Sheila Suess Kennedy: Don’t use public dollars to create thought ‘bubbles’
Why do our legislators continue sending Hoosier tax dollars to private schools, rather than spending to improve public education?
Sheila Suess Kennedy
Articles
Sheila Kennedy: Word games prevent honest policy conversations
Today’s linguistic game revolves around “socialism.” If policymakers were really discussing economic systems, rather than using labels to hide their actual motives, they would define their terms.
Sheila Suess Kennedy: Using courts to promote homophobia is so last century
Outgoing Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill wants states to be able to deny married same-sex couples the right to be recognized as parents of their children.
Sheila Kennedy: America is being penny wise and pound foolish
Despite Donald Trump’s sneering disinclination to help “mismanaged blue cities,” the current state and local government financial crisis is a result of the pandemic, not incompetent governance. And this crisis isn’t limited to Democratic jurisdictions.
KENNEDY: We need two parties with workable policy ideas
Political science research tells us that people affiliate with a political party for one of two reasons: They agree with the party’s basic approach to issues of governance, or they identify with the other people in that party.
Sheila Kennedy: Privatizing parking meters is a mistake we’re stuck with
When you contract away your flexibility and your authority to make decisions that are responsive to unforeseen events, you can end up owing a lot of money to the private vendor.
KENNEDY: This is not the time for economic idealogues
Americans’ economic battles are being fought between ideologues who have convinced themselves that their favored economic system is “the” answer to every problem.
Sheila Suess Kennedy: Our hyper-partisan politics can be deadly
In today’s highly polarized America, an individual’s self-identification as Republican or Democrat has come to signify a wide range of attitudes and beliefs not necessarily limited to support for a political party. Affiliation with a political party has made Americans’ increasingly tribal social identities most predictive—and most consequential.
KENNEDY: Is making it easier to vote ‘rigging’ elections?
More citizen participation in the political process is obviously good for democracy. So why is the GOP hysterically claiming—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—that encouraging vote-by-mail will enable fraud and “rig” election results?
Sheila Kennedy: Constitutional tax caps limit governments’ response
When Daniels and the Republicans in the Statehouse told Hoosier voters they were “protecting taxpayers” by putting tax caps in the state’s constitution, objections by mayors and warnings by fiscal and tax policy experts were pooh-poohed. Politics won. Prudent and informed policy lost.
Sheila Kennedy: What lessons will we learn from the pandemic?
The most important lesson to be learned by policymakers and plutocrats alike is that fortunate people are secure only when everyone is secure.
Sheila Kennedy: Legislators like to remind us who’s boss
Their most consistent behavior, year after year, is their adamant refusal to allow cities and towns—especially Indianapolis—to do much of anything unless and until our overlords in the Legislature deign to give local elected officials their official blessing.
KENNEDY: For a community, no news is not good news
The collapse of the business model that sustained local newspapers is well-known; the consequences, however, are only beginning to be appreciated.
Sheila Kennedy: Local government matters to our city’s future
Around the globe, cities are actually having a dramatic impact on climate change. In the absence of federal leadership, what cities do—from recycling to energy sources—becomes critically important.
Sheila Suess Kennedy: Time to hit pause button on Drake demolition
The bleak transformation of the neighborhood surrounding the ever-expanding Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is one thing; the museum’s total indifference to the significance of Meridian Street and the transit goals of the city is another.
Sheila Kennedy: Jail de-privatization is big step forward, small step back
Indianapolis is making impressive strides in modernizing its approach to criminal justice. The mayor and council should continue that progress by examining the negative impact of imposing “user fees” on low-level offenders.
‘Pro-life’ crowd, be careful what you wish for
Alabama, Georgia and other states have passed abortion bans, aiming at a Supreme Court they believe has been politicized in their favor. Ironically, sending the issue back to the states, as a decision to overturn Roe would do, falls into the “be careful what you wish for” category. Republicans have benefited greatly from the single-issue […]
Sheila Suess Kennedy: Can partisans game the system? We’re about to find out
The census is supposed to count “heads”—the number of people in a given area. There is no use of census data that requires knowing how many of those residents are citizens.
Sheila Suess Kennedy: Connecting the dots between gerrymandering, potholes
Few of us who live in Indianapolis recognize the connection between Indiana’s gerrymandered legislative districts and the thousands of potholes we dodge every spring, or the fiscal shortchanging of urban schools, or the Legislature’s refusal to pass comprehensive bias crimes legislation, or our lawmakers’ seeming fixation on women’s reproductive decisions.
KENNEDY: Legislators ignore their constituents—again
This is the fourth year Indiana’s legislators have been asked to enact a bias-crimes bill. As proponents have pointed out, ours is one of only five states without such a law. As the business community has testified, the impression that Indiana is a state unfriendly to minorities—an impression that “went viral” during Gov. Mike Pence’s […]