Government Executive - Authors - Stephanie Czekalinski

How Washington Ruined Governors

Ronald Brownstein and Stephanie Czekalinski, National Journal — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:18:55 -0400

Even for longtime advocates on both sides of the emotional gun-control debate, the events of March 8 were enough to induce whiplash.

On that day, South Dakota became the first state to explicitly authorize school employees to carry guns, when Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed legislation sent to him by Republican majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. The bill represented a resounding victory for the National Rifle Association.

That same day, after an exhaustive debate approximately 525 miles away in Denver, the Democratic-controlled state Senate, joining the Democratic House, gave preliminary approval to Colorado’s most sweeping gun-control package in years—including measures to impose universal background checks on gun purchases and to prohibit the sale of ammunition magazines containing more than 15 rounds. Despite strong opposition from gun-owner groups and Republicans, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed the legislation later in March, capping a decisive victory for gun-control supporters.

That sort of jarring juxtaposition has become increasingly common across the United States. Exactly one week after Colorado and South Dakota split on guns, the Republican-controlled Legislature in North Dakota approved the nation’s most restrictive abortion law on the same day the Democratic-controlled Legislature in Maryland, fulfilling one of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s top priorities, voted to repeal the state’s death penalty. One day before that, Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, catching a rising wave among GOP state executives, proposed to eliminate the state’s personal income and corporate taxes, replacing the lost revenue with a vastly expanded sales tax. And just two days earlier, Colorado’s House gave final approval to legislation authorizing same-sex civil unions, while gay-marriage legislation cleared committees in the Minnesota House and Senate, both controlled by Democrats.

Some of these initiatives will not become law. But in their ambition, and proliferation, they show how the same pressures that have polarized the parties in Washington are reshaping policy-making in the states. Across the full range of economic and cultural issues, Democratic and Republican state officials are pulling apart far more than they did as recently as two decades ago. On gun control, gay marriage, immigration, taxes, and participation in President Obama’s health reform law, among other issues, states that lean red and those that lean blue are diverging to an extent that is straining the boundaries of federalism. “I can’t recall any time in American history where there was such a conscious effort to create such broad divisions, without any sense of how it is all going to turn out,” says Donald Kettl, dean of the public-policy school at the University of Maryland and an expert on public administration.

In many places, this widening gap is recasting the role of governors. Well into the 1990s, state executives considered themselves more pragmatic than members of Congress; they regularly shared ideas across party lines and often sought to emerge nationally by bridging ideological disputes. Some of that tradition endures. But now, governors are operating mostly along parallel, and partisan, tracks. On each side, they are increasingly pursuing programs that reflect their party’s national agenda—and enlisting with their party on national disputes such as health care reform. “Everything has been infected with the national political debate,” says Bruce Babbitt, who served as Arizona’s centrist Democratic governor for two terms and later as President Clinton’s Interior secretary. “And it’s really destructive.” Tommy Thompson, who launched a flotilla of innovations emulated by governors in both parties during his four terms as Wisconsin’s Republican chief executive, agrees. “Anyone who looks at this in an impartial way has to say we have become a more partisan nation,” he says. “I think we have [become] much more doctrinaire with our philosophies and much more locked into our positions.”

Read the rest at NationalJournal.com.

]]>

Are black women key to easing military suicides?

Stephanie Czekalinski, National Journal — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 08:35:00 -0400

Black women have the lowest rates of suicide in the country, and although it’s not completely understood why, Veterans Affairs officials hope to re-create elements of black female culture that may help stop military veterans from killing themselves.

Women - particularly black women - provide each other social support and encouragement categorized by the opportunity to speak honestly with their peers, said Jan Kemp, mental health director for suicide prevention at the VA.

“The sense of community among themselves, and the ... built-in support that they get from each other is something we’re paying a lot of attention to, and trying to find ways to emulate,” Kemp said. “I think often that veterans and men don’t have that same sort of personal support, and we have to build that for them,” she said.

In general, white men are more likely to commit suicide than people in other groups. The suicide rate among white men was 25.96 per 100,000 from 2005 to 2009, according to the Centerns for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, the rate for black women was less than three suicides per 100,000. Government data for suicide deaths among military personnel is not available by race.

Combine that with the stress that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have put on troops, and the risk of suicide increases. “We’re working with the highest-risk group in the nation,” Kemp said.

Stories abound of vets dying at their own hands after slipping through the cracks in the care network or not seeking help because of the stigma surrounding mental health issues.

In April, Spc. Rico L. Rawls Jr., 22, reportedly shot himself after he led Georgia State Police on a high-speed car chase. At the time, Rawls was wanted in connection with the shooting death of his wife, Jessica T. Rawls, of South Bend, Ind.

