Top-down strategy doesn't work

It’s been a standard catch-phrase of Republican rhetoric for generations: “The heavy hand of government.”
And voters have rightly assumed that the GOP was talking about the Democrats when those words were used.
But “the heavy hand of government,” it seems, isn’t limited to a single party.
In fact, when all is said and done, it may be the hallmark of the Daniels administration.
From the outset of the first term, this has been a state administration that believed it had all the answers.
Indianapolis knew better than Fort Wayne or Terre Haute or Evansville. It certainly knew better than Jay County or Blackford County or Randolph County.
Though Republicans have long prided themselves — rightly, we believe — in their commitment to the notion that government is at its most effective when it is closest to the people, the Daniels administration believed otherwise.
Instead of home rule, Hoosiers found themselves dealing with more and more directives from the state capital. And often those directives were prompted by very parochial concerns within Marion County.
Folks in greater Indianapolis didn’t like their property tax bills? Dub it a “crisis” and force through restrictions and caps that hamstring other counties where no such “crisis” exists.
Just as often, it seemed to be a matter of power.
Consider two examples: the Department of Child Services and the Department of Education.
Of the two, the case of the DCS is the more painful, simply because more children suffered as the result of a top-down management philosophy that attempted to impose a one-size-fits-all system. Local child protection teams, local judges, local caseworkers all found themselves dealing with a bureaucracy — the heavy hand of government — more interested in being the boss than in serving kids.
But the same philosophy pervades the Indiana Department of Education under Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett. Just this week, Bennett suggested he’s not satisfied with the state taking over troubled schools but would be ready to take over control of entire school districts as well.
Is there any reason to believe the state could succeed where local leadership may have fallen short? Not really.
But one suspects this isn’t actually about success, just as the DCS approach wasn’t about serving children.
It’s about power.
Or, as the GOP used to argue so effectively, it’s about the heavy hand of government. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]