Governing Magazine/April 2007

OBSERVER

By Alan Greenblatt

LABOR'S LIST

Unions are playing offense for the first time in quite a while.

A year ago, public employee unions appeared to be on the ropes in much
of the country, with several Republican governors moving to abolish
collective bargaining for state employees. But the unions had a good
year at the ballot box in 2006, helping to elect allies in many
states, tilting the balance of power their way in some places. Now, in
states where Democrats have taken control, labor is pushing hard for
long-sought priorities. But it is finding the pushback pretty strong.
 Unions would especially like to ease some of the state "right to
work" laws, which bar any "closed shop" requirement of union
membership as a condition of employment. They thought they had a
particularly good shot in Colorado, where Democrats control both
legislative chambers and the governorship for the first time in 40
years. A bill moved swiftly through both houses, and needed only the
signature of Governor Bill Ritter--who had just been elected with
strong union backing--to become law.
 The bill was actually fairly modest in scope. Colorado's labor
relations act is an odd hybrid under which unions have to win two
separate votes of the employees at any workplace to create an all-
union shop. This year's bill would simply have eliminated the
requirement for the second vote. Ritter had pledged his support during
the campaign for such a move, so it looked like a done deal.
 But the governor surprised everybody by vetoing it. He said that he
wasn't against the bill in principle, but that the debate had become
so rancorous that he had no choice. Business groups lobbied vehemently
against the legislation, and Ritter, who enjoyed a considerable amount
of corporate help in 2006, worried that its passage into law might
poison his chances to win needed business support for other
priorities, such as health care, transportation and higher education.
"I realize how deeply disappointed my friends in organized labor will
be with this decision," Ritter said.
 Surprisingly, the main sponsor of the legislation, Representative
Michael Garcia, agrees with Ritter's logic. "The furor over the bill
created so much animosity," Garcia says, "that it really would have
affected our ability to work on issues as important or more
important."
 Despite the wasted expenditure of political capital, Garcia still
insists a new day has dawned for labor in Colorado. Unions clearly
aren't going to win every fight, particularly when they need the
support of a governor who is determined to maintain his ties to
business. Still, Garcia feels his friends in the labor movement have a
chance to help set the agenda. That hasn't been true in Colorado in a
long time. How long? "Maybe since the Eisenhower administration,"
Garcia says.


I SEE DEAD PEOPLE

"In high school, I learned that dead people can't vote. In
Mississippi, it's time to make that a reality."
 Jeffrey Rupp, a candidate for secretary of state, explaining why he
supports a voter ID law
 Source: Associated Press


ALBANY AMBITIONS

Andrew Cuomo still wants to be governor. But there's work to do first.

Andrew Cuomo has spent his career seeking to step into big shoes. The
former HUD secretary has long wanted to avenge his father's 1994
defeat after three terms as New York governor, but the younger Cuomo
ran a disastrous campaign for the office in 2002. He won the job of
state attorney general last year, but in following Eliot Spitzer, his
notably controversial predecessor, Cuomo again finds himself faced
with the task of proving that he can make his own mark.
 Spitzer's activism as attorney general, particularly his crusades
against Wall Street corruption, won him both friends and enemies, but
propelled him to the governor's office. In order to make a similar
name for himself as AG, Cuomo will have to come up with his own set of
dragons to slay.
 He hasn't wasted any time in looking for them. New York's attorney
general has the job of signing off on earmarks--the local pork-barrel
projects known euphemistically as "member items" in the legislature.
Most AGs have simply rubber-stamped the items, but Cuomo has embraced
the task as an opportunity to bring new scrutiny to the question of
how public money gets spent. Toward that end, he also has pledged to
lend staff to the Albany County district attorney to investigate
corruption cases.
 This appears to be a nice fit all around. The DA has jurisdiction in
such cases, but the AG's office has the resources to push the
investigation. And legislative corruption issues, while they open up a
front different from Spitzer's Wall Street focus, dovetail nicely with
the new governor's current calls for state government "reform."
 Cuomo is borrowing or adapting other familiar Spitzer strategies,
such as latching on to little-used laws as prosecutorial weapons. He's
taking advantage of a federal law regulating "vapor intrusion" to sue
oil companies in hopes of forcing them to clean up a decades-old spill
along a waterway between Brooklyn and Queens. Also in the Spitzer
tradition, he isn't overly concerned about staying within New York
borders: Cuomo is investigating the activities of college lenders who
do business in New York--and just about everywhere else in the country
as well.
 Given all this activity, it's clear that the new attorney general
thinks he can leave his own stamp on the job--even with his
predecessor watching closely, not too far away. He may find that, for
all the complexities of New York politics, trying to be the next Eliot
Spitzer might be a better springboard to power than trying to be the
next Mario Cuomo.


