The Indianapolis Star. May 13, 2012.

Indiana State Fair improvements shouldn't have waited for tragedy

With the addition of two professionals to the executive staff of the Indiana State Fair, the policy of "better late than never" continues in regard to oversight of mass attractions on state property.

The appointments of David Shaw as chief operating officer and Jessie Olvera as director of safety and security follow recommendations from two firms that were brought in to review the Aug. 13 stage collapse that killed seven people and injured nearly 60.

Shaw, who headed operations at Klipsch Music Center in Noblesville, has a much deeper background in entertainment management than State Fair Director Cindy Hoye. She offered her resignation after the Sugarland concert episode, but State Fair Commission Chairman Andre Lacy refused to accept it.

Olvera, a former Indianapolis policeman and homeland security specialist, has been on board since March. Thursday, the commission announced the retirement of Dave Hummel as facilities manager, calling the departure voluntary but adding that it is part of a staff reorganization.

In essence, there was no organization on Aug. 13, the outside auditors declared in their scathing reports: no chain of command for deciding on such testy questions as when to cancel a show, no evacuation plan for limited or general emergencies, and no prior inspection of stage rigging that turned out to be incapable of withstanding the winds of that night's storm.

As litigation has rumbled forth, government has taken action on a variety of fronts.

The legislature filled a hole in the law which allowed temporary structures on state property to go without inspection or engineering specifications. It more than doubled the long-outdated fixed sum in the victims' compensation fund.

The Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration, meanwhile, fined three entities over the disaster, including the fair commission, which paid its $6,300 penalty.

Finally, Gov. Mitch Daniels called for a review of all temporary outdoor structures by the state Department of Homeland Security and raised the prospect of a shakeup, possibly including firings, at the State Fair.

All of which prompts the exclamation "At last" -- and the question "What were they waiting for?"

The corrective steps are substantive and commendable. They also should have been taken years ago; models for supervision and inspection exist in many other states, and in Indianapolis city government, for that matter.

The Daniels administration, in short, should have known better; but at the same time, it was following venerable bipartisan tradition of light state regulation of activity affecting public health, safety and pocketbooks, directly and indirectly. As so often happens, penny-wise in this case turned out to be pound-foolish.

Hindsight is 20/20, certainly. It also can be highly useful. In that respect, we would urge our public servants not to settle for "better late than never." Now that they have taken heed of some hard-earned lessons, they should ask themselves where else in their array of responsibilities the wisdom of "a stitch in time" may apply.

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Tribune-Star, Terre Haute. May 13, 2012.

When it's IU vs. UK, there's got to be a way

If the annual Indiana-Kentucky basketball game was not significant, would the coaches of the two universities be talking like this?

"We were willing to play (the next two series games) in the state of Indiana, and they said no to that. That means they don't want to play us," Kentucky coach John Calipari told ESPN.com.

"The bottom line is that (Kentucky) didn't want to play home-and-home," said Indiana coach Tom Crean, "and we did."

A series deserving of cancellation usually involves no nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah. Attendance drops, the intensity of play cools, and everybody just shrugs and says, "Let's call the whole thing off."

That's not the case here. Instead, with healthy doses of indignation and finger-pointing, officials at both schools have announced that their rivalry — which had been renewed every season since 1969 — must end because UK and IU can't agree on where to play. Kentucky wants neutral sites, such as Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Indiana wants the games played on-campus, rotating between Assembly Hall in Bloomington and Rupp Arena in Lexington.

You may be thinking, "Hey, it's a basketball game, for cryin' out loud. How hard is it for two border-state colleges to pull that off, especially after having done so successfully for the past 42 years?" We wonder the same thing.

Egos play a role in the impasse. Calipari's Kentucky Wildcats are fresh off a national championship. In an open letter to fans, "the Big Blue Nation," Calipari explains that UK has elevated to a plateau heretofore unseen in college basketball. "Nontraditional," he calls the Wildcats program, the new "gold standard. Everyone has to accept that." Everyone, perhaps, except Galileo, who proved the universe does not revolve around Earth or, by extension, Lexington.

In his letter, Calipari lamented that no other program shoulders the burden of having to replace five or six players every year, as those teenage phenoms trade their gold status at UK for NBA platinum after just one or two seasons in a Wildcat uniform. (Even Bill Clinton would have a hard time saying, "John, I feel your pain.") Kentucky can no longer afford to lock in a nonconference opponent (such as IU or North Carolina) for a long-term contract into perpetuity, Calipari said. After all, what if the Wildcats win another NCAA title, and then eight players leave as first-round NBA draft picks? In the event of such an atrocity, Calipari couldn't, in good conscience, subject the following season's new UK collection of McDonald's All-Americans to a road game in Assembly Hall.

On the flip side, Indiana has dug in its heels by insisting the series continue in the campus arenas. Twenty of the 43 meetings between IU and Kentucky since 1969 have been played at neutral sites, such as the old RCA Dome in Indy and Freedom Hall in Louisville. Huge crowds turned out, and the two schools split the proceeds, so refusing to continue that routine seems lame on Indiana's part.

