grow and became unattainable for many. Today, a new model centered on a dense suburban core (theorists also refer to it as New Urbanism, Smart Growth and Transit-Oriented Design) is emerging. This “city in miniature” model is particularly appealing to Millennials, renewing the suburbs as the home for America’s dwindling middle class.
Since its founding in 1851, Whitestown was a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it town without a traffic light. But at the start of this century, the population exploded from 471 in 2000 to 2,867 in 2010, making it the fastest growing city in Indiana for several years running. (The population is estimated to have doubled again in the last five years.) Its vinyl-sided developments were unglamorous, but the bargain prices drew young families who wanted good schools, green space and the urban amenities a short drive away.
Hungry for space to expand, Whitestown began eyeing land to annex, including areas close to its white-collar neighbor, Zionsville. Whitestown went “annexation crazy,” says Marc Applegate, a county commissioner. “[The town] gobbled up an enormous amount of territory,” adds Aaron Renn, an Indiana native and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Maps were redrawn several times until Whitestown’s limits had stretched right up to Zionsville’s outline.
Zionsville residents, for their part, didn’t want anything to do with their neighbors. A bedroom community for attorneys, doctors and mid-level managers who commute to Indianapolis, Zionsville featured quaint brick storefronts lining Main Street. “You could probably have driven down it 50 years ago and think that it doesn’t look that different today,” says town council president Steve Mundy. Its residents worked aggressively to preserve the serenity, prohibiting big-box retailers and setting a strict quota on building permits.
The town’s restrictive approach didn’t last long. In 2007, anger over high property tax bills cost 21 Indiana mayors their jobs. Three years later, discontented Hoosiers approved a constitutional amendment capping property tax: residential at one percent, multi-family housing at two percent and commercial at three percent. Zionsville’s budget, which relied heavily on the assessed value of its well-kept estates, suddenly lost much of its revenue and needed to diversify the town to make up for the shortfall. To provide services long term, the town needed commercial development, but didn’t want to destroy its charm in the process. “It’s a tight rope we have to walk,” says Zionsville Mayor Jeff Papa.
Over in Whitestown, town manager Dax Norton says that with the tax caps, “communities had to find ways to grow, because in Indiana now, you’re either growing or you’re dying.” Developers there skirted zoning restrictions by building on land annexed by Whitestown, but within Zionsville’s prized school district.
“Part of what happened, I think, was these developers realized Zionsville is not going to let us come in, but the Whitestown area is very pro-development,” says Renn, of the Manhattan Institute. “That kicked off a free-for-all fight,” a mad civic frenzy over which town owned the land just outside of Zionsville. Whitestown won a lot of the battles, simply by having filed its paperwork first.
Whitestown’s competition and the dire need to fill the town’s coffers broke Zionsville’s long-standing policies, kickstarting development. Pro-growth candidates assumed power on the town council and two nearby rural townships received the opportunity to voluntarily reorganize as special districts within Zionsville. (Opposed by Whitestown, one of the mergers is being disputed before the Indiana Supreme Court.)
Zionsville also competed to attract business. Because of Boone County’s central location in the heartland, many shipping companies place warehouses outside Indianapolis, giving them easy access to half the country within a short truck ride. “The land in-between [Zionsville and Whitestown] is so hotly contested because there’s a huge amount of development along the I-65 corridor,” which links the area to Chicago and the Deep South, says Jamie Palmer, a senior policy analyst at Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute.
In 2007, Whitestown won a contract with Medco, a mail-order pharmacy and, the following year, an Amazon Fulfillment Center, a facility with seven miles of conveyer belts. To match that, Zionsville courted a FedEx distribution plant that opened last year.
Even during the recession, construction never stopped in Boone County, enticing outsiders to the area. Today, big roadside displays advertise grand openings of new single-family construction. “This year, we’ll break a record on single-family housing with 300 homes,” says Norton. Most will be priced at around $170,000, he notes, astonishingly cheap to most urban city-dwellers.
