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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Oops

How in the world do you "misplace" so much money?

Indiana's governor announced Tuesday that state officials have found $300 million that went untouched even as lawmakers made deep cuts to education and slashed vacant government jobs while it weathered the recession.

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said the money was collected but never transferred to the state's general spending account, which lawmakers use to allocate funds to various programs and departments.

From a taxpayer viewpoint, I suppose it could be said that at least this is better than the opposite scenario -- thinking you have $300 million that turns out not to be there. But still . . .

And Daniels is making a mistake, I think, in trying to minimize the problem by pointing out what a small amount $300 million is compared with the state's yearly $14 billion budget. Most people see $300 million as a hefty sum, especially considering the cuts made to services by the state while that pile of money was just sitting there.

Oh, silly suggestion, I know, but since you didn't even know you had it, you could always give it to the taxpaye

Comments

littlejohn
Wed, 12/07/2011 - 12:11pm

I recall Sen. Dirkson saying something about those "small" quantities of money.
BTW, the JewelKraft game ad that pops up when accessing this page contains a virus. Do not play the game.

Christopher Swing
Wed, 12/07/2011 - 8:41pm

Except they'd somehow manage to spend half the money figuring out how to give any of it back.

Ad-virus stuff like that is being served on the page?

I tried turning off my ad blocker and Ghostery for a moment, but still didn't get any game ads.

Harl Delos
Thu, 12/08/2011 - 12:10am

I don't have any blockers, and didn't see anything, littlejohn. Perhaps you are already pwned.

littlejohn
Thu, 12/08/2011 - 12:19pm

The game looked harmless, but my antivirus software went into DefCon 4 when I clicked to play. It may have been a false alarm, but I can't recommend taking the chance.

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