The Courier Press is reporting that Sen. Server is stepping down from his state Senate seat effective Sept. 19. Representative Vaneta Becker has put in to replace him in the Senate.

I don’t know how solid the party affiliation is in Rep. Becker’s district, but I suppose that could have an effect on the closely divided House in the Nov. ’06 elections.

I came across this article in the Perry County news saying that the Perry County Commissioners have adopted a resolution on Aug. 15 indicating a preference for Central Time. However, they did this to get the ball rolling, they’ll have a hearing on Sept. 15, and they say they’re willing to pull the resolution if it turns out that the County is more in favor of Eastern than Central. The anectdotal evidence suggests a close split and a lot of strong feelings. It also reflects some misunderstanding of the situation among many residents. The Commissioners are apparently getting a lot of comments indicating a preference to remain on Eastern Standard Time year-round. Of course, the Governor and the thinnest majority of the General Assembly destroyed that option. It will be really interesting to see what the southwestern counties of Perry, Dubois, Pike, and Knox do. I would also expect action of some sort in Parke, Fountain, Warren, Benton, and White counties.

The Evansville Courier Press has an editorial entitled Time Trouble.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels last week took to task Indiana county commissioners who are upset that the time-zone issue has landed in their laps. Jennifer Whitson of the Courier & Press Indianapolis bureau quoted him: “I think that some of these folks would rather not have been forced to deal with an issue of local importance; but in that case, they shouldn’t have run for their jobs.”

Truth told, few elected officials really want to deal with controversial issues, and that could go for Daniels, as well. He’s the one who put the issues of statewide daylight-saving time and one statewide time zone on the table. In fact, he succeeded in getting daylight-saving time through the Legislature but backed off on time zones after setting the process in motion.

. . .

we have the potential here for checkerboard counties in which motorists driving north from Evansville could find themselves going into and out of the Central and Eastern time zones several times for the first 150 miles. That could take confusion about Indiana time to a whole new level.

The Courier Press followed up on that editorial with another one entitled Checkerboard Clock

The Associated Press reports that county commissioners in Cass and Carroll counties have voted to ask the DOT to move them into the Central zone.

Those two counties are located northeast of Tippecanoe County, home of Lafayette, Ind., and Purdue University. And, the AP tells us, Tippecanoe, where there is sentiment to remain on the same time as Indianapolis and Marion County, has decided to stay in the Eastern time zone, This means that a motorist driv-ing from the east in a southwesterly direction could pass through Cass and Carroll counties in the Central time zone, only to motor farther west into the Eastern-zone county of Tippecanoe.

Explain that one to the folks on the East Coast who were confused about Hoosier time before Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana Legislature fixed things.
. . .

Daniels persuaded the Legislature to put all of Indiana on daylight-saving time in return for his asking the DOT to hold hearings on time zone changes. This tracks back to his comment as a candidate last year that all of Indiana should observe daylight-saving time and all of the state should be in one time zone, preferably the Central zone.

Since then, Daniels has stepped back from the time zone debate, joining the federal government in saying the decision is up to the individual counties.

. . .

Let us make two predictions here. First, the DOT may look at the checkerboard pattern that is developing and tell the counties to forget it. And second, Daniels will wish he could forget it.

The Terre Haute Tribune Star has an editorial suggesting that despite residents of Vigo County’s strong preference to be on Central Time, the only thing that really matters is staying on the same time zone as Indianapolis. But, they call this an “unhappy predicament and note, “Still, this is not a dilemma we asked for. It was created by Gov. Daniels. Hoosiers need to remember that.”

Meanwhile, at the other end of the State, Niki Kelly has an article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette entitled Time Zone battle heats up on Web, describing mainly what she found at the USDOT Docket. My only beef with Ms. Kelly’s article is the paragraph:

The majority lean toward the Eastern time zone – including virtually all of the business posts – but others are still pushing the Central time zone.

This is factually true, but it would have been nice to mention that most of the pro-Eastern letters closely resemble the Chamber of Commerce recommended form letter.

Hostettler votes against nearly $52 billion in aid

Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., was one of 11 lawmakers who voted against nearly $52 billion in hurricane relief approved by the House on Thursday. The Senate voted 97-0 to send the measure to the president for his signature.

“Within seven weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast,” Hostettler said in a statement, “federal taxpayers will have spent 50 percent more than the combined annual budgets of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”

. . .

Hostettler, who is from southwestern Indiana and often votes against spending bills he thinks are too expensive, did not say whether he opposes any relief funding, or just not as much as the House approved.

I don’t know whether to add this to the “Hostettler is a nutjob” file or mark it up as a sign that Hostettler is at least not off the rails when it comes to spending. It sort of depends on what kinds of spending he’s voted for and against in the past, and I just don’t know that. If he still supports involvement in Iraq, that’s a huge strike against him since the $300 billion we borrowed to spend there would come in handy just about now.

Some more time zone news. The Monticello Herald Journal has an article saying that the White County Commissioners expect to make a decision at their September 12 meeting. Meanwhile, not a lot of details, but Cass and Carroll have voted to request central time.

(Update Here is the Logansport Pharos Tribune Story on Cass County.)

