2008 Woodie Awards
Indiana gubernatorial election as important as presidential election
By: Beth Towle
Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: Opinion
With Super Tuesday immediately behind us, and the Indiana primary election so far away, now is a great time to think about elections that aren't presidential. More specifically, it's time to start thinking about the gubernatorial race in Indiana. Mitch Daniels is up for re-election in November and his office is of extreme importance in the state, particularly in light of the way he has mishandled it during the last four years.
"Who is Mitch Daniels?" out-of-state students often ask me. When I explain that he is the governor of Indiana, I am often dismissed. Many students assume that because we are a private institution, our lives are completely uninfluenced by a state governor they do not share. But this dismissal cannot continue. Mitch Daniels has had a huge impact on the state that is now home to all of us DePauw students, regardless of where we were born or raised. Unfortunately, most of that impact has been negative. His disregard for public education, social welfare and employment makes it more difficult to live in Indiana with every passing year of his term.
In this part of the state, you don't hear much of the negative. Central and parts of southern Indiana have benefited from several of Daniels's economic projects. However, if you move a little further north, sentiments change. At the beginning of his term, Daniels changed the state over to Daylight Savings Time, but allowed certain counties to opt out of the change. To this day many counties in northern Indiana are still trying to hold on to the old system, causing confusion for businesses and residents. Daniels followed up this change by privatizing the Indiana Toll Road. As one of the most important highways in the Midwest, the Toll Road has long been an important part of northern Indiana's development. After selling it to an overseas corporation, Toll Road jobs were lost and the highway became more expensive for drivers to use.
If that doesn't sound so bad to you, then look at some of the other projects Daniels has put in place in the last few years. Last summer, Daniels proposed getting rid of the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority, an organization composed of most of Indiana's private and public libraries (including DePauw) that provided library systems support and ran the interlibrary loan delivery in the state. Daniels shifted these responsibilities to the overwhelmed and under-staffed state library, which quickly privatized interlibrary loan delivery. Now Daniels is proposing an overhaul of the property tax system in Indiana, which could prove detrimental to schools, libraries and other local institutions that are already under-funded. He's also obsessed with the idea of privatizing the social welfare system in Indiana.
"Who is Mitch Daniels?" out-of-state students often ask me. When I explain that he is the governor of Indiana, I am often dismissed. Many students assume that because we are a private institution, our lives are completely uninfluenced by a state governor they do not share. But this dismissal cannot continue. Mitch Daniels has had a huge impact on the state that is now home to all of us DePauw students, regardless of where we were born or raised. Unfortunately, most of that impact has been negative. His disregard for public education, social welfare and employment makes it more difficult to live in Indiana with every passing year of his term.
In this part of the state, you don't hear much of the negative. Central and parts of southern Indiana have benefited from several of Daniels's economic projects. However, if you move a little further north, sentiments change. At the beginning of his term, Daniels changed the state over to Daylight Savings Time, but allowed certain counties to opt out of the change. To this day many counties in northern Indiana are still trying to hold on to the old system, causing confusion for businesses and residents. Daniels followed up this change by privatizing the Indiana Toll Road. As one of the most important highways in the Midwest, the Toll Road has long been an important part of northern Indiana's development. After selling it to an overseas corporation, Toll Road jobs were lost and the highway became more expensive for drivers to use.
If that doesn't sound so bad to you, then look at some of the other projects Daniels has put in place in the last few years. Last summer, Daniels proposed getting rid of the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority, an organization composed of most of Indiana's private and public libraries (including DePauw) that provided library systems support and ran the interlibrary loan delivery in the state. Daniels shifted these responsibilities to the overwhelmed and under-staffed state library, which quickly privatized interlibrary loan delivery. Now Daniels is proposing an overhaul of the property tax system in Indiana, which could prove detrimental to schools, libraries and other local institutions that are already under-funded. He's also obsessed with the idea of privatizing the social welfare system in Indiana.
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Trisha
posted 9/30/08 @ 9:20 AM EST
Very nice article. As a born-and-raised Hoosier, I have followed Daniels' reign as Governor. I haven't lived in Indiana in 7 years (though all of my family is still there), but I still hold it close to my heart and follow the politics of the state. (Continued…)
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