Search Results for: troy woodruff

Former Rep. Troy Woodruff gained my attention when he became the deciding vote for abandoning Hoosier Standard Time and imposing Daylight Saving Time on Indiana. (I can’t say for sure, but Richard Mourdock is probably the only state official at whom I’ve taken more shots over the years.) Mr. Woodruff cast his fateful DST vote after promising his constituents he would never vote for it. After that, Mr. Woodruff was the beneficiary of some RV-1 fundraising love during his next House campaign.

After losing his election to Kreg Battles, Woodruff had a soft landing with the Indiana Department of Transportation – which one could infer might have been repayment by friends and well-wishers in appreciation for the tough vote that probably cost him his position. (His wife also gained INDOT employment). But, then, he moved on from that position after some sketchy land deals.

And, now, Ryan Sabalow and Tony Cook, writing for the Indy Star, bring us another installment in the ongoing saga. “Indiana’s ethics laws generally require former state employees to take a year off before working for companies with which they directly did state business.” The notion is that you might not be a great steward of public funds with respect to a particular organization if you know that you can arrange for that organization to make big money from the State, then jump ship and cash in by becoming an employee of the company. Woodruff is skirting this restriction, after the Indiana Ethics Commission told Woodruff they would not grant him approval to quit his state job and become vice president of RQAW in whose favor Woodruff signed contracts in his capacity as chief of staff for INDOT.

“So what if I was an ‘independent contractor’ instead of an ’employee’ of RQAW?” Woodruff seems to have asked himself.

[A]n Indianapolis Star investigation has found that Woodruff is working for the very company that ethics officials had warned him to avoid for a year. But not as an employee. He’s an independent contractor.

“I’m doing it within the law,” Woodruff told The Star. “If I want to have an affiliation with those guys on a contractual basis, and it doesn’t violate the law, I feel like I should be able to do that.”

Government ethics experts say it appears Woodruff is on sound legal footing, thanks to a loophole written into the state’s ethics rules.

*Slow clap*

(Via TDW.) An editorial from the Evansville entitled Politics & Perceptions says that eyebrows are being raised by Representative Troy Woodruff’s wife’s new job working for the Indiana Dept. of Transportation. You’ll recall Representative Woodruff as the fellow who said he would “never” vote for Daylight Saving Time. Until, of course, he did. He was the deciding vote that finally through us into the time mess we’re in today. There was another dust up in July when Governor Daniels used the State of Indiana’s RV for a fundraiser benefitting Representative Woodruff.

Woodruff’s wife, Melissa, has been hired by the Indiana Department of Transportation to a new position of human resources manager in its Vincennes district office. The opening was not advertised in the state’s job bank or local newspapers, though notification is not required by state law, Whitson reported Thursday.

Melissa Woodruff may be the best qualified person available to INDOT for the $43,000-a-year job. Her hiring may have nothing to do with her husband or his time vote. But already, Indiana Democratic Party Executive Director Mike Edmondson has said the hiring raised concerns. It should. It’s that perception thing again.

The original article by Jennifer Whitson is here.

Mainly that headline, stolen from an old high school buddy, was too good not to use. Ryan Sabalow reports for the Indy Star that Troy Woodruff is resigning. Woodruff gained quite a bit of attention from this blog — probably bordering on unfair by my standards — from his time as a state representative when he cast the deciding vote that brought Indiana on to Daylight Saving Time after he promised his constituents he would never vote for it.

Woodruff was subsequently defeated in his bid for re-election and, not too long after, took a job at the Indiana Department of Transportation. It was difficult not to suspect some sort of connection between that job and the DST vote, given that he had done Gov. Daniels an immense favor by saving one of the governor’s primary initiatives at the expense of Woodruff’s credibility and his legislative seat.

The Indy Star started reporting connections between his family and highway land sales. That has led to an investigation, the results of which are apparently forthcoming:

Gov. Mike Pence ordered the investigation after The Indianapolis Star reported early last year that Woodruff did not disclose to ethics officials a land sale for the I-69 project and that he apparently intervened in a highway bridge project that benefited his relatives.

The Star’s investigation uncovered six I-69 deals that paid $1.86 million to Woodruff’s uncle and cousins, who then bought land from Woodruff and his family for more than market value.

Earlier this month, Mr. Woodruff was seeking an exception from the state ethics commission that would allow him to skip the one year “cooling off” period before he took a job with an engineering consulting firm with whom he had signed what’s characterized as “more than $500,000” worth of projects. (Highway projects can get pretty expensive pretty fast, so I’m not sure how substantial those contracts are in the scheme of INDOT projects.)

Update Ryan Sabalow further reports that the Inspector General did not find actionable offenses by Woodruff, though he suggests changes in the law that would avoid appearances of impropriety.

Kyle Stokes has an item entitled South Bend Schools Revive Old Indiana Debate: Central Or Eastern Time? pointing to a South Bend Tribune article about a proposed resolution for South Bend Community School Board for it to join the Central Time Coalition.

The coalition, as the name suggests, supports a switch to Central Time for Indiana. This is fall out from the Daylight Saving Time debate from several years ago. Prior to that, most of the state was on Eastern Standard Time, year round. This was the functional equivalent of year round Central Daylight Time. Eastern Daylight Time causes the hours on the clock to roll around earlier in relation to the sun – that’s why, mornings are suddenly dark again when we were given a taste of daylight in the mornings not so long ago.

In terms of schools, the argument goes, this is pernicious because kids internal clocks aren’t set to let them be as productive that close to sunrise. And, in terms of direct, objective dangers, there is concern about kids waiting for buses in the dark. St. Joseph County is an interesting case – they had petitioned to be on Central Time shortly after Troy Woodruff broke his promise and cast the deciding vote in favor of daylight saving time for the state legislature. Despite the promise that counties would be free to pursue their own preferences on the time zone issue with the Department of Transportation; the State intervened in opposition to St. Joseph’s request based on the protests by Elkhart County that St. Joseph’s time zone ought to serve the convenience of Elkhart County. The feds took notice of that and rejected the request of St. Joseph County to move to Central Time.

For my part, I don’t like the idea of Central Standard Time in the middle of the winter, with its 4:30 sunsets; but I also don’t like Eastern Daylight Time in early spring with its dark mornings. Given our geographic location, year round Eastern Standard Time/Central Daylight Time was the best balance of distributing the available daylight between morning and evening.