CNN has an interesting article today on the bellwether Ohio town of Chillicothe. The town is still collectively on the fence regarding the McCain/Obama question, and may serve as a microcosm of many similar areas throughout the Midwest:

No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, a state that has received more visits from the candidates and their running mates this year than any other.

Inside the bellwether state is the bellwether town of Chillicothe, a town that often mirrors the state’s election results.

Voters there are divided.

With less than a month to go until the election, it’s concerns about the financial markets and the economy that dominate the airwaves at the town’s radio station.

"The only other people that’ve experienced something like what we’re experiencing now are our grandparents or our great-grandparents," host Dan Ramey said on his radio show on WBEX-AM.

We all have that crazy aunt or uncle that we can’t help but love. For me it’s an uncle who lives in the South, loves to leave me prank phone messages about politicians and happens to be a bigwig for an automotive company.

When it comes to business though, he’s, well, all business. So when I told him I was writing a story about the new Honda plant in Greensburg, he interjects, “We’re a pain, aren’t we?” – referring to the auto industry’s cautious interactions with the media.

Getting information about Honda for the BizVoice story did take a lot of patience, I will admit (about two months, but who’s counting?). But that’s OK. After all, they were hustling to wrap up two years of work on the $550 million plant.

Those two years of planning, training and building culminated with one (with many more to come) shiny black car early this morning. Greensburg’s plant began mass production today when its first four-door Civic rolled off the assembly line.

Congrats to both the city of Greensburg and Honda. We’ll be looking for more of those fuel-efficient Civics traveling along I-74.

13th Floor (the blog of Governing magazine) just released its 2008 Public Officials of the Year results, and Indiana’s own Governor Mitch Daniels was named Governor of the Year. This is actually a sneak peek of information that will be released in their magazine in November.

An accompanying press release explains Daniels was honored for championing "landmark infrastructure and health care legislation, while improving the management of state government and putting his state on a sound fiscal footing." The awards are also discussed here.

I’ll admit to being a huge fan of Law & Order. When the original series (Fred Thompson did better work there in recent years than on the 2008 presidential trail), or one of the spinoffs (SVU, Criminal Intent) promotes a plot as "ripped from the headlines," it’s usually quite twisted and entertaining.

The only problem is that the stories truly are taken from real life cases. In that setting, it’s more costly than funny, more ridiculous than riveting. Let’s not even consider the financial factors — which impact all taxpayers — here. Simply look at some of the issues contributing to the overcrowding of the legal system. The Heartland Institute has a periodic publication (here’s the latest) that summarizes the worst of the worst. Hint: there’s part two of the lawyer suing his dry cleaners over a lost pair of pants and seeking punitive damages.

It’s often written that tort refom is needed. Tort sounds like something that should be popping out of your toaster in the morning. The simple, straightforward name is lawsuit abuse. And it’s being practiced by a set of lawyers who are playing a game, not practicing their craft in the way it was intended.

Hoosier scribe/pundit Brian Howey recently penned a thoughtful article on township government and the gubernatorial race. The piece is worth a read, and our own Mark Lawrance is quoted:

Mark Lawrence [sic], senior vice president for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, is part of a consortium that includes the Indiana Association of Realtors and the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership that is pushing a “yes” vote on the referendum.  He said the coalition would have limited resources, though he expects some direct mail campaigns in the coming weeks.  He called the assessor referendum “a bump on the road on the way to Kernan-Shepard.”

The fact that the referendums come in each township, as opposed to countywide, means the “deck is stacked against us,” Lawrence said. The problem is that poor assessing in one township can impact property taxes for the entire county.

“We hope there will be enough interest in having fair assessments,” Lawrence said. “You want to make sure your house is assessed fairly as well as the neighbor’s down the street,” noting what he called the current “fragmented system.”

“If people understand it under those terms, they’ll see it impacts their pocketbooks,” Lawrence said.

An influencing factor may be the recent Washington and Warren township fire mergers with Indianapolis. “That went very smoothly,” Lawrence said. “It is saving millions of dollars. There has been no decrease in services.”

A new organization – MySmartgov.org - is looking for individuals and civic organizations that are troubled by redundant and costly layers of local government in Indiana and want to see that changed. Currently, the Hoosier state has more layers of local government than all but two of the 11 states of similar size.

The focus of MySmartgov.org is to persuade the 2009 General Assembly to adopt the recommendations to streamline government made by the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform. The ultimate goal is to make local government more fair and efficient.

Some steps already have been taken. The 2008 General Assembly abolished township assessing duties in 965 townships, shifting those duties to their respective county assessors. The Legislature also set qualifications for some county administrative officers; shifted funding for child welfare from the counties to the state; and established the requirement that all increases in taxes be reviewed by elected officials.

The executive director of MySmartgov.org is Marilyn Schultz, a 14-year veteran of the Indiana House of Representatives and state budget director under Govs. Kernan and Frank O’Bannon. 

For more information or to get involved, visit the MySmartgov.org web site.

Obviously, the Great Lakes Compact has been far from the front page of most newspapers lately. However, the Chamber-supported bill that was put forth by bipartisan efforts in eight states and two Canadian provinces is a big deal for the Midwest, and is now officially a law.

Negotiations leading to the compact began in the late 1990s after an Ontario consulting firm obtained a provincial permit to ship 158 million gallons of Lake Superior water to Asia each year.

It later was withdrawn, but the case sent a shudder through the region and led the governors to investigate whether they had sufficient legal authority to reject similar attempts.

Supporters noted a United Nations estimate that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population would lack ready access to clean, fresh water.

The compact drew bipartisan support and was endorsed by presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain, as well as business and environmental groups in the region.

In this year’s state legislature, the passage of SB 45 made Indiana the first state to adopt the Great Lakes Compact and implemenation language. Prior to the session, the Chamber, in cooperation with environmental interest groups, hosted the Indianapolis public meeting on the compact. In testimony, the Indiana Chamber expressed its support for the bill, noting that nearly 20% of the world’s fresh water is contained in the Great Lakes and that we must do what we can to preserve and protect this valuable resource that is critical to many Indiana businesses, industries and residents.