Niki Kelly has an article about the Governor’s race in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Apparently Governor Daniels is running an ad where he brags about balancing the budget without raising taxes. In unrelated news, the sales tax is going up 16% today and tolls on the Toll Road are going up 58%. Oh, and tax caps are going to put the beleaguered Carroll County in even worse shape.
The Journal Gazette article also discusses Jill Long Thompson’s new ad. Apparently she takes a shot at Daniels for “selling state assets to foreign companies.” In my opinion, Gov. Daniels deserves all the abuse his opponents can dish out over privatizing the toll road; but does the “foreign companies” angle really add much? I don’t think I’d be any happier if the Toll Road had been sold to a domestic company.
Toll Road thoughts:
Correct on the issue of sale to foreign company compared to domestic—real issue– was sale a good move? We seem to want our cake and eat it too–want foreign companies setting up factorys, offices, buying our goods, etc. but don’t want the same thing that our domestic companies might do in another country. Much of the anti-NAFTA talk echoes this rather loudly. Now we have groups starting to really complain about food prices (particularly wheat and other grains) since good reliable markets have been established around the world for our products.
Tolls, etc–state would not raise tolls even though studies indicated serious financial problems without it—Now private business is doing it and in a big jump. What will be the net-net for sale occuring after increased tolls are being paid by users over the 75 years?
I think the “foreign company” aspect resonates with a lot of Democratic voters in this state. Indiana has been hit hard by NAFTA, and outsourcing in general, so it probably can’t hurt to employ a little jingoistic politics…
If you really want something that will make you want to shoot out your TV, watch Dan Burton’s new ad. It made me want to donate to John McGoff after I got done swearing. Burton’s some piece of work.
The only prayer the Indiana Democratic candidates have is that Obama is on the ballot and lots of people vote straight ticket. They’re not showing enough reasons they’re better and Mitch Daniels hasn’t shown enough reasons why he needs to be voted out.
The Toll Road increase will only (at the current time) affect those who do not live in the northern part of the state. If you lease an I-Zoom or have the Illinois I-Pass, the tolls do not increase for three years.
ITR’s (company that leases the Toll Road) argument is that the tolls are now similar to those in other states; like Ohio.
Still that does not make me happy with the sale of the Toll Road.
BTW when did they announce that the sales tax was going up? I didn’t hear about it until three days ago. Pretty sneeky….
The sales tax increase has been noted as a substantial component of the property tax restructuring since the Governor proposed it last fall. The bill didn’t actually pass until the last month or so. So, it’s been a pretty speedy transition from passage of the law to actual implementation of the tax increase.