A series of recent progressive initiatives in Whitestown — non-discrimination protection for sexual orientation and gender identity (passed as the rest of Indiana lurched rightward on “religious freedom”), wider boulevards for bikers known as complete streets and a field of solar panels beside the municipal building — has only bolstered the town’s appeal to young people. “It’s a different kind of place in the ever-fearful-of-change Midwest,” says Norton. “It’s really a Millennial-driven community, and that’s made it pretty interesting. I’m not one of those, but I enjoy it.”
While Boone County’s ability to draw young, middle-class families may be instructive to other communities, the exurb still has much to accomplish to reduce inequality. Its significant decline only brings it in line with other American communities. Throughout the U.S., the richest Americans make about 4.4 times their poorest neighbors; in Boone County, it’s 4.2. That ratio of inequity, however, fails to express the divide between wealthy homeowners in Zionsville and poor tenants across county lines in Indianapolis. Boone County may be heading towards greater equality, but it could also be gentrifying, forming a homogenous group of families that all bring home high wages.
So far, Boone County has seen only a slight uptick in median income, from $64,961 in 2000 (adjusted for inflation) to $66,023 today, which suggests the county is not simply pricing out poor residents. That fits trends nationwide, says Joel Kotkin, an urban studies fellow at Champan University in Orange, Calif. Extreme wealth disparities exist in urban areas like New York City, he says, but suburbs ringing small and mid-size cities (particularly in the Midwest where land is cheap) offer the best shot at restoring stability to the middle class.
With Americans, in general, preferring single-family homes and a car, “all of the stuff about the death of the suburbia is overblown,” Renn explains. The major question today is not whether suburbs will survive, but how. “When they get old, [suburbs] have to reinvent themselves in the same way cities did.” The growth in Zionsville and Whitestown — prompted largely by the need for higher tax yield — serves as a model for how diversifying a graying, upper-middle-class population and reinventing a place where nothing much had happened since the post office opened in 1853 can do just that.
Boone County is still, on the whole, a rural county, primed for denser growth in its towns over the next decade. If anything, the boom has just begun.
7 States Making Bold Criminal Justice Reforms
No other sitting Commander in Chief, including Ronald Reagan, who took office in 1981 when prison populations spiked upward rapidly, or George W. Bush, the hang-’em-high leader who presided over 152 executions as Texas governor, had ever set foot inside a federal penitentiary. But last month, President Barack Obama stepped behind bars — hinting that he’s conscious of the legacy he’ll leave and is eyeing criminal justice reform as his next issue to tackle.
“When they describe their youth and their childhood, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made,” Obama said after speaking to six nonviolent offenders at El Reno prison, about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City. “The difference is they did not have the kinds of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.” He added, “It’s not normal. It’s not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What is normal is young people making mistakes.”
As bipartisan momentum grows in Washington, D.C., reform efforts are also sweeping the nation, many led by conservative governors. Here’s the latest innovations to come out of our country’s statehouses:
TEXAS SHUTTERS PRISONS
Everything’s bigger in Texas, including its correctional facilities. That is, until recently. Starting in 2007, Gov. Rick Perry, Bush’s successor in a “tough on crime” state and now a Republican presidential candidate, led the conservative state in reining in the size of its prison populations. Texas focused on expanding treatment programs and diverting offenders through probation and parole. In 2011, three juvenile facilities were closed, halving the number of incarcerated youth in the state. Cuts continued in 2013, when legislators reduced the corrections budget by $97 million, a clear sign they intended to scale back the system’s capacity. Two prisons near Dallas mired in scandal and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest for-profit prison company, looked to be on the chopping block. When Sen. John Whitimire, the longest-serving legislator, called for the closure of the prisons built during his watch, the decision seemed final. Through the budget process, both were defunded.
UTAH REDEFINES A PRISON-WORTHY OFFENSE
Obama didn’t selected El Reno prison for his visit at random. He picked the institution because half of its inmates are behind bars for drug offenses — the same proportion for the country as a whole. Utah faced the same situation. While crime fell for two decades, the state’s prison population increased without bound: From 2004 to 2013, the number of inmates grew by 18 percent, six times faster than the national average. This March, Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, signed a comprehensive reform package (developed by a commission of state and local officials) that reclassified all first- and second-time drug possession violations as misdemeanors, instead of felonies. Along with creating new guidelines for parole violations and adding “re-entry specialists” to smooth the transition from prison, the Beehive State’s new law is expected to eliminate the 2,700 projected incarcerations and save the public $500 million over the next 20 years.
