By Eric Bradner, Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS - A top Senate Republican budget negotiator says he is investigating a doomsday scenario in case lawmakers and Gov. Mitch Daniels don't agree on a new budget in time.
If the General Assembly doesn't pass - and Daniels doesn't sign - a new budget before the current one expires at the end of June, most of state government would shut down.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley of Noblesville wants to see if Indiana would be able to tap into its $1.3 billion in reserves to keep the state government afloat for an extra month or so.
Kenley told a group of Franklin College journalism students on Friday that he has asked legal experts to determine whether the state can use its reserves in case no budget is passed by June 30.
Doing so, he said, could keep the state government operating for another "30 to 35 days."
"We are in uncharted territory," Kenley said. "I want to know what the options are."
Daniels wants a budget much leaner than the one that passed the Senate but failed in the House in the waning minutes of the General Assembly's session.
However, Democrats and some Republicans have balked at the governor's demand to trim at least $1 billion from that budget.
Carbon cap
Daniels took to the national stage to issue a blistering criticism of climate change legislation currently under consideration in the U.S. House.
He said carbon cap-and-trade legislation would double Hoosiers' energy bills without carving a serious dent into global warming.
"My fellow citizens are being ordered to accept impoverishment for a policy that won't save a single polar bear," Daniels said in an opinion piece published in Friday's Wall Street Journal.
A House committee is expected to vote next week on a plan that would limit greenhouse gas emissions and establish a system to allow companies to buy and sell credits to emit gases.
Hoosiers have enjoyed some of the nation's lowest utility rates, but almost all of Indiana's power is generated by coal, which releases carbon dioxide off into the atmosphere.
That means companies would have to buy extra credits in order to be allowed to emit the heat-trapping gas.
Daniels said Indiana is not arguing for the status quo. He pitched the state as one among the nation's leaders in wind energy and carbon sequestration in coal-to-natural gas plants.
"This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers - California, Massachusetts and New York - seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies," he said.
Daniels decried the "imperial climate-change policy" favored by President Barack Obama.
He said it is "government that cannot work, and we humble colonials out here in the provinces have no choice but to petition for relief from the crown's impositions."
Daniels vs Rokita
Todd Rokita, Indiana's Republican secretary of state, challenged Daniels head-on after the governor vetoed legislation that would expand the use of centralized vote centers.
"How ironic it is that the one local government reform that actually passes the Legislature ends up getting vetoed," Rokita said in a statement after Daniels' veto.
"Vote centers is perhaps the only local government reform that so far has been proven unequivocally to save taxpayers money."
The legislation had been designed to allow residents in counties that chose to use vote centers to cast their ballots at centralized locations rather than individual precincts.
"While this bill contains provisions that would make the act of voting more convenient, it does not contain sufficient safeguards against fraud and abuse and removes long-standing bipartisan checks and balances in the conduct of elections," Daniels said in his veto message.
Franklin College student Brittany Brownrigg contributed to this report.