I commend the governor for recognizing the state’s long overdue need to expand access to quality early-childhood education. In my years as a teacher, I found the difference between students arriving with a preschool education and those without to be profound.
Allowing legislators to draw their own districts is like the NBA allowing the home team to hire its own officials; it would be an obvious conflict of interest that would discredit the process and lead to unfair play. That’s why redistricting reform tops Common Cause Indiana’s legislative agenda and why I’m pleased that the House took action early this session by passing House Bill 1032.<
Gov. Mike Pence has proposed eliminating property taxes on business machinery and equipment. How exactly that is to be done, and over what time frame, he has left to the wisdom of the General Assembly.
To the Matador, we don’t matter. All he has heard so far when he bows ever so deep toward the grandstand is, “Olé!”•
I started speaking truth to power early. And my older brothers didn’t like it. They told me that archness in a 10-year-old was not welcome.
Depressing news about black students’ scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so. But both may have to do some rethinking, in light of radically different news from England.
My favorite story in Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s fascinating new book, “The Second Machine Age,” is when the Dutch chess grandmaster Jan Hein Donner was asked how he’d prepare for a chess match against a computer, like IBM’s Deep Blue. Donner replied: “I would bring a hammer.”
Downtown Indianapolis was recently ranked No. 1 for livability among smaller cities by Livability.com—gratifying praise after $9.3 billion of reinvestment. Recent debates and plans, however, have raised a fundamental question: Whose downtown is this?
Mayor Ballard proposes to create a judicial center that would bring the dispersed offices of the criminal courts, prosecutor, public defender and perhaps other agencies together with the county jail in one facility at a location to be determined, and free up the jail site for development.
What “D” word is used most sparingly or avoided altogether by Hoosier political, business and civic leaders when sharing how to position Indiana for growth and success? a) debt, b) deflation, or c) diversity?
I read recently that a proposed statue of a goat-headed figure of Satan, known as Baphomet, is a bad idea on the grounds of Oklahoma’s Capitol.
I’ve been listing to the Swan Silverstones. “Don’t blame it on the children,” this gospel group sings, which got me thinking about who’s to blame for the failure to regulate all our state’s child care facilities.
Free-market economists are skeptical of government programs designed to promote economic development.
I don’t think anyone can disagree we need a strategy for making the slogan “Indiana Works” a reality.
Compared with neighboring states, Indiana is doing well. For that, Hoosiers can be thankful.
Dwayne Sawyer just set a new world record for quickest rise and fall of an Indiana statewide elected official. His tenure as auditor fell just short of four months.
Each session, I work to find efficient and effective ways to streamline government functions. Bolstering our city’s infrastructure is vital for sustained economic growth.
After reviewing the facts surrounding a proposed expansion of mass-transit services in central Indiana, gathering input from local officials, meeting with the public, and listening to concerns about establishing an expanded transit system, legislators are working to develop a plan that is both efficient and cost-effective.
Folks in the business of passing laws and enforcing them must, of necessity, impose somebody’s idea of what is good on the rest of us.
I’ve written a fair bit in these pages about the pitfalls of official secrecy—the often unjustified withholding of information by public agencies at all levels of government.
