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Ivy Tech Audience Grills Governor
3/17/2011 9:53:10 AM
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Cathie Rowand | The Journal Gazette
Gov. Mitch Daniels speaks to students and faculty Wednesday at Ivy Tech Community College.
Published: March 17, 2011 3:00 a.m.
Ivy Tech audience grills governor
Questions Daniels on education, unions, jobs, 2012 bid
Angela Mapes Turner | The Journal Gazette
FORT WAYNE – Gov. Mitch Daniels didn’t have much to say about his possible presidential aspirations during a Wednesday visit to Fort Wayne.
Others had plenty to say for him.
“I hope you do run,” one audience member told him after the governor spent more than an hour answering questions from a largely working-class crowd in the Ivy Tech Community College auditorium.
The governor laughed and thanked the man. He had more to say on the topic during a meeting with local media earlier in the day in downtown Fort Wayne – but not much.
“There’s nothing new to say about it,” he said when asked about a possible presidential run. “The opportunity to grow Indiana’s economy, improve Indiana’s education system, comes first to me. We’re going to give that all the time and attention it takes.
“If the other question is still of any relevance when that’s done, we’ll think about it then.”
Plenty of issues have vied for Daniels’ time and attention lately, and the Ivy Tech audience didn’t shy away from seeking the governor’s opinion – or, in a few cases, giving him their own.
The first audience member to question him asked about the proposed changes in education, among the factors in the House Democrats’ walkout, and asked Daniels why he has been “beating up” on public-school teachers.
Daniels took issue with that, saying he has praised teachers “relentlessly” but has been vilified by teachers’ unions and Indiana Democrats who have misrepresented proposed changes.
“I love teachers,” he said. “I have a hard time loving their union.”
He said he has difficulty understanding union opposition to charter schools, which he called a national trend.
“Talk about the Flat-Earth Society,” Daniels said.
Indiana devotes more than half its state budget to K-12 education, more than any state in the country, the governor said. The proposed changes are to make sure that money is better spent, he said, by paying better teachers more.
He added that the majority of the GOP-led education proposals in Indiana are in President Obama’s Race to the Top agenda.
“I may disagree with him on some things, but on education, he’s got it right,” Daniels said.
When they weren’t talking about education, most in the audience wanted to discuss jobs – or the lack of them. Several brought up the difficulty in being accepted into the Healthy Indiana Plan, the state’s health care program for uninsured, low-income families, and the failed modernization of Indiana’s food stamp and Medicaid program.
While acknowledging the canceled contract with IBM Corp. as a “misfire,” Daniels said the program is constantly improving and reiterated the need for the overhaul in the first place. He encouraged several audience members to continue their education in hopes of getting off assistance.
“You study hard here and do well, you won’t need food stamps, and I know that’s where you want to be,” he said.
One question seemed to touch a nerve – a student’s suggestion that Daniels had leased the Indiana Toll Road for short-term budget balancing and good press.
Daniels spent nearly 10 minutes defending the lease, even launching into an impromptu business school lesson on “earnings before taxes and depreciation.”
He said he had to be reminded that Tuesday was the fifth anniversary of the deal – which he likened to forgetting his own birthday – and said Indiana will be a better place decades from now because of the sale.
“We’re supposed to be the ‘Crossroads of America,’ right? That’s the slogan,” he said. “Better pave the intersection.”
aturner@jg.net
