Karen Francisco has a dim view of Governor Daniels in a column entitled Administration belies folksy campaign image. In it, she suggests that Daniels heavy handed ruling style is more in keeping with his corporate executive past than with the folksy, tenderloin-eating sales job he did with his “My Man Mitch” marketing campaign. She takes him to task for not being up front during the campaign about BMV closings, his indifference to environmental concerns (resulting in, for example, an attempt to bully Blackford County into rubber stamping a proposed confined-feeding operation), and his view of public education as nothing more than an unwanted budget item rather than a particularly important economic investment for Indiana.
She also devotes a fair amount of space to Gov. Daniels handling of Daylight Saving Time/Timezones:
Daylight-saving time is another example. During the campaign, I asked Daniels how he expected to accomplish what no other elected official had achieved. His reply was that he would take his case to the people, convincing them that it was in the state’s best economic interest to adopt it.
But that’s not how he went about it. Instead, he turned to some old-fashioned arm-twisting, wheeling and dealing. I think it’s hardly a coincidence that the wife of Rep. Troy Woodruff, who voted for daylight-saving time after insisting he never would, suddenly has a job with the Indiana Department of Transportation.
If the governor followed the course he had suggested, he would have learned what every legislator in Indiana already knew: It’s not about changing clocks twice a year. Not observing daylight-saving time was the compromise Hoosiers reached in the real battle over time zones. It wasn’t perfect, but it allowed both those who preferred Eastern time and those who wanted Central time to have their way for six months out of the year. Nullifying the compromise means that someone comes out the loser.
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