With the first phase of the General Assembly's session complete, more than half of Governor Daniels' proposals for local-government reform are dead -- but the most significant pieces are still alive.

The Senate passed seven of the 20 proposals Daniels endorsed from 2007's Kernan-Shepard report on government streamlining, including proposals to give counties the option of replacing commissioners with a single county executive and local library districts with a countywide system.

Also winning approval: an elections bill containing four Kernan-Shepard recommendations, including a ban on municipal workers holding elected office with the entity that pays them, and shifts in the timing of elections for school board (November instead of May) and city offices (even-numbered years instead of odd).

Supporters estimate eliminating the need for elections in odd-numbered years would save $22 million.

The Senate deleted provisions that would have abolished township government. But the fact that a township-related bill made it out of the Senate at all has supporters hopeful of beefing it up.

Marilyn Schultz with the pro-Kernan-Shepard group MySmartgov.org says even the changes the Senate did approve would be an improvement, bringing "sunlight" to what she says is an often-murky layer of government by banning nepotism and giving county councils oversight over township budgets.

Seven of the 20 reforms Governor Daniels recommended, from abolishing the Gary and East Chicago Health Departments to having the state pay for courts, never got out of the starting blocks, as no legislator introduced thenm as bills. Four more, including consolidation of the state's smallest school districts and abolition of four county offices, were killed in the Senate.

House Speaker Patrick Bauer (D-South Bend) has said he'll review which proposals have the potential to save money before deciding whether to allow hearings in the House. He's assigned two of the four surviving bills to the Government and Regulatory Reform Committee, chaired by Indianapolis Democrat John Bartlett. The township and library bills haven't been assigned yet.

 

Daniels and former Governor Joe Kernan have an appearance Tuesday in Fort Wayne to promote the reforms.