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Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Ind. Gov't. - Star editorials reflect on recent stories
Two Indianapolis Star editorials today serve as companion pieces to recent Star reports.
The Star's lead editorial today is on "Attorney General Steve Carter's outsourcing contract with a staff member," reflecting on the Star story last Saturday discussed in this ILB entry from that date. Some quotes:
It is well and good that former deputy attorney general John Lewis knows a lot about state litigation and -- at least according to his former boss's calculations -- can save the taxpayers money by defending the state as a private contractor.The second Star editorial today is about the General Assembly's health insurance plan for retired members. (See yesterday's ILB entry here, titled "Prerogatives of legislators and their staffs.") Some quotes from today's editorial:Those purported advantages do not justify the process under which the $1.3 million contract was awarded to Lewis, who bid on it and won it while still working for Attorney General Steve Carter.
Lewis may have officially removed himself from the contracting process, as he says, but it would be naïve to assume the work wasn't his for the asking. He managed the tort litigation division that Carter pegged for outsourcing and had worked with the team evaluating proposals for the contract; only one other law firm competed. Three fellow former staffers from the division have joined him in the private enterprise. * * *
The law says state employees must wait a year after leaving government before doing paid work with their erstwhile agency. The State Ethics Commission allows agencies to skirt that restriction by stating in writing that the arrangement isn't "adverse to the public interest." The commission had to demand it from Carter's office in this case; and due to lag time in transitioning from the Kernan to the Daniels administration, Lewis had the contract before the commission had the statement. Kernan's people raised conflict-of-interest questions; the Daniels folks signed off on the deal.
Again, ethical rigor was the resounding theme of the Republican campaign that carried Mitch Daniels and Steve Carter to victory. Rationalizing coziness in the name of know-how and cost-efficiency is part of the business-as-usual tradition the reformers pledged to reverse.
Even as the state was balancing its budget with school funding cuts and one-shot gimmicks in 2002, the General Assembly was taking care of its own desires with a new perk: taxpayer-funded health insurance for former legislators who served a mere six years in office.Despite a veto by then-Gov. Frank O'Bannon, state Senate President Pro Tempore Bob Garton and then-house Speaker John Gregg quietly invoked a law that would finance the benefit from the general fund.
With the state still mired in a fiscal morass three years later, you would think Garton would strike a blow for fiscal sanity by supporting calls to either scale back the insurance coverage or eliminate it altogether. Not a chance. As The Star's Kevin Corcoran reported Monday, Garton and House Speaker Brian Bosma have blocked any such move. Why? Out of fear that legislators "will retire before the law (is) effective," Garton said.
In one sense, who could blame any lawmaker who left office in order to join 22 former colleagues in taking advantage of such a sweet benefit? Each retired legislator pays at most only $1,900 a year for family dental, health and vision coverage -- far less than what it costs for either retired state or private sector workers. Taxpayers bear the rest of the cost, averaging $10,900 a person.
Bosma acknowledges that the benefit is hard to justify. Some newly elected House Republicans even made the perk an issue during last year's campaign. But the House Speaker says now is not the time to scale back the benefit. Perhaps next year, he says.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 15, 2005 07:58 AM
Posted to Indiana Government