ALABAMA DOESN’T JAIL FOR PROBATION VIOLATIONS
Alabama has one of the nation’s highest incarceration rates, jailing more than 30,000 people in a system designed to hold only 12,000 prisoners — leading officials to call it a “time bomb waiting to explode.” Almost a quarter of newly admitted inmates were thrown into overcrowded cells because they violated the terms of their parole or probation. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, half of those cases were for “minor technical violations,” such as missed appointments, unpaid fines, moving to a new home without permission or losing a job, “that did not result in a new offense.” A law signed in 2010 by Gov. Robert Riley limited incarceration for those who committed an administrative error but didn’t break any laws. The alternatives saved the southern state an estimated $18 million.
INDIANA RETOOLS DRUG-FREE ZONE LAWS
The signs are so commonplace you might not notice them: “Drug-Free School Zones.” In fine print, they’ll inform you that selling drugs within 1,000 feet of school property, a public park, a housing project or a youth center in Indiana is a Class A felony, automatically upping the recommended sentence to 20 to 50 years in prison. The creation of these areas were one of the government’s first salvos in the War on Drugs, passed by Congress in 1970, more than a decade before Ronald Reagan escalated the battle. Indiana’s reform began in 2007 in an unlikely way: bills in each chamber of the legislature initially set out to expand the drug-free zone to include bus stops and churches. Kelsey Kauffman, a professor at DePauw University, tasked her students with evaluating the law’s effectiveness. Over an eight-year campaign, they presented their findings — that more than 75 percent of the defendants affected by the zones were black — to multiple Senate committees. By 2013, new legislation cut the zones in half, limiting them to a 500-foot radius. A bill last year sought to scale them back even further to 250 feet, but political maneuvering killed the attempt.
NEBRASKA OVERTURNS DEATH PENALTY
Smack in the middle of America’s heartland, the Cornhusker State became the first conservative state in four decades to repeal capital punishment this May. Nebraska’s nonpartisan, unicameral legislature defied Gov. Pete Ricketts, a fierce advocate for the death penalty, with a 30-to-19 vote, just barely enough to overturn a veto. Liberals and conservatives alike believed the death penalty was inefficient, costly and immoral. “Today we are doing something that transcends me, that transcends this Legislature, that transcends this state,” Sen. Ernie Chambers, an independent from Omaha, said before the vote. “We are talking about human dignity.” Along with Washington, D.C., Nebraska joined 17 other states in banning capital punishment.
MISSOURI REPEALS SELECT BAN ON FOOD STAMPS
The federal welfare overhaul in 1996, passed by Rep. Newt Gingrich’s Republican stronghold in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, revoked the ability of felons convicted of drug offenses to receive welfare benefits. The lifetime disqualification from food stamps seemed so vengeful and contrary to public safety that 19 states have chosen to opt out of the provision entirely and 24 states created exceptions, according to a tally by The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline blog. Barring someone from benefits “increases the odds they will commit new crimes by virtue of the fact that you’re creating a significant financial obstacle,” says Marc Mauer, the executive director of The Sentencing Project. A grassroots push, particularly by religious leaders in St. Louis and Kansas City, united lawmakers in values-based support and won the governor’s signature.
GEORGIA WIPES THE SLATE CLEAN
Once a person’s made contact with the criminal justice system, it’s hard to allude its grasp. A criminal record follows you into every job interview. It’s a red flag on every background check for a new apartment or a loan. That’s the case — even if a person isn’t a felon who spent years in the pen or if a judge dismisses the case or a jury agrees the accused is innocent. With prodding from the Georgia Justice Project and others, legislators overhauled the state’s burdensome and limited expungement law. On the day the law went into effect, one-third of Georgia’s population had a record expunged. Bolstered by the success, Georgia Justice Project convinced Gov. Nathan Deal to issue an executive order to “ban the box” asking criminal history questions on state employment applications this February — the first state in the Deep South to change its hiring policy.
