Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels laid out an aggressive agenda for change Tuesday and gave a rousing pep talk to the Indiana General Assembly. His impatience in his State of the State Address mirrors ours.
It is vital to make these major changes now to ensure progress later.
Local government reform, for example, is important to make sure the people making decisions on local boards and councils aren't the government employees affected by those changes. It's a simple reform recommended by the bipartisan Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, yet it's common for local government employees to be their own bosses. It's time to forbid this unethical practice.
And while the Legislature is changing that aspect of local government, streamline it as well. As Daniels said Tuesday, "Likewise, our strange arrangement of a three-headed county executive should change. No business has three CEOs; no football team has three head coaches; no military unit would think of having three co-equal commanding officers." One elected county executive is needed.
Not all the change is needed at the local level, however.
Putting the state on solid financial footing requires making the bankrupt unemployment insurance fund solvent again. The Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund is funded by employers, but that doesn't make the fund's solvency any less urgent than aspects of government funded through general taxes.
The Legislature no longer can delay action on the unemployment fund and hopes the federal government will solve it. This is the state's responsibility, and the Legislature must face it head on.
The Legislature also must face education reform without flinching.
Providing the best possible education to all students means heeding Daniels' call for a blind lottery or other impartial means of selecting students for extra spaces in Indiana's schools.
Now that the schools are funded primarily by the state, with local taxpayers on the hook for primarily debt service and transportation, transfers of students between districts should be more freely available.
This competition, along with other reforms, will foster improvement in public schools.
Daniels referred to Public Law 221, passed in 1999, requiring schools to either improve or be taken over by new management.
"The little ones who entered first grade then, full of hope and promise, are 18 now," Daniels said Tuesday. "In the worst of our districts, half of them will not be graduating." That includes some in Northwest Indiana.
"For those children, we have waited too long," he said. And not just for them, but also for other students who will graduate but not with the quality of education they deserve.
If Daniels runs for president in 2012, he is going to need this session of the Legislature to accomplish the great goals he has set. But even more important, Indiana needs these things.
"Our children are waiting. Our fellow citizens are waiting. History is waiting. It's going to be a session to remember," Daniels told the legislators. "You're going to do great things. I can't wait."
Neither can the other Hoosiers counting on the Legislature this year.