It’s more of a "fix the darn system, train the people we have and give them the tools to do the job effectively" message. Just as has been the message with local government reform in Indiana, it’s not knocking the people (or at least most of them) but the bureaucracy that protects the status quo and prevents taxpayer dollars from being used efficiently.

Here are some of the details from the Government Executive article:

A May survey of 2,523 participants conducted by Hart Research Associates found that 67 percent of respondents believed a major source of government waste was due to inefficient federal employees receiving generous benefits or high salaries.

Respondents did not indicate a desire to cut federal pay, but instead expressed support for improved training and recruiting of federal employees to increase government efficiency.

Overall, respondents said they wanted a government that runs better, regardless of size. Sixty-two percent of respondents thought the government’s priority should be to improve efficiency and effectiveness, while 36 percent considered reducing the size of federal government a priority.

"Public lack of confidence in government’s ability to solve problems is more closely related to perceptions of government performance than it is a function of partisan affiliation or political ideology," the authors of the survey said in a statement. Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research; John Whaley, a Hart Research senior analyst; and Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, conducted the survey.

"They [those polled] are extremely receptive to reform efforts that would eliminate inefficient government programs, implement performance-based policy decisions, and adopt modern management methods and information technologies," the authors said. Forty-five percent of respondents said efforts at improving federal management should begin with holding government more accountable for how it spends money.

While the majority of those polled — 74 percent — believed government could be effective with better management, 23 percent said the government was "bound to be ineffective no matter what."

In New Jersey, cost cutting governor Chris Christie has state budget woes and education tied together. His target, however, is superintendents’ pay. Not only are there 591 school districts in the Garden State (that’s a ridiculous number), but apparently bidding wars contribute to driving up salaries. While the governor makes a tidy $175,000 a year, that salary is exceeded by 253 of the school leaders.

The solution (one that does not require any legislative or regulatory steps): superintendents will be paid on a sliding scale — the smaller the district, the smaller the salary. It was reported that 366 of the current 591 would be getting pay cuts. In addition, state government will negotiate the pay for the leaders of the 16 largest districts. There would also be caps for assistant superintendents and business administrators.

Christie’ s response when asked about the possibility of superintendents leaving the state: "If that’s the sole reason they’re here, then goodbye."

It just might be that Christie sees too much red tape to reducing the number of school districts (New Jersey also has tried unsuccessfully to eliminate townships), so this is a money-saving alternative.

My tourist tip of the year: take a bike ride during a visit to D.C. My family did just that earlier this month as part of an East Coast vacation. In a three-hour, nighttime guided bike ride, we learned more about and had time to reflect at all of the following: Washington Monument; White House; Lincoln Memorial; Jefferson Memorial; World War II, Korea and Vietnam War memorials; and a few other memorable spots. A little exercise and a lot of history in a short time period.

I come back to see a story on top presidential tourism spots in 2009. Abraham Lincoln leads the way, with Indiana contributing through visitors to one of his boyhood homes. Franklin Roosevelt and our first three presidents (Washington, Adams and Jefferson) were also high on the list. And there’s a few surprises.

Some highlights from the article:

According to figures collected by the National Parks Service , nearly 6.8 million people visited sites associated with Lincoln last year, including his memorial on the National Mall, Ford’s Theatre and childhood homes in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois.

In contrast was John F. Kennedy, who falls at the bottom of the list. His Massachusetts home drew only 16,000 visitors last year, mostly nearby residents and students on field trips. It’s only open part of the year and few people know about it, a National Parks Service rep explained. Many Kennedy enthusiasts pay their respects at the Eternal Flame in Arlington National Cemetery, where he rests, or visit the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, his living memorial.

Those and several other popular spots like Washington’s Mount Vernon and Jefferson’s Monticello are not managed by the NPS or included on this list. Among the lesser known entities:

Who knew that 162,000 people visited Herbert Hoover’s home in Iowa last year? That’s just shy of the entire population of Des Moines, Iowa’s largest city. The popularity of the place may have less to do Hoover’s presidency, which was darkened by the Great Depression, and more to do with modern-day marketing. 

