Northwest Indiana Discussion

Daniels said he would seek consolidation of some areas of local government as one of his administration's goals for the 10-week legislative session that started Tuesday.

Among those are the centralization of fire service resources at the county level, similar to what was done with library services.

"I hope for the last time I've gone somewhere where someone proudly shows me the new half-million-dollar firetruck, and three blocks away, literally, they've just bought another one because that's a different township," Daniels said.

Local control and local departments will continue to exist, "but we ought to be making the resource decisions at a level that guarantees the service is really uniform and complete, and that we're not doubling up on spending," he said.
Township advisory boards also will be targets.

"That would be another 3,000 politicians that we don't really need," Daniels said.
His administration also will take aim at city and county employees serving on their communities' legislative bodies, Daniels said.

"You've got people voting on their own pay increases. You've got people countermanding the decisions of their own management," Daniels said. "That's as direct a conflict of interest as you can have, and we ought to part with it."

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake ... 99521.html

First up will be a vote next week in both chambers on amending the state's constitution to include property tax rate caps of 1 percent of assessed value on homesteads, 2 percent on rental property and 3 percent on business property.

With November elections on the horizon and every vote set to receive extra scrutiny, legislators are likely to approve sending the tax-caps question to Hoosier voters. Whether voters understand the potential effects of the limit on property tax rates remains largely unknown.

"Northwest Indiana has to figure out how they are going to get in the path of what these will bring," Harris said. "You're going to have to make do with what's there. How are you going to do it?"

In the Senate, state Sen. Frank Mrvan, D-Hammond, says there's plenty of upcoming points of contention, including school funding issues, a proposal to eliminate township government and legislation to delay a scheduled hike in the unemployment tax.

"Last year was the first time I felt we finally really did something for the working man. We gave him a break and didn't cut his unemployment tax, and two months later, the talk started about rescinding that," Mrvan said.

Indiana has borrowed more than $1.7 billion from the federal government to keep its insolvent unemployment program functioning. Republicans want to delay an unemployment insurance premium hike that was supposed to begin to fix that deficit.

Had this been proposed in his first term it would be news or something to talk about. But since he chose to bring it up in his last term lets reflect on his ideas:

Restructure Welfare- failed and still costing us money-even when the errors of TX are the same errors IN is making. Let’s watch to see if he ends up with a job at IBM?

BMV- still has not recovered from the poor supervisor selection and has become a tool for voter disenfranchisement.

Property Assessment- out sourced the assessment to a company in Ohio that had a fifty percent error rate in its assessment placed a larger burden on property owners in favor of big business.

Let’s not forget who refused to recognizing the unionized state workers that resulted in hiring a slew of temporary workers, have they recovered? Or is this being hidden since claims are done over the telephone, where are the records of this progress.

And what about Elkhart's unemployment rate not to mention his stand on health care. INDOT had ignored Lake County bridges to a point of road closure, when or where has this ever happen in the state?

“He has my vote” is tongue in cheek I hope, you may need to bite your tongue so that you don’t swallow it.

Nope cutting my nose off to spite my face is what it's called!

Too easy, but did it improve your appearance, I’m smiling at the post to keep from crying.

What we need is slash and burn Democrat to the point the republicans cry!

I don't own anything been retired going on 22 years this should get interesting.

Yeah! Look how well that has worked out for Gary since 1967![/sarcasm]