The Surprising Way That States Are Getting Residents to Pay Their Taxes
They say there’s two things that are certain in this life: death and taxes. Only this year, that’s not true in 13 states. No, a quarter of America hasn’t discovered the secret to immortality. Rather, this group has offered (or is considering) amnesty for delinquent taxpayers to file their unpaid back taxes.
It may seem contradictory, but these states are demonstrating that the best way to collect taxes is to sometimes forgive those who don’t pay. Tax amnesty sacrifices some of the penalties and interest that an evader technically owes, in exchange for receipt of the outstanding balance. While state governments do forgo some funds, they gain an injection of cash that can help close budget gaps and get citizens back in the system.
“I think it’s just kind of an easy way of plugging a budget hole. You get some revenue out of it, and if you don’t do it too often, it’s pretty effective,” Mandy Rafool, a tax expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures, tells The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline blog. “It doesn’t generate much money,” but “it’s pretty painless,” she adds.
Louisiana decided to offer a break to scofflaws when the state’s revenue wasn’t keeping up with expenditures. If the Bayou State didn’t pull in $100 million, cuts would have been made to healthcare and education. Luckily, it collected more than half a billion dollars — $551 million — most of which came from a handful of big evaders. In 2013, two participants coughed up $175 million to the state, and another 34 late-filers each forked over more than $1 million. “This is an opportunity to come clean,” says Jarrod Coniglio, deputy secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Revenue, which opened a one-month window each of the past two years to catch up on payments. A third and final phase will roll out later this year, though it’ll be far less generous than in preceding years.
Experts caution, however, that tax amnesty programs can’t become too routine. “If you do one every 20 years, you can clean up some accounts,” John Kennedy, former Louisiana Revenue Director who’s now the state treasurer, tells Governing. “But we’re doing it too often. It seems like they do one every Thursday now. It’s a disincentive to people paying their taxes.”
Amnesty supporters agree the programs should seem to be announced at random; otherwise, some will expect to be let off the hook in the future. That’s why Indiana, which estimates it will haul up to $159 million in back taxes, has prohibited those who took advantage of amnesty in 2005 from participating in this year’s event.
Most people who skip paying taxes aren’t out to game the system, argues Michael Fried, a tax lawyer in Bethesda, Md. “They do it because of real reasons — the economy, their job status, the cost of raising a family,” he tells Stateline. “People just fall behind and a solution pops up.”
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When Her Impoverished Students Didn’t Have Proper Attire, This Ingenious Principal Found a Way to Keep Them Warm
As this bitter winter grips Indiana, the 200 students at Heth-Washington Elementary School can step out in the cold with their best foot forward, thanks to their principal Nissa Ellett. The compassionate administrator made sure that these youngsters now have something they desperately needed before: brand new shoes.
In rural Harrison County, Ind., 75 percent of students live below the poverty line, Good News Network reports. Because of that, many families cannot afford a decent pair of shoes.
“We’ve had several students who have had holes in their shoes, the soles were peeling off, we’ve been using duct tape and staples and tying together shoe strings,” Ellett tells WDRB.
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That’s when she decided to make sure every single one of her students had a new kicks. She organized a community fundraiser hoping to raise $6,300, and the response she received was staggering. “In 24 days, we raised $17,000,” Ellett says.
Not only did the donated funds pay for shoes for each student, but it was enough to buy them snow boots, hats, outerwear, socks and candy, too.
As you can see in the touching video below, the students got to open their presents as a Christmas surprise.
“My perspective on it is if we can meet their basic needs, then they can focus on learning and that what’s critical,” Ellett says.
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Mayors on the Rise: Pete Buttigieg
Most of us can’t take a seven-month leave of absence from work, but most of us don’t have as good of an excuse as Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.
Mayor Buttigieg, better known as “Mayor Pete,” took office January 1, 2012, at the age of 29 — making him the youngest mayor in America to serve a city with more than 100,000 residents. He assumed command while still fulfilling his monthly commitments as a member of the Navy Reserve, but after about two years in office, he was called to serve abroad.