DATA? WHAT DATA?

The school reform movement learns to ignore bad results.

For years, free-market school reformers have complained that teachers
unions and educational bureaucracies were blocking the path of
necessary change. They have persuaded policy makers in several large
cities to challenge the established culture through means such as
charter schools and merit pay. But when their ideas are tried and
don't succeed, they can be slow to admit that their own programs
should be open to challenge as well.
 For the past five years, Philadelphia has engaged in the nation's
biggest experiment in private management of public schools. When
Pennsylvania took over the schools in 2002, state officials wanted to
hand the entire running of the district over to Edison Schools Inc.
That didn't fly politically, but Edison and several other operators
were brought in to manage 45 of the 250 schools in the district.
 The results are starting to show, and they don't look so hot for the
private managers. A study of four years' worth of reading and math
scores released by the RAND Corp. in February found that student
achievement had improved at the privately managed schools--but not any
more than in the district as a whole. In fact, the only schools to
post faster gains were 21 "restructured" schools to which the district
itself had devoted more resources.
 The findings have since been more or less replicated by local
studies. But the reformers have attacked RAND's methodology and
conclusions on blogs and in venues as prominent as the Wall Street
Journal op-ed page. "For me, at least, the study completely misses the
mark," says Charles Zogby, a consultant who served as Pennsylvania's
education secretary during the district takeover. "Any reform in
education is held to this standard of perfection, when the public
school system itself is indisputably inadequate."
 One of the main complaints of the free-market critics is that
Philadelphia doesn't offer a true test of market competition. The
private managers have to abide by union contracts and other district
policies. Still, many of these same critics had long hailed
Philadelphia as the shape of things to come. "They have hyped and
overpromised in Philadelphia," says Frederick Hess, author of the book
"Common Sense School Reform," "and they are dealing with the
consequences."
 Eventually, someone will come up with a better way of educating
children in this country than the models that have been tried, but
there are bound to be plenty of failures along the way. The reformers
should admit that some of their ideas will not pan out quite as well
as they had anticipated, rather than denying proof of failure or even
mediocre results whenever they appear.


SAVING SMART GROWTH

EPA has a program locals like. But maybe not for long.

