In a story entitled, Senior state senator to retire, the Indy Star is reporting that Senator Harrison will not seek reelection. He has been in the Senate since 1966 and was the majority leader from 1979 to 2004. He was one-fourth of the Senate powerhouses consisting of Senators Garton, Mills, Harrison, and Borst. Mills retired a few years back, Borst was defeated in the 2004 primaries, and now Harrison is going. I don’t know if Senator Garton has announced any plans for the future, but after a solid two decades of the Senate being controlled by those four, the landscape is apparently changing.
The article mentions that Senator Harrison’s labor committee is where pro-labor bills from the House Democrats went to die. The article also reports
Former Republican Sen. Richard Thompson of North Salem, which is now included in Harrison’s district, already had announced that he would run for the seat next year. Republican Rep. Tim Brown of Crawfordsville also is considering a run, but said today he had not made a final decision.
Personally, my primary experience with Senator Harrison had to do with his opposition to the proposal to “insource” printing operations from an outside vendor to Legislative Services employees. I posted about the project and Senator Harrison’s opposition. The project has resulted in a two-thirds reduction in legislative printing appropriations. As of 2001, the savings were $300,000 from the previous year. I like to keep that experience in mind as an example that outsourcing is not at all guaranteed to save taxpayers money.
Leave a Reply