Two quotes from two columns of the year about to end best exemplify what kind of year 2013 was and what it reveals about Indianapolis.
In my July 18 column, I quoted an Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) editorial that said, “Mayor Greg Ballard isn’t known as a hands-on leader. Simply setting a vision won’t work on crime. It’s time for Ballard to roll up his sleeves, put aside partisanship and lead on the issue he promised would be ‘Job One.’”
Despite the stats that say otherwise, Indianapolis residents were concerned that crime is increasing. Homicides this year rose sharply, up some 20 percent, compared with the stagnant homicide rate of the past several years.
Even though other violent crimes were down from previous years, the rise in murders was shocking, especially since homicides have been declining in many major American cities.
Mayor Ballard’s complete abdication of leadership on this (and other issues) mirrors the complete abdication of action by many other sectors of Indianapolis leadership.
In my Oct. 10 column, I quoted Bill Taft, executive director of LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corp.), who wrote in IBJ about a subject Indianapolis leadership didn’t want to talk about in 2013 – poverty.
Said Taft, “Some of our core neighborhoods have poverty rates as high as 40 percent, almost twice the city’s overall percentage. It is critical that we focus seriously on growing the scale and quality of community development in these areas.”
Between 2000 and 2012, Indianapolis’ poverty rate jumped 88 percent; the highest increase of the country’s 20 biggest cities.
In 2000, Indianapolis had the second lowest poverty rate of the country’s 20 biggest cities. In 2012, Indy had jumped to 10th highest.
Being called out and embarrassed by having the biggest jump in poverty of any city and being 10th highest has been greeted with a collective don’t give a damn attitude by the mayor, his minions and other leaders.
I remember when Indianapolis had the highest Black infant mortality rate in the country. That civic embarrassment caused community leaders and the mayor then (William Hudnut) to react and act.
I remember when Indianapolis had 162 homicides in the mid-1990s. Community leaders and the mayor then (Stephen Goldsmith) reacted and acted.
And while today Indianapolis leadership deals with suppressing crime, their failure to even acknowledge how sharply poverty has increased in this city is a major example of the timidity of a frightened, impotent, uncaring Indianapolis leadership in 2013.
The year 2013 was the year of pushing proposals that won’t reduce poverty or create jobs or strengthen Indianapolis’ working class and middle class. Ideas like cricket fields, more unneeded and unused bicycle lanes, spending millions on unneeded electric vehicles, pursuing another Super Bowl are examples of Indy’s new “ignore the 99 percent for the 1 percent.”
Overall unemployment, while declining this year, remains too high. Increasingly jobs aren’t moving into downtown, and not even to the I-465 corridor in the city. Instead those jobs are moving to suburban counties.
At 19.6 percent, Black unemployment remains stubbornly high. Indianapolis leadership, from the dysfunctional Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce to Indianapolis’ corporate leadership – not to mention the mayor was more concerned with job development in the suburbs than in the city. A development that inhibits reducing Black unemployment.
One absurd example of not doing something that would’ve put a bite into Black unemployment was Indy Parks’ stubborn refusal to acknowledge how many Blacks they’d hired as lifeguards. Or admit they really didn’t hire many.
In education, the mayor’s office tried pushing a complex school reform scheme. But instead of being honest and open about it, they followed their usual sneaky strategy of sharing the scheme with certain people while trying to keep it out of the media’s hands.
Meanwhile, IPS and Dr. Eugene White quietly divorced.
The IPS Board brought in an interim superintendent who became a divisive figure.
IPS’ purge of Black administrators, especially males, severely damaged IPS’ credibility and contributed to the reality of rising Black unemployment.
IPS, redeemed itself by replacing White with Dr. Lewis Ferebee, who seems to be hitting the ground running with a new openness and directness.
This year brought a governor who tried to change the conversation about education by not talking up college in every breath. Mike Pence’s movement to uplift and emphasize vocational and skills training as an option for young people is commendable.
But the governor’s job creation efforts have been spotty. His failure to take the federal billions to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act may have exacerbated a major loss of jobs as Indy’s major hospitals all cut employees this year.
It seems that for every job Gov. Pence and Mayor Ballard seemingly create, we lose just as many jobs due to economic contractions or companies moving out jobs.
The Dwayne Sawyer debacle erased an opportunity for Republicans to reach out to Black voters and sent a warning to younger Black politicians.
Because 2013 wasn’t an election year, the year revealed the dysfunction of the next generation of political leaders.
Democrats on the City-County Council sharply disagreed on some key issues. One concerned those controversial TIF districts which siphon cash from schools and local government agencies to provide cash to developers who should be able to fund their schemes through conventional means.
The infighting was so serious, a potential coup engineered by Democratic Councilman Brian Mahern with the help from cooperative Republicans, nearly unseated Democratic Council President Maggie Lewis.
African-Americans were stunned when Democratic Councilman Jose Evans cast his lot with Republicans and switched parties in the middle of his term.
Politics were poisoned when the Indiana Legislature, egged on by radical Republicans and Mayor Ballard, gave the city/county’s unelected controller authority over the budgets of independently elected county officials.
And Gov. Pence and the Legislature stripped our city of its four at-large council members, even though virtually every other Indiana locality (including Lawrence and Speedway here) retained their at-large council members.
Finally, 2013 was a year when we lost several of our African-American community’s lions. Indianapolis is diminished because of the passing of political pioneer Dwayne Brown, cultural icon Eunice Knight-Bowens, community center leader Earline Moore, journalist Jane Harrington and a medical institution – Citizens Health Center.
See ‘ya next year – 2014.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
