Just a reminder that you can view the USDOT docket on the Indiana Time Zone Issue with new documents as they come in. So far, the only new submissions are hand written letters from a couple of citizens, both of Vincennes, Indiana oddly enough. One is in favor of Central, one is in favor of Eastern.
Lawsuit against Benton County Bd of Zoning Appeals
Oddly, I read about this lawsuit in the Evansville Courier Press even though it’s in my neck of the woods. (In fact, I had a hearing with the Defendant’s attorney earlier today in an unrelated case.)
The town of Kentland and 13 individuals are going to court to fight a 4,200-head mega-dairy that has received approval from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and from local planners.
Gerrit Dekker of Oxford is planning the dairy for land near Kentland, about 100 miles northwest of Indianapolis along the Illinois border. Kentland and the 13 individuals sued the Benton County Board of Zoning Appeals, claiming it violated Indiana’s Open Door Law when it held an unadvertised executive session during a meeting in 2004. The closed-door session occurred during the board’s regular meeting just before it voted to approve an exemption allowing the dairy farm.
The main concern of the Plaintiffs, obviously, is not with a technical violation of the Open Door law but rather with the effects of having that kind of operation in your back yard. One resident expressed reservations about having a 50 million gallon manure lagoon 1.6 miles away from his front door. Odors, strain on water pressure, and adverse effects on property values are a primary concern.
Senator Simpson on Schools and the State Budget
Senator Vi Simpson has an opinion column in today’s Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. She says that the General Assembly has failed school children with the budget. She says
Thanks to the approved two-year state budget, many Indiana children can expect to see larger class sizes, fewer teachers and a much more limited academic curriculum.
The $24.4 billon state budget, signed into law by Gov. Mitch Daniels, dramatically reduces the state’s financial support to 143 rural and urban school corporations across the state. It passes the budget buck by shifting much of the responsibility for paying for schools onto the backs of local property taxpayers. Indiana’s property owners can expect to see their property taxes increase by as much as $850 million statewide.
She goes on to criticize the “Money Follows the Child” philosophy as sounding reasonable but being unfair in practice because it penalizes school corporations with stable or declining populations. She also notes one key problem that I have also pointed to in the past: children are not created equally. “Some have a greater number of challenges to overcome, and these children often cost more to educate and to prepare them to achieve their full potential.” (Others that have pointed this out: The Muncie Star Press and The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.)
She also mentions the issue of fixed costs that do not decrease even with fewer students in the school.
I’ll offer up a simplistic scenario illustrating the problem. Say you have a school with four kids and two teachers. The rent is $100 and each teacher costs $50. The legislature assigns $50 per student. With four kids, you’re fine — $200 for rent and teacher, paid for by 4-kids @ $50 per kid. Then two kids leave, and you can let one teacher go. So you have $100 rent and 1 teacher at $50. $150 total cost. But, at $50 per kid, you only get $100 in taxes. You’re in the hole $50. Oops.
Journal Gazette on DOC Commissioner J. David Donahue
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette continues its series on changes in state government with a look at new Dept. of Corrections Commissioner J. David Donahue. Donahue was an import from Kentucky’s prison system.
One of his first cost-cutting actions was to move 600 to 700 inmates who were being held in Kentucky back to Indiana. The inmates had been shipped to Kentucky because decision makers figured the $58 average to house an inmate domestically was more expensive than exporting them to Kentucky at an expense of $45 per day. Donahue, however, figured that the $58 per day could be reduced with more inmates being placed in underused facilities to bring down the average. (For example, there was apparently one facility Donahue visited where 74 staff members were on duty to guard 70 offenders.)
He also outsourced prison food preparation to a private vendor promising to save $11.5 million per year. (Watch the condition of confinement lawsuits roll in alleging either inhumane, unhealthy diet or violations of religious rights because they weren’t receiving food that meets the dietary requirements of whatever religion the offender adopted upon arriving at the jail.)
Donahue is also reducing the number of high-security classifications and increasing the number of minimum-security classifications. (Watch for lawsuits after inmate fights that allege, among other things, deliberate indifference to safety evidenced by the DOC’s misclassification policies.)
Finally, Mr. Donahue is trying to combat recidivism. It looks like about 38% of prisoners released in 2001 are back in prison. “Donahue is beginning to work with local courts and law enforcement officials to ease transition. To do so communities have to beef up the job, housing and transportation opportunities for returning inmates.” That’s probably true, but one big problem with that is the fact that people without convictions are having trouble finding work and making ends meet even when they are working. All things being equal, an employer will presumably want to hire someone without a conviction first. If the government somehow subsidizes or gives the released inmate with some kind of advantage, then it is, in a sense, penalizing the law abiding citizen in favor of the law breaker. Something of a catch-22.