The similarly situated James A. Garfield home in Lawnfield, Ohio, drew far fewer people. Just 17,000 people visited the site recently acquired by the National Parks Service, placing it second to last on the list. Though the Civil War general is a local celebrity in this Cleveland suburb, his national status was limited by the short length of his presidency. Garfield was assassinated six months after taking office.

Special programs, especially those timed to historical events, can make or break a site’s popularity. They even gave Lincoln a boost to the top. Though Lincoln has always been a popular draw — 900,000 people visited his memorial in 1936  — tourists flocked to Lincoln sites last year to celebrate his bicentennial.

The Adams family home in Massachusetts also drew relatively large crowds. Some 250,000 people visited the home of John Adams, who was overshadowed in life and in death by other founding fathers.

The Massachusetts birthplaces of both the second president and his son John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, draws many New Englanders interested in the family’s history. Its location just nine miles from Boston and close to beachside vacation homes doesn’t hurt either.

Tourists are willing to go off the beaten path for one particular president, however. Seniors who lived through Roosevelt’s presidency comprise most of the visitors to his home 90 miles north of New York City.

"For so many in the World War II generation, FDR was their only president," the NPS spokesperson said.

One would think that in these tough economic times, placing a help-wanted ad in the paper or online would be sufficient for netting employers a pile of resumes. But the Transportation Safety Administration has decided to target a very specific demographic in the Washington, D.C., area — pizza eaters.

The ad, touting a "career where x-ray vision and federal benefits come standard," is for TSA security officers at Washington-Dulles International and Reagan National Airports and is apparently popping up on pizza boxes around our nation’s capital.

Do you think this is an effective or embarrassing method of reaching potential hires?

I’m sure some would say pizza eaters are an odd audience for the message, but hey, if you can’t handle pizza (or dairy, for that matter), what makes you think you can handle a job at the TSA?

Indiana Chamber education expert Derek Redelman commented on that story, to provide more information and to further explain the benefits for Hoosiers. Again, the full story is above for those who need the background; the majority of Derek’s post is featured below and enhances the understanding.

The formation of WGU Indiana, along with Gov. Daniels’ strong public endorsement, offers a terrific opportunity for Indiana learners - for all the reasons that the story portrays. But there are more components to this development than is even noted in the story: First, the price structure is for time rather than credit hours or semesters. $3,000 will buy the student as many courses as he/she can complete in the six-month time period. So there’s a direct incentive - and a reward - for working hard.

Second, start times are flexible - with new groups starting every month of the year. So there’s no more waiting around for a new semester to begin. Once that adult learner takes the initiative to pursue his/her options, he/she can get started almost immediately - while the motivation is still high. That should lead to fewer lost opportunities. Third, completion/advancement is based on competency demonstration and is flexible to the individual learner’s pace. So for those students who need a rerfresher rather than a semester-long course, or for those who are able/willing to work faster than the traditional college pace, there is opportunity (and incentive) to do so.

While none of this is completely new, it is unique - as best that I am aware - as the default approach for any other institution operating in Indiana.

I do hope that the approaches offered by WGU will catch hold in other Indiana institutions. Yes, there are other online learning opportunities offered by nearly all - maybe every single one - of our public institutions. But how many of those are offered with the incentives/components noted in the story? I am aware of none. As for course articulation agreements that will be helpful to students, my observations indicate that we remain far, far away from achieving the level of convenience necessary.

