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Doug Ross, Times of Northwest Indiana: Next Friday, I plan to listen to evangelist Joe Kernan preaching in Gary. Kernan, the former Indiana governor, plans to tell the Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council about streamlining local 
government. It’s a subject he knows well. Kernan, a Democrat, is a co-author of last December’s report from the Indiana Commission on Local Government. When Gov. Mitch Daniels — the Republican who defeated Kernan four years ago — met with The Times editorial board on Tuesday, I tried to gauge his sentiment toward that issue. Trust me, it’s strong. “If I’m rehired,” Daniels said, “one of the first things I will do is sit down the leaders of both parties and say, ‘OK, we’ve had a year to reflect on it, the citizens have had their say, the newspapers, what do we like most on it?’” The commission, headed by Kernan and Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard, made 27 recommendations, three of which have already been implemented by the General Assembly as part of this year’s property tax reform. One of them, taking child welfare support off the property tax rolls and putting the onus on the state where it belongs, “is a major benefit, a huge benefit for Lake County,” Daniels correctly noted. Some remaining reforms should be relatively easy to implement, like holding elections only in even years instead of three out of four years. That will shave election costs. Others, like merging library districts and smaller school districts, will be infinitely more controversial. That’s where the property tax caps come in. Tax caps, Daniels said, “I believe will force people to consider reform that they probably should have done long ago but could postpone as long as they could just increase your tax bill.” I hate to keep bringing up the failure of the effort to merge fire protection in Highland and Munster, but that shows how much people in Indiana have dug in their heels. But the tax caps might change their minds. “It’s really, I think, the anvil of reform against which possibly some breakthroughs can occur that have just sat there for decades,” Daniels said. “I think the Indiana public — quite an overwhelming majority — wants to see change occurring. That’s different in the abstract from saying, ‘How about this change, this change …,’” he said. The bottom line is Indiana has “way too many politicians, way too many jurisdictions, way too many everything.” There are more than 80 layers of government in Lake County alone. Daniels feels so strongly about this that he is going to push hard to bring those numbers down, even though he acknowledges that of the 11,000 or so elected officials, “probably 70+ percent of them are from my own party.” I’ll be asking Daniels’ opponent, Democrat Jill Long Thompson, these questions when The Times editorial board meets with her again. But I won’t make you wait for my answer: Indiana needs a radical new structure for local government that allows for less expensive, more efficient, more nimble service to the citizens. Are you as impatient as me to see this happen?
Stephanie Salter, Terre Haute Tribune-Star: I can’t repeat both the words I uttered when I heard about John McCain’s choice for vice president. But the second word was “genius.” If the most adroit political talent scout had been given the assignment, if all the data on all the potential running mates in the universe could have been fed into the highest state-of-the-art computer — if the boys and girls at Pixar had been ordered to generate the animated super hero to relegate all other super heroes to the shadows — no one could have come up with anything better than Sarah Palin. As network anchors and reporters scrambled Friday morning to compile biographical information on the governor of Alaska, the news scene began to look like a sketch from “Saturday Night Live.” (That Palin strongly resembles SNL alum Tina Fey only added to the environment.) Can she get any closer to conservative GOP perfection? She loves guns and uses them to hunt. Ferociously anti-abortion, she is 44 and the mother of five. The eldest of her children enlisted in the Army last year — on 9/11 — and next month on 9/11 will deploy to Iraq. Her youngest child is but a babe in arms, born in April — with Down Syndrome.
Sylvia Smith, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: Here’s this year’s magic number: 11. That’s the number of electoral votes Indiana has. For the first time in two generations, they might be up for grabs. At least that’s what Barack Obama’s campaign thinks – and wants to make John McCain a believer, too. The image of Indiana as a swing state is hard to credit. After all, the Hoosier electoral votes have been delivered to the Republican presidential candidate every year since 1964, when LBJ beat Barry Goldwater among Hoosiers as well as across the country. All Indiana’s electoral votes go the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in the state. (Only Nebraska and Maine don’t use the winner-take-all method.) That means it doesn’t matter how close the loser comes; if the other candidate gets one more vote, it’s game over. So in the elections since LBJ won Indiana by nearly 260,000 votes, Democratic contenders largely have ignored the state as not being a cost-effective place to spend time or money. Both are in short supply during a presidential campaign, and candidates are unlikely (not to mention stupid) to devote their treasure to an almost-certain lost cause. That pragmatic decision by Democrats allowed the GOP ticket also to bypass the state in its campaigning. As a result, Hoosiers have seen presidential candidates in the flesh rarely, if ever; they have been subject to only those TV commercials that are placed nationwide; and their mailboxes remained relatively uncluttered by brochures and other mailings from the presidential campaigns. Our license plate motto might as well have been: “Indiana, the Cast-Aside State.” But Obama has enough money, at this point at least, to break tradition. His campaign has opened 29 offices in the state and is airing ads on Hoosier TV stations and has given every indication that he’ll spend money – if not time – competing for those 11 electoral votes. That kind of activity will force McCain to do something similar lest he be cast as “giving up on” Indiana. If Indiana becomes a swing state, and if Bayh’s conduct during the campaign is at least partially credited with that, his stature in the national party will be enhanced. If Obama does not win, we’ll look back on Denver and say Bayh started his 2012 presidential campaign in those 7 minutes at the Denver podium.
Jerry Davich, Post-Tribune: The steelworker’s e-mail was short and to the point: “Why does the local community hate us steelworkers so damn much?” Excellent question, I thought. His e-mail stemmed from lingering contract talks between the ArcelorMittal union employees and the world’s largest steelmaker. A new contract is needed to replace the one that expired appropriately on Labor Day. Before a tentative agreement was reached Saturday, the topic became hotter than a fresh slab of steel. And debatable questions like these bubbled to the surface of public opinion: Are these union employees overpaid crybabies, or under-appreciated craftsmen? Are they asking for too much, or simply demanding a fair shake? If a similar contract was OK for U.S. Steel’s union workers, why isn’t it OK for these union workers? I’ve heard both sides, from readers, region residents, and even millworkers whose livelihoods, and lifestyles, hang in the balance. I also heard from steel mill retirees like Bob, who worked at the Burns Harbor plant for more than 30 years, back when it was called Bethlehem Steel Corp. “They should strike, plain and simple,” Bob said.
Tags: Doug Ross, Jerry Davich, Stephanie Salter, Sylvia Smith
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