INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan for Indiana's economy has always been to make the state the best "sandbox" for business to play in while increasing the income of everyday Hoosiers.
In the last six years, Daniels has signed into law simplified business sales taxes, easy to understand unemployment and worker compensation insurance programs, and incentives to lure the advanced manufacturing of the future to Indiana today.
It's beginning to really pay off, Daniels said recently, pointing to more than 25,000 new or retained jobs in Indiana in the past 18 months, even as job growth elsewhere in the United States has stalled.
However, many of the new jobs in Indiana are concentrated in the northeast, near the Michigan and Ohio borders, and in the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Northwest Indiana has seen very few of the new jobs coming to the state.
In an interview with The Times, the Republican governor doesn't hesitate to admit Northwest Indiana is missing out on badly needed jobs.
"There's no way to candy coat this: our Northwest corner is still, unfortunately, not a very good sandbox," Daniels said.
For example, the governor said a Chicago company was recently interested in relocating to the region. The state's economic development agency set up a meeting with a local mayor who told the executives that they'd love Northwest Indiana because it was just like Chicago, committed to union labor and prevailing wage agreements.
"They said to our people, 'Where else you got?'" Daniels said. "They wanted to get away from Chicago, they didn't want to go to a place that looked like, thought like, acted like Chicago."
The governor said he understands how geography makes Northwest Indiana more a part of Chicago than the Hoosier State, but he said the region pays a significant price in terms of jobs and opportunities by choosing to emulate the city to the west, rather than the rest of its state.
"If it weren't and it had pro-growth, pro-business, high integrity government, right adjacent to Illinois, what is now a trickle would be a flood, I think, of businesses coming over," Daniels said.
Adding the problem, as he sees it, is too much local government in Lake County. That not only leads to higher taxes, he said, but makes it difficult for businesses to move in to the region because they're required to appease a half-dozen units of local government before setting up shop.
"These aren't problems unique to Lake County, but they're more pronounced there than any other place I can think of and it holds things back," Daniels said.
But the governor isn't giving up on the region. He said his proposals for local government reform are intended to help people in Northwest Indiana loosen the ties that are holding back the kind of business growth happening elsewhere in the state.
"We can hope that people will notice and say 'Hey, it's costing us jobs to have a reputation for less-than-honest government. It's costing us jobs to take a hostile attitude as opposed to a 'how can we help you' attitude to businesses that might come here. It's costing us jobs to have 28 municipalities and dozens and dozens of taxing districts and all the extra taxes,'" Daniels said.
If the region can make its business sandbox more like the rest of Indiana, the governor said he sees almost unlimited potential for growth in Northwest Indiana due to its proximity to Chicago and its transportation links to the rest of the nation.
But that change won't just happen on its own and the region could benefit from following the state's example during his term in office, Daniels said.
"We believe in vigorous action to build the best sandbox," Daniels said. "Not the kind of action that makes government bigger, but the kind of action that increases the chances that the private sector can flourish."