Just reading Maureen Hayden’s “Story’s Not Over for Indiana’s Bookkeepers” about the half-billion dollars the Daniels’ administration failed to properly account for. It talks about this being a particularly rough item for Gov. Daniels’ to deal with on account of his reputation as a penny-pincher (Iraq War era tenure at the Office of Management & Budget notwithstanding, apparently.)
Apparently the laser focus is only on the spending side of the ledger; the income side of the ledger gets a little fuzzy.
Actually, this fits right into his penny pincher reputation. Mitch Daniels just kept 50 billion pennies that don’t belong to him!
Paul, from the perspective of local governements that did not get the funds that they were due, “pinched” is the right word.
The chairman of the House Ethics Committee demanded a meeting of state contract applicants several years ago and when the information was given one contractor was told by the AG that no good deed goes unpunished after reporting state appointed officials were manipulating the process and ended up with a forty year state contract five months after resigning from the state board to choose the contractor. The contractor then defaulted twice on multi million dollars bonds in excess of $270,000,000 and still kept the contract.
The reporting applicant at the REQUEST of the Ethics Commission was sued in Federal Court for a contract issue and the Federal Court found it to be dismissed with prejudice. By then the personal and professional damage and reputations had already been ruined. All for telling the truth.
When countersuits were issued the AG circled the wagons and protected the state commission, it’s leaders and the former state appointed officials who steered the contract to themselves.
Millions have been defaulted, contracts were issued to friends and state appointed officials and Governor Daniels signed the contract as a witness and on the signing day he was quoted to say, ” I thought long and hard about this contract and I then told Donald Trump he was fired”.
Daniels staff told the applicant that they had better things to do then listen to a person with far less means than their friends of old money and new money in Indiana.
It looks like they cannot keep any of the money straight! There is a lot more mess than one agency. Someone lift up the rug it is all under there.
Carlito: Yes, I understand that perspective fully. I completely agree.
My point is that this may not damage Daniels reputation to the masses as much as some would hope, as these were not wasteful expenditures or even a mistake of giving the counties too much money, which would show waste on Daniels’ part.
I understand Paul. One way of killing the “beast” is starving it. (Just an analogy, not a political position.)
And if I were Daniels it would be a lesser of two accounting evils.
Daniels is a fraud. He strolls into American Legion and VFW halls
when he visits the little people as if he was a Viet Nam war hero, but
he never served one day in the military..