Efficiency group urges lawmakers to make changes in government

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana's governor and legislators must make bold changes if they want schools, universities and state government to operate smoother and cheaper, a government efficiency panel told lawmakers Wednesday.\n"There are going to be some hard choices -- some very hard choices -- to straighten things out, and these are going to be politically unpopular," John Hillenbrand, co-chairman of the Government Efficiency Commission, told the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee.\nAmong other things, the commission urged lawmakers to give schools more flexibility over operations and spending, create a cabinet system under the governor to oversee agencies, eliminate some agencies and boards and impose fees on some Medicaid providers to draw federal matching dollars.\nNew Ways and Means Chairman Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, said some recommendations would be tough sells in the General Assembly and could take years to implement, since many facets of state government took years to evolve.\nBut he predicted lawmakers would seriously explore some of the commission's ideas in the upcoming legislative session, and the group's work would last beyond that, too.\n"They won't all be adopted now, but I think it will continue to be a resource for some years," Espich said.\nThe Legislature created the commission last year at the urging of House Republicans. More than 50 professionals spent about 12,000 hours examining the inner-workings of state government in hopes of identifying potential efficiencies and savings.\nThe work was broken into four main categories -- K-12 education; higher education; general government; and Medicaid and human services. The group criticized many facets of state government and has recommended numerous changes in each of the four areas.\nSteve Baranyk, a business management consultant who led the subcommittee on general government, said the array of state agencies, commissions and programs were in a "hell of a mess," in part because they did not know what it was like to be measured and accountable like a business.\nThe commission said change should include cabinet-type officers who report directly to the governor, revised hiring practices and eliminating some of the state's 74 agencies and 319 boards and\ncommissions.\nThe subcommittee on education said schools have been strapped with too many state laws and regulations, a rigid, decades-old collective bargaining structure, and restrictions that stifle their ability to make spending decisions.\nThe commission said schools should be able to pool funding sources and decide for themselves whether money should be spent on such things as new buildings, teacher salaries or specific programs.\n"Get out of the way," said David Shane, chairman of the education subcommittee. "They (local school officials) won't be perfect, but now they can barely move."\nSome lawmakers, such as Republican Rep. Eric Turner of Gas City, offered recommendations of their own. He said Indiana could save hundreds of millions of dollars by encouraging the growth of private schools.\nHe said 11.9 percent of students in Indiana attend private schools, but the average in the Midwest was 19.9 percent.\n"I don't think we should just accept the fact that we should educate every child in a public setting and incur the cost," Turner said.