After a few months of preparation with his mayoral team, Buttigieg left South Bend in the hands of his Deputy Mayor Mark Neal and departed to perform intelligence counter-terrorism work in Afghanistan for seven months.
Buttigieg grew up in South Bend. His parents were transplants that arrived a few years before his birth to pursue work at the University of Notre Dame. Although his family found opportunity in the Indiana city, Buttigieg would come to learn while growing up that his hometown was a city in crisis: the all-too-familiar tale of a Midwestern town in an economic tailspin due to loss of industry. In South Bend’s case, it was the shuttering of the Studebaker car company, which until 1963, when its factories closed, was the largest employer in town.
After high school, Buttigieg left South Bend to pursue higher education, first at Harvard and later, at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After spending some time in the private sector doing consulting work, he joined the Navy as a reservist in 2008, putting into practice his childhood admiration of his great uncle, a family hero who died while serving in 1941.
The Great Recession hit South Bend hard, and Mayor Pete recalls following his hometown’s news from a distance.
“I was reading headlines from home,” says Buttigieg, “I was thinking, ‘Jeez, we gotta do more, we gotta change things a little bit back home.’ And then beginning to stop asking that question ‘why don’t they…’ and start asking that question ‘why don’t we?’ or ‘why don’t I?’”
Buttigieg returned to South Bend in 2008 and made his first foray into politics: a run for Indiana State Treasurer in 2010 (an effort he lost decisively to incumbent Richard Mourdock). While contemplating his next step, it became apparent that South Bend would soon have an open-seat mayor’s race for the first time in 24 years. Encouraged by his supporters in town, Buttigieg ran and was elected mayor on November 8, 2011, with 74 percent of the vote.
Buttigieg’s administration works hard to reinvent South Bend, while still acknowledging and celebrating its past, including work to redesign the old Studebaker campus into a turbo machinery facility in partnership with Notre Dame. By taking advantage of its excellent Internet capability (thanks to fiber optic cables that run through the town via old railroad routes), the city is attracting tech start-ups. Additionally, a 311 line has been set up for city residents.
But what might be called Buttigieg’s signature program is his plan to demolish, renovate or convert 1,000 vacant homes in 1,000 days. Since 1960, South Bend has lost about 30,000 residents, and empty homes pepper the entire town — attracting crime and lowering property values. This ambitious program, dubbed the Vacant & Abandoned Properties Initiative, was launched in February 2013. As of January 10, 2015, 747 properties have been addressed, putting South Bend is ahead of schedule.
Buttigieg recently announced that he is running for a second term, perhaps surprising those who assumed he was only interested in using the mayor’s office to further his career. He is also personally renovating a home in the neighborhood where he grew up, while continuing to give one weekend a month to the reserves. He sees the recent initiatives in South Bend as a way to establish the next era for the community and is excited about the way South Bend is once again investing in itself.
“I would like to believe that if the work matters to you,” says Buttigieg, “and the importance of it is what fills your sails, that people can see that.”
How Paper Airplanes Paid for a Veteran’s Trip to Washington, D.C.
While learning about D-Day in his homeschool lessons, Jagger, a 7-year-old from Hamilton, Ind., was struck by the soldiers’ bravery. Inspired, Jagger wanted to do something to honor a World War II veteran.
So he came up with the idea of raising $800 — enough to send one veteran on a trip to Washington, D.C. through Northeast Indiana Honor Flight, a nonprofit that has four flights scheduled for 2015 to bring groups of veterans to see the World War II memorial.
“He loves folding paper airplanes and with it being the honor flight we thought that would be a really neat thing that he could give back to the people who are helping him reach his goal,” Jagger’s mother Chante Hurraw tells WANE-TV.
So Jagger began folding airplanes and built a display explaining his project. He took it and his paper-airplane-folding prowess to several dinners at American Legions and told the attendees that if they made a donation, he’d give them an airplane.
Jagger ended up raising $1,058.25, enough to send one veteran to our nation’s capital, plus extra to start saving up for a second veteran’s trip. Jagger plans to keep up his fundraising and paper airplane mission indefinitely.
“We couldn’t be prouder,” his mom says. “He’s a great person. He’s a great kid, but he is a great person. He has a big heart. That’s important to us.”
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