Imagine for a moment you work in Chicago every day and commute from Northwest Indiana. It's not a tough scenario for many regular Region commuters to envision.
Now imagine calling your boss on a Monday, noting you don't intend to come to work on Friday because a festival in the big city promises too much traffic gridlock for the commute. You're going to start the upcoming weekend early to avoid that logistical headache.
It's likely your boss or supervisor would tell you to plan ahead, leave early or be fired. It's also likely you consider this scenario hypothetically silly.
But the Indiana Legislature — hired at the polls by voters to do the business of the state — is on the cusp of doing something outrageously similar.
Hoosier lawmakers recently announced they're likely to wrap up their 2016 legislative session a few days prior to the mandatory March 14 adjournment date.
Why? Because the Big 10 Men's Basketball Tournament, which runs from March 9-13, would overlap with the legislative session and the General Assembly's slated March 14 adjournment.
It seems some lawmakers want to adjourn March 9 — or even earlier — to avoid the logistical interruptions the tournament will cause in scarce hotel rooms and other accommodations.
We feel comfortable speaking for the voting taxpayers who put these lawmakers into office with this admonition: Get to work, stay at work until the job is done, and don't rush out early as matter of convenience for yourselves.
Logistical problems created by a basketball tournament, which should have been on our lawmakers' collective planning radar, isn't our problem. Legislative "short" sessions last only about 10 weeks in the first place, and there are numerous issues deserving careful consideration.
Legislators were hired to do a job. In fact, they sought these jobs, some aggressively, through political campaigns.
Now they should aggressively go about serving the state of Indiana and not look for excuses to cut out early.