More on “The Blade”
An Indy Star article by Michele McNeil entitledNo cut is too tiny for ‘The Blade’ reports that Governor Daniels is bragging on himself for allegedly saving the State $150 million. That’s nice, if true. But if you’re going to mention Daniels stint as White House budget director, I think the nickname “The Blade” can be used only ironically given the record breaking deficits that marked his tenure in that office.
Some of the cuts:
A little here, a little there
Here are some of the more unusual savings the Daniels administration says it found in state government:
• Agriculture: The Department of Agriculture stopped giving grants to a bed-and-breakfast, saving $100,000.
• BMV: The Bureau of Motor Vehicles stopped mailing notices for driver’s license renewals, saving $200,000, and stopped buying bottled water for offices, saving $35,000.
• DNR: The Department of Natural Resources is switching from Ford Expeditions to less-expensive Chevy Trailblazers, saving $100,000.
• Maps: Indiana road maps will be printed every two years, not annually, saving $175,000.
• Prisons: 650 Indiana prisoners living in Kentucky prisons have been moved back to Indiana, saving $6.6 million.
• Lottery: The Hoosier Lottery switched from color to black-and-white newsletters, saving $21,670 a year.
Meanwhile, Mary Beth Schneider writes of 27 legislators headed to Seattle for an NCSL conference at an expense of approximately $2,000 per person.
Gov. Daniels Speaks to Evansville Chamber of Commerce
Thanks to Paul for flagging this article by Bill Medley in the Evansville Courier Press on Gov. Daniels remarks at an Evansville Chamber of Commerce function. Most interesting to me were Daniels’ comments about the time zone issue.
The governor addressed the issue of the time zone in response to a question from the audience. Daniels said he anticipated many counties in Indiana would choose to be in the Central time zone.
He said confusion over what time it was in Indiana was costing businesses. He relayed the experience of an Indianapolis businessman who expected to lose about $30,000 because a partner in Los Angeles missed a conference call because of time zone confusion.
While he expects the Central time zone will be the most popular option for counties, there will still be some areas of the state that will choose differently.
“Everybody on one time zone is probably not attainable, given our position on the globe.”
It strikes me as odd if Gov. Daniels said that he expects most counties to want to be in the Central time zone. My personal sense is that the opposite will be true. I think Indianapolis will choose Eastern Time. I think everything east of Indianapolis will choose eastern time. And, I think some counties west of Indy will want central time, but due to Indianapolis’s economic sphere of influence, will choose eastern time anyway.
Counties already in the Central time zone are: Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper, Newton, Gibson, Posey, Vanderburg, Spencer, and Warrick. I’m probably going to miss horribly here, particularly with respect to the southern part of the state, but looking at this map I’d guess counties prone to switch from eastern to central are: Perry, Dubois, Martin, Davies, Pike, Knox, Daviess, Sullivan, Vigo, Clay, Parke, Vermillion, Fountain, Warren, Benton, White, Pulaski, Starke, Marshall, St. Joseph, St. Joseph, Elkhart, and Kosciusko. I doubt all of those would actually vote to switch, but if they do, that would mean about 33 counties. That would mean 59 counties still on eastern.
Minutes of the 7/5/05 Health Finance Commission
There are some fairly interesting issues before the Health Finance Commission. I don’t know that I’ll have time to go back and really analyze it, but the minutes from the 7/5/05 meeting are linked above. (I presume the minutes don’t get posted until they are approved by the Commission, meaning a month or more lag time. I don’t suppose there is any way around that.)
Quite a bit of testimony from FSSA Secretary Roob. Also there is a link to the KPMG Audit of FSSA (Looong PDF document). Among other things, Sec’y Roob commented about “staff apathy and a lack of cooperation in investigating crimes within the agency.” (The flogging will continue until staff morale improves.) He also wants to reduce the number of FSSA operated hospitals from 7 to 1 but still have FSSA fund the other hospitals. (You know, if I wanted to funnel state money to people I liked without the bother of helping people and without liability for substandard care, that’s probably how I’d go about it. I’m not saying that’s what Mr. Roob has in mind, just saying what I’d do if I lost my scruples.) He wants to cut the annual Medicaid increase from 10% to 5%. “Secretary Roob stated that FSSA is going to alter the manner in which health care is delivered in the state. FSSA will be a health care financing agency.” (Again, see my comments about how I’d go about funneling money if I ever became a cartoonish supervillain.)
