LAFAYETTE – The question came minutes after Gov. Eric Holcomb went over the bullet points of his latest agenda, a recitation that took five poster boards to capture and a good 40 minutes to round up during a stop last week at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette.
He was “laser focused,” he said, on beefing up the state’s approach to a rampant opioid problem, putting computer curriculum into Indiana’s public schools, finding more help for veterans and “skilling up” Indiana’s workforce.
That last one was No. 1, Holcomb said, reflected in a reorganization of his Statehouse office around what he called the Governor’s Education to Career Pathway Cabinet and the promise to kick start similar task forces across the state to deal with site-specific, regional education and training challenges.
“I think we’ll be the first nation in the country to crack the workforce shortage code,” Holcomb said.
Then the question came about what wasn’t on his poster boards.
Nothing about Sunday retail alcohol sales or the laws that cover which stores can sell cold beer for carryout?
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If it had been, the governor would have had a perfect chance to get his point across.
Sitting in the third row of that Ivy Tech classroom – among a couple of dozen West Lafayette elementary students there to accept Holcomb’s promise to join their efforts to make the Say’s firefly Indiana’s state insect – was state Sen. Ron Alting.