10:25 a.m.: Daniels recognized by Governing magazine

The Associated Press

October 10, 2008 10:24 am

— Governing magazine named Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels on Thursday as one of its top eight public officials in 2008, citing him for getting infrastructure and health care legislation passed and putting Indiana government on strong financial ground.
The magazine names one governor each year among recipients of its Public Official of the Year award for outstanding achievement in state and local government. New York Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, was the governor chosen last year by Governing, which calls itself an independent, national magazine devoted to coverage of state and local government.
A news release from the magazine said Daniels had “championed landmark infrastructure and health care legislation, while improving the management of state government and putting his state on sound fiscal footing.”
Alan Ehrenhalt, the magazine’s executive editor, said the mention of infrastructure referred to legislation that allowed Daniels to lease the Indiana Toll Road to a foreign consortium in exchange for an upfront payment of $3.8 billion. The money is largely being used to fund highway and other transportation projects.
Daniels also won legislation that increased cigarette taxes, with the money used to fund a new program that is providing health insurance to more low-income residents.
Ehrenhalt said the magazine was not judging whether such things would be good or bad in the long run, and it was not necessarily endorsing everything Daniels has done.
But, he said, “He has shown a great deal of creativity and those are qualities we need in public officials.”
Jeff Harris, spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jill Long Thompson, said just because Daniels has done some different things did not mean they were good for Indiana.
“Unfortunately in these experiments, Hoosiers have been lab rats and we’ve not come out on the winning end of any of these experiments,” he said.
Long Thompson has criticized the Toll Road lease as a bad financial deal for the state, especially in the long run, and has said that other privatization moves by Daniels have resulted in poor services.