IU claims it wants the Wildcats-Hoosiers games played on the campuses, so the students can easily attend such a highly anticipated game. Indeed, the Indiana students savored that opportunity last season. The resurgent Hoosiers handed Kentucky its only regular-season defeat with a game-ending shot, and the IU students immediately swarmed the court. Indiana fans also heckled Calipari more colorfully than any other UK road opponent, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. Emboldened by his NCAA title, Calipari may have decided, "I don't need this."

Whatever the root, this feud needs to play out on the basketball court. To Calipari, Crean and their bosses we say, find a way to play that game.

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Evansville Courier & Press. May 9, 2012.

Mourdock scores with conservative Hoosier roots

In politics as in life, it is always best to remember who brought you to the dance. Unfortunately for Richard Lugar, 36 years a U.S. senator, he forgot. And by the time he realized that Indiana Republican voters might be leaving the dance with another, it was too late.

Once reality set in, Lugar ran a desperate campaign, but it was too late. Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock had built momentum with an enthusiastic campaign that successfully portrayed Lugar as being out of touch with Indiana.

Consequently, it will be Mourdock, an Evansville resident, who will face Indiana Rep. Joe Donnelly in November in the contest for the seat now held by Lugar.

Mourdock had commented during a meeting with the Evansville Courier & Press Editorial Board that Donnelly was probably wishing that he would defeat Lugar, giving him an easier fall opponent than the internationally known Lugar. To which, Mourdock added, "Be careful what you wish for."

Mourdock, a geologist, ran a smart campaign against the 80-year-old Lugar with strong backing from tea party activists and conservative organizations, some that might have once backed Lugar, but who now feel he has moved too far to their left.

Mourdock benefitted, as well, from the revelation that Lugar had not owned a residence in Indiana for decades; instead, he stayed in a hotel room when visiting Indiana. It hurt, too, when Marion County Election Board officials determined that he could no longer use a former address to register to vote. Eventually, he was allowed to register at a family farm which has no residence. His only real residence is his home in McLean, Va., near Washington, D.C. It just didn't sit well with Hoosiers who felt their elected senator should own a residence in his home state. As Mourdock often pointed out, he does own a home in Indiana. There was also the question of Lugar's infrequent trips back to his home state.

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, suggested last week that Mourdock would likely win on Tuesday, and related the story told by an Indiana Republican county chairman who said that he attended an Orange County Lincoln Day dinner in 1970 "and that's the last time I saw Lugar at a Lincoln Day Dinner".

As we said, he forgot who brought him to the dance.

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The Star Press, Muncie. May 9, 20120.

Vote centers way of future

Exact numbers aren't available, but the recently-concluded primary might prove to be costly to more than just the losing candidates. Taxpayers will have to fork over thousands of dollars to pay for the election. Some of those dollars could have been saved if vote centers had been in place in counties now without them.

In 2009, training and staffing for the election cost more than $100,000 in Delaware County.

As counties across East Central Indiana struggle to meet budgets, one idea that should gain traction as a means to cut costs -- and create efficiency -- is vote centers.

More of them are springing up across Indiana after the legislature studied the issue for a few years, then passed a bill to allow all counties to move to this system.

One of the newest converts is Blackford County Clerk Laura Coons. That county just conducted its first election using vote centers.

"It worked out really well. Everything ran smoothly," she said. Blackford was able to fold 12 precinct polling stations into two vote centers, one at the high school and another at Montpelier. Coons said the number of poll workers was reduced from 38 to 23, and that number might be reduced further as they gain familiarity with conducting elections in a new way.

The concept of vote centers is simple. Instead of voting at a precinct, voters go to strategic locations where their precinct information is available to be loaded into the vote machines. The centers are often located in places where people gather, such as shopping malls.

Wayne County Clerk Jo Ann Stewart said 99 percent of that county's voters live within seven miles of a vote center, and 93 percent are within a five-mile radius. "They're where the people are, but we also take care of our rural communities," Stewart said.

Wayne County has used vote centers since 2007, when it joined a pilot program with Cass and Tippecanoe counties. Wayne County has eight vote centers open on Election Day, and four are open a week before the election.

The centers eliminate the need for voters to get up early, or rush home from work to vote in their precinct. And it eliminates the chances voters will show up at the wrong precinct. That can happen with new residents, or when precinct boundaries change.

Besides convenience, vote centers will save money.

According to a 2010 study by Ball State's Bowen Center for Public Affairs, "The data on the costs of holding elections clearly show that vote centers save money. ... The bulk of the savings are found in direct labor costs."

Coons said she expects to see savings of $3,300 to $4,000 per election in Blackford County.

In Wayne County, early cost savings were found by reducing the number of poll workers from 300 for 58 precincts, to 100 or less. "When you're paying people $100 a day, that's a substantial savings," Stewart said.

Over the long term, Stewart said a cost analysis calculated savings of about $100,000 a year. A reduction in the number of vote machines needed, which can cost between $3,000 and $5,000 each, is a major component. Wayne County has 43,940 registered voters.

Back in 2010, the secretary of state's office projected Delaware County could save $32,500 a year with vote centers.

If county governments are serious about saving money, then vote centers deserve a serious look. For more than 150 years, the process of casting ballots has not fundamentally changed in Indiana. A system that once served the state well does not meet the needs of modern society or government.

It's time for that to change.