By Lesley Weidenbener
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Gov. Mike Pence declared a legislative victory just 12 hours after the House and Senate adjourned for the year on Thursday night, saying he had won support for most of his agenda.

The governor’s staff handed out a list of 20 of his bills the General Assembly passed. But although they were all marked as ‘achieved,’ some of the biggest issues were only partial accomplishments.

The Republican sought pre-kindergarten classes for children of low-income families, but he got a pilot program in five counties.

He wanted to eliminate the property tax on business equipment and lawmakers voted instead to give counties the option to cut the tax.

And he sought $400 million for roads. Legislators gave him half that – but with the possibility of getting the rest later on.

Still, Pence says it was a good year.

“A lot of people thought we wouldn’t get a lot done in this session,” Pence acknowledged.

“But because the men and women who serve Indiana – frankly in both parties – were willing to roll their sleeves up, stay focused on the people of Indiana, stay focused on jobs and kids and families and schools, this has been a remarkably productive session of the General Assembly,” he said.

Pence said his administration will get to work on the kindergarten pilot program immediately.

Lawmakers assigned the Family and Social Services Administration the task of choosing the counties that will participate and coming up with $10 million for several thousand 4-year-olds to participate. Pence said Friday the agency has already found the money.

To qualify, a student’s family could earn no more than 127 percent of the federal poverty limit. That’s about $28,380 for a family of four. And parents would have to pledge to participate as well.

Meanwhile, the state will study the kids through third grade to determine whether the preschool program is effective.

House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said lawmakers aren’t likely to move to expand the program until at least some of the study results are in.

“It’s going to take some time to get it completely functional, to get it studied,” Bosma said. “A few years to look at the pilot program would not be reasonable.”

The House had originally proposed the five-county pilot in January but members of the Senate said they were concerned about the cost of fully implementing a system. Lawmakers compromised on the plan requiring Pence to come up with the money.

But on Friday, Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley reiterated that pre-K and other spending programs must be weighed against existing priorities as lawmakers write a two-year budget in 2015.

Democrats on Friday praised the preschool pilot program. But Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, said the state needs to do more.

“We’re going to have the opportunity now to see the benefits of early childhood ed. When we come back next year, the challenge is going to be: Let’s make a meaningful commitment to expanding this to every child.”

But House Minority Leader Scott Pelath said preschool is one of the few bright spots in a session that otherwise did little to help most Hoosiers. He said majority Republicans focused too much on helping big business.

Pence plans to sign legislation to extend the reduction of the corporate tax rate, which was already scheduled to drop to 6.5 percent in fiscal year 2016. The legislation will phase in an additional reduction, lowering every year through 2022, when the rate reaches 4.9 percent.

“The continuing reduction in corporate taxes in Indiana is shameless. It’s shameless,” Pelath said. “And there isn’t any evidence it will produce a single job.”

And the bill gives local officials the power to cut the property tax on business inventory – or abate it for 20 years for individual projects.

Republicans said Friday that cutting business taxes – and letting local officials in part decide the best way to go about it – will help boost the state’s economy.

Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said the legislation will create a “better environment for jobs and entrepreneurship and companies to come to our state.”

Pence also praised legislation that provides more money for state highway projects.

The compromise bill allows Pence’s administration to spend $200 million on new highway projects starting on July 1.

Then it puts the bipartisan State Budget Committee – which includes four lawmakers and the governor’s budget director – in charge of deciding when or even whether to transfer another $200 million from the state’s main checking account to the highway fund.

Pence said Friday he is considering vetoes of some of the other bills headed to his desk, but he wouldn’t provide specifics.

Lesley Weidenbener is executive editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Chris Cotterill, former chief of staff for Mayor Greg Ballard, says outsourcing made it possible for Indianapolis to upgrade the technology and improve the service of the city’s parking meters.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

He says it was the only way to get it done because all government budgets are tight and options are limited.

Rep. Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, says outsourcing management of the Indiana Toll Road has been a huge mistake. Bauer, the former speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, says the money Indiana collected for leasing the toll road to a private consortium for 75 years now is gone with more than 65 years remaining on the lease.

Bauer, Cotterill and I – along with Indiana University Prof. Sergio Fernandez, co-author of a study on government outsourcing – are sitting in a radio studio talking on the air about the ups and downs of having government enter into agreements with private companies to provide public services.

Indiana has been at the vanguard of the outsourcing movement. It also has been at the forefront of the controversies about the practice.

The toll road and parking meter deals are prime examples of both outsourcing’s upsides and downsides.

The toll road lease won national attention. The state secured nearly $4 billion in the deal – although it had to return a portion of that money – and it was able to plow those funds back into more road and bridge construction projects than the state had seen in a generation.

Those funds, though, now have been spent and the toll revenues will flow into private hands for the next six decades and change. Reports on the service and maintenance of the toll road since it moved into private hands have been mixed.

Bauer says the deal’s premise was flawed. He says that the toll road became a toll road only to fund first its original construction and then some upgrades. The decision, with the lease, to make it a permanent toll road, he says, amounted to a breach of promise to the taxpayers, but, then, he’s not exactly a fan of outsourcing.

Cotterill says that the parking meter deal provided the best option to bring parking in Indianapolis into the 21^st century. He says that the city couldn’t have acquired and implemented the expertise and technology to make it possible for people to pay for parking with credit cards and their smart phones anywhere near as efficiently as a private company could. He says that upgrading the parking system relieved pressure on businesses and made parking more cost-effective around the clock.

That’s the problem, a caller says. She says that before the parking meter deal, people could park free downtown after certain hours and that now it costs everyone more to park.

Bauer jumps in on that point.

He says that the problem with outsourcing is that it introduces a new factor into the public service equation. He says that people pay taxes so that government can afford to provide certain services and that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay anything more than what those services cost. He says that outsourcing brings in companies and people who want to make a profit from serving taxpayers and that breaks down systems of accountability and opens the door to corruption.

Cotterill shoots back that the for-profit motive encourages efficiency and that encouraging efficiency serves taxpayers better. He says that one way to achieve a profit is to figure out how to provide a service less expensively and that private companies often are better at that than government is.

“The only people who benefit are the officeholders who can get a lot of cash while they’re in office,” Bauer retorts.

It gives those officeholders a way to finesse problems without raising taxes, he says, and allows them to leave the more enduring problem for the next office holders and the next generations of taxpayers.

Cotterill disagrees, of course. The hour and the show end with Bauer and Cotterill still at odds.

Fernandez’s study shows that government outsourcing is on the upswing.

That means that both the practice of outsourcing and the arguments accompanying it are likely to continue.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.