“My son-in-law Rico came back from Iraq a different person. We asked, pleaded, and begged for help for him, but no one listened,” Rawls’s mother-in-law told an Indiana TV station in a written statement. “The pre-Iraq Rico Rawls would not have done this.”

In another case, Kim Ruocco’s husband, John, killed himself in February of 2005 while awaiting a redeployment to Iraq, according to MSNBC. “He was so ashamed of being depressed and not being able to do his job,” Ruocco told MSNBC. She believes her husband was going to seek treatment, but “when he sat there and thought about what it meant to get help, how people who see you, how young Marines viewed him, how his peers viewed him ... he thought the problem was him.”

Kim Ruocco, 49, is now the national director of suicide education and outreach for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a group that provides counseling resources for suicide survivors and facilitates support groups for family members. The organization works to provide the social support similar to that prevalent among women -- particularly among black women -- for the loved ones of veterans and active duty personnel who die by suicide or in combat.

“We really try to provide wraparound support,” said TAPS spokeswoman Ami Neiberger-Miller. Surviving family members are paired with peers who have experienced similar loss.

“We give people a place where they can talk and share openly - connect with others who have experienced a similar loss,” Neiberger-Miller said.

The task ahead of groups like TAPS and the VA is daunting. Suicides among active-duty troops are up in the first half of this year, the Associated Press reported Friday.

There were 154 suicides in the first 155 days of 2012, according to AP. That was about 50 percent more than the number of U.S. forces killed in action. Last year, 130 active-duty troops killed themselves over the same period, ending June 3. Veterans are more likely than their civilian counterparts to die by suicide, according to a report published in the American Journal of Public Health earlier this year. About 18 veterans kill themselves every day, according to a Veterans Affairs spokesman.

Of veterans who committed suicide between 2003 and 2008, 92.3 percent were white, according to the American Journal of Public Health. White men made up 85 percent of the nation’s veterans in 2010, according to census numbers.

The VA launched its suicide-prevention program in earnest in 2007, Kemp said. Since then, the crisis line has received more than 600,000 calls and 50,000 contacts via computer chat.

Most contacts result in a referral for an appointment at a nearby VA facility or other services - sometimes just a ride, Kemp said. But more than 25,000 times, VA crisis line call-takers have called police because they believed a vet needed immediate intervention. Perhaps they were holding a gun, had taken pills, or told the call-taker that they could not be saved, Kemp said.

Among the most important VA efforts are those that offer support between peers, she said.

“People need someone to talk to - to bounce things off of, someone who perhaps has been there or knows about being there to provide that layer of hope and understanding that you can pull yourself out of this,” Kemp said. “We can help you pull yourself out of this bad place no matter how you get into that bad place.”

Veterans in crisis and their family members can call 800-273-8255 and press 1 to talk with a VA responder. Help is also available via text at 838255 or at VeteransCrisisline.net.

Families who have lost a service member to combat or suicide can also contact TAPS at 800-959-8277.

]]>

Child immigrant detentions up sharply

Stephanie Czekalinski, National Journal — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:10:00 -0400

The number of children detained while attempting to cross into the United States without an adult has increased dramatically in the past seven months.

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Human Services’ Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services has cared for as many as 8,000 children annually. In the first three months of this year, however, the agency has seen a 77 percent increase in the number of children in the program.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that from October to the end of April, the U.S. government has detained more than 6,500 unaccompanied minors who had crossed the border, nearly double the number detained in the comparable period the previous year, according to U.S. officials.

The increase may be due to a change in Mexican law enacted last May, which lets some kids who enter that country remain there without visas for humanitarian reasons, according to the Journal. That gives more children easier passage into Mexico, and from there more appear to be trying to cross the U.S. border.

The situation has become especially dire in Texas where the federal government has set up five temporary shelters to deal with the young immigrants, the Journal reported.

The children, many of whom are caught trying to cross the border or come to the attention of federal immigration authorities after crossing, are mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, according to the UCS. Most are between 14 and 17 years old and three quarters are male.

Many of the children are trying to cross to join family members already in the U.S. or to find work to support themselves or their families. In some cases, they are also escaping abuse or persecution in their countries and are, at times, brought into the country by human trafficking rings.

The agency says that care of the children includes classroom education, medical attention, case management and opportunities for recreation

The UCS’s 2012 budget was more than $168 million.

Nearly 90 percent of children reunite with family members, a UCS spokesman said.

The children’s youth, the lack of an adult to protect them, and the dangerous nature of the journey puts the children in a precarious position.

The children are "especially vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking, exploitation, and abuse," according to the agency.

]]>