Most U.S. Environmental Protection Agency efforts aimed at localities
could disappear without a whimper of protest from the communities
involved. In general, local officials feel that the less EPA gets
involved in their affairs, the better. But there's one EPA initiative
that localities have grown attached to: the Smart Growth program. And
they get upset every year when the program comes under threat from the
Bush administration and its budget proposal.
 In contrast to many EPA programs, which concern themselves with
regulatory fiats, the smart growth office acts in an advisory role,
conducting research, handing out grants, and collating and presenting
information to local officials making land-use decisions. The program
is popular just about everywhere.
 In Cheyenne, Wyoming, for instance, the agency helped "bring in a
fresh perspective," says Matt Ashby, the city's urban planning
director. Cheyenne recently went through the process of drafting a
master plan. EPA came in, but rather than imposing cookie-cutter
ideas, it orchestrated a dry run, lending expertise about ideas that
could be applied in a way that made sense for that particular city.
 "In every community, what EPA has done is not only offer best
practices," says Rick Cole, city manager in Ventura, California, "but
also given very practical advice about how to implement them."
 But the very concept of planning doesn't sit well with the
libertarian instincts of parts of the Bush administration, and the
program has been targeted during tough recent budget years for EPA as
a whole. "They've tried to kill it in every possible way," says Martin
Harris, director of NACo's Center for Sustainable Communities.
 Last year, it took an unusual consortium--not just local officials
and environmentalists but also traditional Republican allies such as
home builders and Realtors--to save it. From the development
community's point of view, smart growth--and the EPA office's ability
to bring together warring parties--look a lot better than fighting
NIMBYism or no-growth zealotry. "I just find it hard to believe that
such a good program was really targeted for budget cuts or
elimination," says Kent Jeffreys, of the International Council of
Shopping Centers.
 Smart Growth is on the chopping block again in the 2008 Bush budget.
Backers are hoping the new Democratic majorities in Congress will
provide some protection. If so, lots of mayors and city planners will
feel a sense of relief--but only for a little while.


LAUGHING MATTERS

State and local April Fool's Day jokes

2006: Indiana radio stations report that Governor Mitch Daniels has
converted the state to the metric system.

2006: The town of Dannebrog, Nebraska, population 352, passes a
resolution to annex Grand Island, population 42,940, and rename it
"Dannebrog South."

2003: The Los Angeles City Council reports that Police Chief William
Bratton is leaving to head Celine Dion's security detail.

Sources: South Bend Tribune, Omaha World-Herald, Arkansas Democrat-
Gazette, Boston Herald, Daily News of Los Angeles


FLOATING ABSURDITY

There's a reason why casinos should be on water. What is it, again?

During the 1980s, Iowa was one of the earliest states to approve of
casino gambling. And it pioneered a new idea for how to control the
games: It required that its casinos be water-borne. In Iowa's case,
they had to be actual riverboats offering no fewer than 100 excursion
tours per year.
 It seemed to make sense at the time. Riverboat gambling evoked a
nostalgic allure along the Mississippi and offered hope for economic
growth to riverfront communities.
 But it soon became clear in Iowa that gambling and waterfronts
weren't a natural combination. Gamblers were interested in sitting at
the slots, not admiring paddlewheels. Very few actually went for tours
on the boats, and since betting amounts were severely limited while
the tours were going on, the rule simply inconvenienced those ready to
give the house some of their money.
 Three years ago, Iowa eliminated the requirement that casinos
actually move, but they still have to be located on the water. This
has served no practical purpose. The casinos were soon either dry-
docked or newly built on top of artificially-sustained little puddles.
"Basically, it's a tremendous cost to some of the new casinos coming
online," says state Senator Mike Connolly, sponsor of a measure to
repeal the requirement. "I think most Iowans see this as darned
foolishness."
 Allowing casinos to build on dry land will not only save their
operators money but also help protect the environment. There may not
have been much damage to the Mississippi, but casinos in other states
sit on top of fragile wetlands. The cars and people they attract have
increased pollution in sensitive areas, while the all-night lighting
presents problems for birds and wildlife.
 There are other reasons for allowing casinos to build on soil, rather
than water. It's easier for casinos built on dry land to afford
insurance. That's why, following Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi
legislature allowed casinos to be rebuilt as much as 800 feet from the
Gulf Coast. Further north, however, Mississippi casinos still must be
on rivers or standing water. Four other states continue to allow
casinos on water only. Gambling opponents support such strictures as a
way of keeping the number of casinos to a minimum.
 But Mike Connolly is right. The whole idea is silly. If states want
to restrict gambling, they can limit the number of casino licenses
they issue. That's a lot better than keeping requirements on the books
that are ignored in spirit and cause more problems than they solve.

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