Loading ...12 DAYS AND COUNTING
There are 12 days left before lawmakers are set to adjourn. I’m going to try to have daily updates from the legislature for your reading enjoyment.
The conference committee met today on HB 1001 and of course nothing was decided. There was some information distributed on how local governments could use local option income taxes to mitigate the impact of property tax caps. I thought it was interesting that according to Senator Luke Kenley, 70-percent of the impact on tax caps would be felt in three counties; Marion, St. Joseph and Lake. Go figure.
Kenley was adamant about caps put into the Indiana Constitution in order to ensure permanent relief, something House Democrats oppose vehemently.
Also at the Statehouse, Jill Long Thompson, the Democratic candidate for Governor left the door open to terminating the lease of the Indiana Toll Road. Thompson, who is skeptical of privatization, says she would reexamine the $3.8 billion deal and do what was “in the best interests of Hoosiers.” She did not outline where she would find the replacement revenue from the lease if it were revoked. However she did say the state might be able to cut a better deal. Thompson made her comments while outlining her plan for Indiana’s economy.
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The Democrats still haven’t got over the toll road lease-after all it was a major source of graft and corruption they had going up there. They couldn’t manage before to make it work and profitable but now they want it back.
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Everything the legislature has been doing, is SSDD (same stuff, different day). It is the same as 1973, 1982 and 2002. A temporary shift; of a small amount of property tax, to sales and income (COIT), then the property tax rockets up again, in a year or two.
When they strip out the constitution so they can keep stealing, you’ll be in the same boat again. But, this time their mark-up on the paddles they sell you will be much higher.
There will be NO change until property taxes are repealed and replaced with other sources. The only thing we can be assured of, is a repetition of the same, grim history.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Red Headed Step-Child,
Exactly right! One must ask the House Democrats why they don’t want caps put in the constitution. The only answer is so they can keep on raping us year after year, plan and simple. Business as usual!
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REMEMBER NOVEMBER
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Question? If Jon Elrod, our pro-repeal legislator, should win the special election, then won’t he miss the final pivotal days of the session where his promised taxpayer friendly vote is most needed?
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When does he swear in and when does he officially vacate his Indiana house seat, should he win the election?
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Is it allowable to do Congress job and a state rep job at the same time?
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Wow! That lease was cash up front, Jill. What were you planning to pay it back with now that we’ve spent a ton of it?
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Right now, the one thing that that could be done in the ‘best interest of Hoosiers’ is to eliminate that albatross we call ‘property tax.’
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Abbie, You have seemed to miss the article regarding daylight savings time cost millions of dollars to Hoosiers. Why? This was Gov. Blade only landmark policy he has seen through since taking office. Oh wait he sold the toll roads. That made us billions. Question ? Where did all the money go from the sale of the toll roads?? Where?
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
February 28, 2008 - Indystar
DST costs Hoosiers millions, study says
Residents spend more on heating and air conditioning than they save in lighting costs, researcher finds
By Tim Evans
tim.evans@indystar.com
The switch to daylight saving time is costing residential electricity users in Indiana $8.6 million a year, according to a new study.
“The point of this study is just to shed light on the old myth that daylight saving time saves energy,” said Matthew J. Kotchen, a University of California-Santa Barbara economics professor who conducted the study.
Kotchen said the energy-saving argument has been made since Benjamin Franklin raised the issue more than 200 years ago.
The study found electricity consumption — when differences in weather and other factors were taken into consideration — increased by up to 4 percent. The cost to individual households comes out to $3.19 a year.
Kotchen said DST reduces lighting costs, but increases both air conditioning and heating costs too much to offset those savings.
Still, he said, the study should not be taken as the definitive assessment of DST.
“I would not draw any conclusions from this as to whether you should keep or get rid of daylight saving time,” Kotchen said.
“The study looked only at residential electric bills and there could be other things that offset those added costs or make (DST) better or worse for the people of Indiana.”
Gov. Mitch Daniels pushed for the change to DST, making the switch a key part of his 2004 campaign for governor.
“The reason the governor supported daylight saving time was about jobs and removing a handicap from Indiana’s economy,” said Jane Jankowski, the governor’s spokeswoman.
Jankowski said Daniels never painted the change as being about energy consumption or savings to homeowners.
“It was about jobs, promoting economic development and getting Indiana in sync with the rest of the country,” she said.
A November Indianapolis Star-WTHR (Channel 13) poll found Hoosiers about evenly split on the time change. Forty-three percent said Daniels’ decision to move the state to daylight saving time has been bad for Indiana, while 44 percent think it’s been good. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Angeline Protogere, spokeswoman for Duke Energy, the state’s largest provider of electricity, called the study interesting but said it leaves many questions. She said Duke supported the change for economic development reasons.
“There are other ways to show the impact of DST,” she said, “particularly from a business development perspective.”
The 240,000 homes involved in the study represent about 35 percent of Duke Energy’s more than 679,400 residential customers in Indiana, Protogere said. There were about 2.5 million residential power users in Indiana in 2000, according to Census data.
The $8.6 million price tag was computed by projecting the added electrical use in the 240,000 homes involved in the study across all of Indiana’s residential electricity users.
Kotchen said the idea for the research project grew out of a conversation with a Hoosier dinner guest in Santa Barbara and a subsequent chance meeting with a Duke Energy official.
As his Hoosier dining companion was talking about his flight to California and confusion regarding time changes, Kotchen said, “he began telling me the history of the time debate in Indiana and that the state had recently switched to daylight saving time.”
At a conference a few months later, Kotchen said he met a Duke official and pitched his idea about getting access to Indiana data for the study.
Biggest gripes
Tom Andrews, Kokomo, said the added cost is just another reason to dislike the change to DST. He said he never thought the switch would save money.
“The added cost is minimal,” he said. “For me, its more of a light issue. It just knocks my body clock out of whack.”
Like many other Hoosiers, Andrews said his biggest gripe with the change is that most of Indiana is on Eastern time.
“I’m not surprised by this,” said Rep. David Crooks, D-Washington, who opposed the time switch and thinks most of the state should be on Central time with Chicago, not Eastern time with New York.
In the southwestern corner of the state where Crooks’ district lies, Evansville and neighboring counties are on Central time, while Washington, Vincennes, Jasper and Huntingburg are on Eastern time. Crooks acknowledges that it’s unlikely that any time zone arrangement will please a majority of people.
“If you wanted to be natural compared to the rest of the nation, Indiana should be Central. Because we were on Eastern for so long, it seems unnatural for Indiana to be on Central.”
Call Star reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204.
Star reporter Kevin O’Neal contributed to this story.
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Isn’t it amazing that the amount gained from the troll road lease and, the boo-boo on the MC reASSessment are nearly identical? One certainly gets more main-stream press than the other ‘though…
March 4th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
That step-child is right.
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I am surprised that the statehouse isn’t surrounded by middle-class americans wielding pitchforks and torches by now.
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I guess folks would rather stay in out of the cold now and risk being permanently out IN the cold later when their home is lost.