Court of Appeals strikes down Judge’s anti-Wiccan decree
The Court of Appeals has Appellate Opinions” href=”http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/appeals.html”>issued an opinion (pdf document) striking down Judge Cale Bradford’s anti-Wiccan dissolution of marriage decree.
Some of you may have read about the case in this prior entry or (more likely) in Kevin Corcoran’s article in the Indianapolis Star. The jist of it is that Marion County Superior Court Judge, Cale J. Bradford, put a provision in a couple’s divorce decree that prohibits the couple from exposing their child to “non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.” Both parents practice Wicca, a spiritual belief that concentrates on worship of nature.
The court of appeals decided that it was not necessary to address the constitutionality of Bradford’s decree since they found Judge Bradford abused his discretion by imposing the religious limitation because he did not find that a limitation on Father’s parental authority to determine the religious training of his child was necessary to prevent endangerment to the child’s physical health or significant impairment of the child’s emotional health, which is the standard set forth in the statute.
There is some discussion of the record in the opinion that suggests Judge Bradford was interjecting his own opinion of Wicca into the proceedings rather than making any kind of a rational determination that the religion was dangerous to the child.
[Judge Bradford] All right, while the two of you are free to engage in any kind of behaviors you want to that are lawful, or that you don’t get caught at, I suppose, where you’ve got a child involved, that freedom can be somewhat limited. All right? And in going through this DRCB Report, there are a lot of issues that we have not touched upon yet. First of all I want to get some information and I’ll start with you, sir, from your religion, and how exactly that is practiced and what implication that has on the child. To the extent the child is part of that practice.
. . .
[Father]: The rituals that are part of what my group does . . . consist of – we start out with a grounding and a centering, which is where we stand with our minds. We relax. We gain some focus. Then we create – the best way to put it is – entities, but that’s not really symbols of the elements, the east, south, west and north, representing thought, passion, emotion and intuition, as well as stability. And then we ask for divine intervention. And then we do guided meditations. After that is gone through, then we sometimes chant or drum. Then we share bread and pass with us – juice or water – and then say good bye and thank you to all those entities, characteristics that we’ve asked to come into our lives. That’s how one of our rituals go.
[Trial court]: All right, where do you practice – is there a location in which this is done in a group.
[Father]: It varies. Sometimes it’s outdoors. Sometimes it’s in parks. Sometimes it’s on private property. Sometimes it’s in homes.
. . .
At one point during its questioning of Father, the trial court remarked, “[P]eople might think that you worship to Satan.†Father responded, “I can’t worship something if I don’t believe in it.â€
Kernan on taxes
Former Gov. Joe Kernan has a guest column in the Journal & Courier. Something about taxes. I haven’t read it as I have Sesame Street-related obligations at the moment. According to my boy, it appears to be fairly urgent.
Indy Star on Evolution in the Schools
In an article by Robert King for the Indy Star entitled Evolution debate may play out in schools, we see an excellent common sense approach to the hot-button evolution issue:
When some residents in Columbus petitioned the School Board three years ago to give the Bible’s creation account equal time with evolution, school officials came up with a novel response.
They created a new class — under the heading of social studies — that examines all the theories on human origins. Not only did the class cover evolution and creationism, it also surveyed Navajo beliefs, the Hindu creation story and a host of other perspectives.
. . .
Such a quiet resolution is unusual in this red-hot front in the culture war. The debate has been re-energized by President Bush’s recent remark that public schools — now almost exclusively the turf of Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory — should also teach “intelligent design.”
I don’t believe the objection has ever been that the theory of evolution, as presently constituted, is infallible; or that kids should never hear other ideas about human origins. The problem is that the theory of evolution is based on scientific observation. The others are not. It is therefore appropriate to teach evolution as the best scientific explanation we have to date. With respect to religious explanations, the problem is with giving the Genesis story, creationism, or Intelligent Design pride of place. To my knowledge, there is no reason for giving these explanations any preference over the story that has the earth riding on the backs of turtles or whatnot.
The article goes on to tell us that things may not have such a smooth resolution at Hamilton Southeastern in Fishers. A man motivated by his faith who thinks evolution is evidence of “the influence of atheism and immorality” in public schools wants a “balanced and nonpartisan” approach to human origins. A balanced and nonpartisan approach to science? Ridiculous. If those motivated by faith had a driving belief that gravity didn’t exist, we were merely held to the ground by God’s will, would schools have an obligation to present a “balanced and nonpartisan” case against the theory of gravity in science classes? Nope.
So, I prefer the Columbus approach. Hopefully, if necessary, Hamilton Southeastern can implement a similar solution.
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