The darker counties are already central time, the red counties have voted to request central time. Keep in mind St. Joseph and White counties are on the fence.

Just an aside, I suppose, but I find the use of the phrase “blame game” in reference to Hurricane Katrina extremely annoying and in poor taste. We’re piling up corpses like cord wood. It’s no game.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a good editorial today on prison privatization. They chastize the Kentucky Privatizer, DOC chief David Donahue, for selecting GEO Group, Inc. (formerly Wackenhut, I believe) which got caught with its hands in the cookie jar to the tune of several million dollars on a Florida contract.

“The fact the contractor made contributions to Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana GOP, and not to Democrats, only makes this deal look worse than it should.”

The audit found that GEO billed Florida for salaried positions that were vacant and charged an excessive rate for cost-of-living adjustments for worker salaries from January 1999 to December 2004, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. The inspector general also found the state’s prison contractors were allowed to avoid minimal staffing requirements for nurses, trainers and teachers. The audit blistered Florida’s defunct Correctional Privatization Commission for putting “profits for the politically well-connected companies ahead of the public interest,” the Tallahassee paper reported.

. . .

The contract also raises another issue. The state rejected a proposal from New Castle employees to run the prison. This contrasts to candidate Daniels’ stance that Indiana should buy from Indiana. Daniels told voters in 2004 that “nobody’s minding the store” when it comes to procurement and the state was doling out too much taxpayer money with out-of-state companies.

Under funding the medical care is of particular interest to me. In my neck of the woods, a substantial chunk of prisoner’s lawsuits allege constitutionally inadequate medical care. I don’t know if Wackenhut or the state is on the hook if an inmate dies because of substandard medical care. As a taxpayer, I hope it’s the private company. As a citizen, I’m a little uncomfortable if the state government gets to pass the buck like that.

According to the Evansville Courier Press, Vermillion and Sullivan Counties have both voted to request Central Time. They join Daviess County in the South and Starke, Marshall, Pulaski, and Fulton counties in the north as desiring to be new additions to Central Time. The current Central Time counties are Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Newton, and Jasper in the North and Gibson, Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick, and Spencer in the south.

The Terre Haute Tribune Star also has a story on the petitions. That article reports that Vigo County (which is in between Vermillion and Sullivan Counties) has decided that it should stay on the same time as Indianapolis.

We’ll see how this works, but I’ve scanned in a map with the current status drawn in. The solid black line and shaded counties represent the current Central Time Zone counties. The striped counties represent counties that have voted to petition for Central Time. And, I’ve put a big question mark on St. Joseph County since everybody but the entity that matters, the County Commissioners, seem to have voted for Central Time.

Noting that there is not a great deal special about the Sept. 16 petition deadline, Tippecanoe County will not petition the USDOT for central time. There is a sense that they should wait and see how things go on eastern time and that the USDOT petition process in place now is largely the same as it is ordinarily. So, if eastern daylight time is not to the citizens’ liking, it will still be an option to petition for central time in years to come.

That’s true, though there will not be an opportunity for counties to petition en masse in the future. But, that shouldn’t be a concern of local officials. A statewide vision of where best to draw the time zone is best left to the General Assembly (who won’t touch it, probably, since it is such a political hot potato.)

A bit of good news from Michele McNeil in the Indianapolis Star. County income taxes resulted in higher than expected revenue.

The reasons for the increase? Hoosiers made more money in 2004, the Department of Revenue processed their tax returns prior to the end of the fiscal year on June 30, and several counties raised their tax rates.

I know that in Tippecanoe County, this increased revenue means that the county probably will not have to use interest on their cumulative bridge fund. That fund has money in it, but in a perfect world you maintain the principal and interest and repair your bridges when they run down. It’s kind of eating your seed corn to spend it on regular operating expenses. (And, to continue the drum beat of all-Katrina, all-the-time, we’ve seen a worst case scenario of what happens when you don’t keep your infrastructure in tip-top shape.)

Michele McNeil, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled Fewer state troopers are patrolling the road.

Money is so tight at the Indiana State Police that the superintendent is making his headquarters staff hit the road, patrolling state highways and interstates.

Indiana’s top law enforcement agency, which does everything from cruising hundreds of miles of interstates to busting methamphetamine labs, is down 200 troopers from the authorized strength of 1,334. By the end of this year, the number of vacancies could climb to 300.

To me, Hurricane Katrina puts this sort of thing in a new perspective. I know around the blogosphere and elsewhere, it has been “All Katrina, all the time.” But, to a large extent, that is appropriate. Certainly, after 9/11, we were constantly told “9/11 changed everything.” The scope of destruction from Hurricane Katrina is larger than 9/11, even if our sense of violation may not be.

The disaster in the South, particularly New Orleans, shows us that government is necessary, and it must be funded. On this page, I am not inclined to get into who is responsible for the inadequate preparation and how much it would have helped. But the “sink or swim,” every man for himself view that government is an unnecessary evil; that taxes are just so much money flushed down the toilet, has to be reconsidered.

We’re asking for trouble, albeit not on a Katrina sized scale, when we cut our police forces, cut our health departments, cut our public transportation, and fail to maintain our infrastructure.