A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial entitled Rich schools, poor schools. This year, the General Assembly decided on a formula that generally sends more money to richer, suburban schools and less money to urban schools. The Journal Gazette quickly notes the problem with conservative legislators nice-sounding explanation that “the money follows the child.” Some kids cost more to educate:

Conservative legislators talk earnestly of how they changed the school funding formula so “the money follows the child,” a noble idea that has lots of difficulties in practice. In general, the 2005 General Assembly is sending more money to wealthier suburban districts at the expense of urban and rural districts. Urban districts may generally have declining enrollment, but the students they have are often more difficult to educate – more are poor, more are at risk of failing and more don’t speak English – and their education comes in older buildings that cost more to maintain.

If legislators want to abandon the notion that Indiana children in public schools should get a more or less equal opportunity, they should make it explicit instead of disingenuously shrugging off the inequities with simplistic explanations.

The Indy Star has an editorial entitled Can bigger utilities actually be better?

The Star notes that Hoosiers do not often benefit from corporate mergers, notes that the old utility, PSI, merged with Cinergy, but still maintained a local feel even though the company was run out of Cincinnati. Now Cinergy is merging with megacorp Duke Energy. The Star grumbles, and probably rightly so, about the utility’s further removal from its Hoosier roots. But then, incomprehensibly, the editorial seems to call for the nationalization of utility regulation and to take regulatory authority out of the hands of the state. Consolidation is bad when it comes to utility mergers but it’s good when it comes to regulation?

The Star apparently fails to remember that the Bush administration’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission studiously failed to act when energy mega-corporations, Enron most prominently but also apparently including Duke and El Paso, were running scams to drive up prices and causing rolling blackouts in California’s deregulated energy market. The line from the Bush administration at that time, most prominently from Dick Cheney, was that California’s problems were being caused by too few oil refineries.

So, for the Star to ask that the same folks be put in charge of Indiana’s energy policy seems misguided at best.

The Indy Star has an article entitled Nonprofit profits Daniels’ agenda describing how Daniels’ inaugural fund has morphed into a new organization acting like a Political Action Committee. I haven’t had time to digest the article, but it sounds like a tactic that is effective, technically legal and somewhat shady. Sort of a metaphor for Daniels’ generally!

According to the Lafayette Journal & Courier, Purdue will be increasing its tuition by 6% for each of the next two years, raising in-state tuition from $6,092 this year to $6,458 next year and $7,095 the year after that. Purdue President Martin Jischke cited the state’s financial situation and the General Assembly’s decisions as causing a need for hard decisions. Out of state tuition is at roughly $20,000 per year. The article states that IU’s tuition is going up more slowly, 4.9% but is already more expensive at $7,112 for in-state students.

According to a similar article in the Indy Star, Stan Jones, the higher education commissioner said that the General Assembly had anticipated an increase of more like 5%.

Once again, it seems like maybe we’re eating our seed corn here by forcing schools into cuts or fee hikes. Higher education doesn’t concern me quite as much as primary education — though maybe I’m wrong on that, I could see a case to be made that higher education is more important to Indiana’s future than primary education. In any event, our state and local taxes may be staying low, but we’re mortgaging our future by pricing Indiana kids out of college. (In a perfect world, we’d get rid of some huge and wasteful federal expenditures and shift the taxes over to state and local expenditures. Big Waste #1 would be the Iraqi adventure. Hugely wasteful. Increasing evidence of corruption that makes the UN Oil-for-food corruption look relatively trivial. But, I most certainly digress.)

We complain about brain drain and a sluggish economy, but we have no one to blame but ourselves if we aren’t giving Indiana kids a top flight education here in the state and if we aren’t nurturing our research universities.

A story I missed. Back on May 4, 2005, the Indy Star ran an article by Michele McNeil and Mary Beth Schneider entitled Sneaky or not, BMV starts a fight. The article reports that BMV Commissioner, Joel Silverman, upset President pro tem of the Senate, Bob Garton (R-Columbus), by including a BMV branch in Hope, Indiana — in Garton’s district — in the list of branches slated for closing. Silverman had a list of 12 branches to be closed that are apparently the branches with the least traffic. The closings are estimated to save $1 million per year.

Garton called the closing announcements a “sneak attack” and said they were deliberately timed to be announced after legislators left town. Oddly, Silverman copped to being sneaky and said that the closings were necessary and the legislators would’ve tried to stop them if they’d been in session. Gov. Daniels said that he’d given Silverman the greenlight.

Told of Silverman’s acknowledgement that he waited to announce the closings until after lawmakers left town, Daniels said there was nothing sneaky about the timing and that his administration is committed to openness.

The branches scheduled for closing on June 4 are satellite branches in Hope, Warren, Montpelier, Cayuga, Knightstown, and Summitville. The 6 full service branches are Elwood, Garrett, Butler, Bloomfield, Berne, and North Manchester. Public hearings are scheduled, but Silverman says that he doesn’t really see anything that could change his mind. Daniels seems to be looking for a way to appease Garton when he says that the hearings will not be a sham, suggesting that Silverman’s plan may not survive intact.

While some lawmakers reacted with anger when they heard the news, Daniels said he was “sort of smiling” at Silverman’s boldness.

“I’ve told our people we want to move fast. I’ve told them to ask forgiveness, not permission. And I’ve pointed out to everybody that most of our people are not politicians,” Daniels said.

. . .

Cayuga resident Albert Clark does business with the license branch across the street from his Chevrolet car dealership at least 10 times a week. Now, he or his employees will have to drive about 22 miles to Clinton to complete title work when he sells a car.

“It’s a big-time inconvenience,” said an angry Clark, who is already stinging because the legislature passed daylight-saving time, which will put his business out of sync with next-door Illinois. “They have really screwed the businesses on this side of the state.”

. . .
Garton, who called Daniels and Silverman, said the BMV commissioner was “absolutely impervious” to his concerns.

While some say government should be run more like a business, with attention focused on the bottom line, Garton said that “government should be run for the customer. The citizens are the customers. It’s different. I hope at some point, in what I hope is a short career in government, (Silverman) learns that.”

On May 5, 2005, the Indy Star followed up with an editorial saying that Silverman has the right idea but that the politics were misplayed. They say that Silverman should have made the decision in a way that allowed lawmakers to represent their districts. (The problem with that being that the branches closed would most likely reflect which BMV branches were located in districts represented by weak legislators rather than which branches were least necessary.)

On May 9, 2005, the Richmond Palladium-Item had its own editorial, saying that “BMV sets example for fairness.” The Palladium-Item says of Sen. Garton’s reaction:

Garton responded like a politician whose territory was trespassed by another. The Senate leader said the citizens are the customers and, “I hope at some point, in what I hope is a short career in government, (Silverman) learns that.”

Garton’s veiled threat deserves a stern rebuke from the governor. Silverman earns the public’s thanks for making a tough call, without fear or favor.

The Indy Star has an article about a former manager at the troubled Family & Social Services Administration (FSSA). The manager, Matthew Raibley, who pled guilty last week to corrupt business influence, forgery and conspiracy to commit theft for his role in stealing more than $700,000 from the agency, testified that he illegally funneled the money to Barbara Wiley because he was in love with her. The testimony came at the trial against Ms. Wiley on charges of theft, conspiracy to commit theft, forgery and official misconduct for accepting payment to develop a for job-training curriculum that she never developed.