Column: Stuck on the front nine
A few days ago, an Indiana Senate committee voted in favor of a bill that would allow people to drive golf carts on county highways.
You read that right.
Golf carts on highways.
The bill’s supposed purpose is to allow elderly and disabled Hoosiers to get around in vehicles they can manage easily. The real purpose, though, may be to give the citizens of Indiana a perfect metaphor for how our state government responds to challenges.
At a time when tens of thousands of Hoosiers are out of work and we are in the middle of a market recovery that seems to be producing everything but jobs, we Hoosiers put golf carts on the highway.
In an age in which the demand for an educated and skilled workforce is more essential than it ever has been, we Hoosiers are cutting several hundred million dollars from the state’s K-12 budget and slashing support for the state’s universities – another golf cart on the highway.
In an era that screams for new ideas and fresh approaches to governing, we Hoosiers seem to be trapped in a road-show political version of the movie “Groundhog Day,” doomed to relive a pallid version of the 1980 presidential election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter over and over again. Republicans say little more than “taxes bad” and Democrats “government good” while their constituents huddle and fear for the future.
Yet another golf cart on the highway.
At a moment in history when the pace of change has accelerated to an almost blinding speed and the demands for flexibility and innovation in public policy are greater than they ever have been, we Hoosiers look for ways to tie our hands with constitutional amendments to cap property taxes. Our leaders say that they can’t be trusted to discipline government spending without some constitutional mechanism that forces them to do so and then wonder why neither citizens nor businesses have faith in government.
One more golf cart on the highway.
The history of this period will record that the leaders who served their communities, their states and their country well were the ones who, to paraphrase America’s greatest leader, shook off the timid dogmas of the quiet past.
Those honored leaders, to be sure, will be politicians, people skilled in the arts of negotiation, compromise and persistence. They will not be statues of stone but real men and women who find ways to work together. They will be tough enough to withstand the harsh jockeying of politics, but will understand that their stewardship in office is an opportunity to do more – much more – than settle old scores, pay old debts or preserve institutions and understandings that have been dying or dead for a half a century.
They will be leaders who understand what most Hoosiers know even if they are too frightened to acknowledge it – that one era is disappearing and another is appearing on the horizon. Government’s duty now is to try to find ways to guide the ship into a fresh port and help as many citizens as possible safely on to the new shore.
In short, these leaders will be people who have a vision larger than putting golf carts on highways.
I hope that Indiana’s history will include some of those leaders, but I have my doubts. In this legislative session, our leaders seem more focused on cutting a dwindling pie into smaller and smaller pieces than on lifting their gazes – and ours – to the future.
Longtime defenders of our Legislature will say that this is what is to be expected during a non-budget year session. Because the budget is in place, lawmakers focus more attention in these short sessions on the wedge issues that help win elections.
Next year, when a new budget has to be drawn up, they say, will be different.
Next year, our leaders will look at the upheavals and disruptions all across the state’s economic and cultural landscape and come up with a new plan.
Tricycles on the interstates.
Your tax dollars at work.
John Krull is director of the Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College.
