Learning lessons

By Carter Bundy

As the Minneapolis and Utah tragedies continue, we ought not to politicize a tragedy of infrastructure. There will be plenty of time for investigations and, if appropriate, blame. That doesn’t mean we can’t make something good of these tragic events.

We have all heard stories about how American infrastructure is in dire straits. We’ve all known this is an impending problem. Heck, New York just had a steam line blow a few weeks ago. Minnesota doesn’t make it more or less of a problem, but it ought to become a turning point.

Just like we all knew about the potential damage of terrorism before 9/11, it wasn’t until that day that people in either party decided that it had to be a top priority.

What the Interstate 35 tragedy can serve to do is act as a catalyst in two ways: First, it can be the starting point for a massive project to inventory not only vulnerable roads, but water, sewer, mass transit, electric and other basic infrastructure.

Beyond the obvious and necessary steps to ensure our immediate safety, I-35 can mark the beginning of the end of the poisonous philosophy, grounded in greed and cradled by contempt, that government is evil.

This isn’t a time for finger-pointing. It should be, however, a time to remember that there are important things we can only do together as a unified society.

Dropping divisiveness

The longer we allow anti-government ideologues to frame discussions of what we can and should do together, the longer the pain of infrastructure disasters will stay with us.

Grover Norquist’s famous desire to shrink government until he can fit it in a bathtub so he can drown it? You can’t do that and prevent real-life drownings that happen when infrastructure is ignored.

Minneapolis isn’t the first, and won’t be the last, city to suffer as we start to address our infrastructure problems. But it can be the place that signals a sea of change in America’s attitude toward commonwealth cooperation.

If we want to honor the memory of the innocent victims of I-35, we can at least start to have a non-ideological discussion of what needs to be done to address an issue that we all knew was there, but that rode under the radar during decades of divisive assaults on the concept of commonwealth.

As for the Utah coal mining nightmare, it’s another of many reminders during the past few years that our agencies have a central role to play in ensuring worker safety. One would think that this is an area that would have gotten more attention following tragedies in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Maybe the close temporal tie-in between Utah and the I-35 tragedy will tilt our regulatory agencies back toward worker safety.

The part that makes me hopeful about our coming together is that worker safety and basic infrastructure are things that are good for business, good for workers and, in the long run, always good for taxpayers. That’s enough for Democrats and Republicans alike to unite to overcome the ill-conceived ideology that erodes interest in infrastructure.

Corporate cluster of the week

Traveling across the country for the National Conference of State Legislatures, there were bound to be several strong travel-related candidates. And there were. But I’m going to give this week’s prize to Amerigroup. It’s a private company involved in handling Texas Medicaid.

One of its super-connected lobbyists (former legislative chief of staff) gave a presentation this week at NCSL, and the cluster that got half the people in the room rolling their eyes was her repeated reference to Texas as a health care success story – for poor people.

Ummm… here’s the problem. You know how we like to say our state motto is “Thank God for Mississippi?” Well, Texas is one of the wealthiest states in America. New Mexico is one of the poorest. Yet somehow, Texas actually has a higher percentage of uninsured and underinsured, and has a world of health problems. Coming in dead last in some of the most obvious measures of health coverage is not what is commonly considered a success. New Mexico is 49th in percentage of uninsured. When it comes to our health care rankings, Thank God for Texas.

Calling Texas’ health care system for the poor a success might have flown in a room of rookies, but with a slew of experienced legislators and staff, it was nothing short of a joke. So much for credibility. For that, our friends at Amerigroup win the corporate cluster of the week.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and in no way reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.