I recall in the 1990s sitting through three years of monthly meetings - lasting 4+ hours per meeting - as our state institutions struggled to meet a legislative mandate for just 10 entry-level, for-credit courses to be tranferrable across all public institutions. Yes, the ’90s are "ancient history" at this point. And yes, Indiana is now well beyond that initial 10-course mandate. But the process for expanding on those articulation agreements remains incredibly arduous and the results of current agreements remain confusing to students. Indeed, there are courses taught at one branch of our intitutions that do not even transfer to other branches of the same institution. As yet another development resulting from the creation of WGU Indiana, it is my understanding that every single course taught at our community college system will be transferrable to WGU - and they did that without a years-long, committee laden, course-by-course, campus-by-campus process.

I remain a biased advocate for Indiana’s entire higher education system, and I completely agree with those who suggest that there are terrific opportunities here. But even the best can get better. And the addition of WGU Indiana adds one more institution to that portfolio of great options.  

It usually takes a good session with Chamber expert Vince Griffin to enhance my knowledge and understanding. But Vince is off on a well-earned vacation so I’ll have to go this one alone in saying that legislation introduced in Congress on Wednesday seems to have, in technical terms, a whole heck of a lot of common sense. And you seemingly can’t often say that today.

The authors are senators John (Jay) Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Opinions may vary on the performances of one or both, but they want to provide incentives for carbon capture and storage. Their states, like Indiana, generate the vast majority of their electricity from coal. It’s a different approach from the controversial cap and trade or other versions of reducing carbon emissions.

More on that in a minute. The senators added a provision related to a renewable electricy standard that is currently part of a separate bill. Instead of a mandate on the amount of power that comes from simply renewable energy, they want to add clean coal and nuclear power to that mix. Again, that simply makes sense in so many ways.

Details below courtesy of CongressDaily:

"If you really want to do something significant about reducing greenhouse gas emissions … this one piece of legislation would do more than perhaps anything else," Voinovich said. "This bill by itself has merit to getting it done this year."

Rockefeller said renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal power cannot be developed quickly enough to replace coal anytime soon, so Congress should invest in technology that makes coal clean.

"We’re going to offer [the bill], and I think it’s going to change the face of this debate," Rockefeller said. "A lot of our colleagues won’t face up to the fact that [renewable energy] won’t make up the difference."

The $20 billion in federal money in their bill would go toward developing large-scale pilot projects of carbon capture and sequestration, in which carbon emissions are captured and stored underground or elsewhere instead of going into the atmosphere. The bill establishes a regulatory framework to monitor and govern "long-term geological storage" of carbon, Voinovich said. It also funds additional programs through loan guarantees and new tax credits for companies that are early adopters of the technology.

The bill would be funded by a fee assessed to utilities in both the commercial and industry sector. Consumers would see an increase of roughly $10 a year, both senators said. The fees would total about $2 billion a year, which is how the bill would pay for the $20 billion.

Many of these are expected, although it’s nice to see the unheralded, mutton chop rocking Chester Arthur receiving some propers, or "mad props" as they said in his day (I’m not the best student of history):

Arthur, an almost-forgotten president, deserves to be remembered for his efforts to sweep graft and corruption out of government service by instituting the first merit-based system for hiring public employees—a system which extends to all levels of government today.

In the House (which doesn’t return until Tuesday), it’s less than three weeks until the August break (starting a week earlier than normal). House members will not be back in Washington until mid-September, with a targeted adjournment date of October 8 in order to hit the campaign trail fulltime in the weeks leading up to the November 2 election. Are we looking at a lame-duck session in November or December — or no action on major items until 2011?

For the Senate, the legislative backlog includes:

• Seeking two votes (Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe are the top targets) to move the financial regulatory reform conference report
• A lending pool/tax incentives increase for small businesses, which was originally seen as an opportunity to address other financial issues — including the expiring Bush tax cuts from 2001 and 2003
• A $75 billion war supplemental that faces a White House veto over issues unrelated to the original intent. The House added $16 billion, including $10 billion to local school districts to help avoid teacher layoffs. Part of the offsets feature recissions in education programs (among them Race to the Top); hence, the White House opposition

CongressDaily reports the following on that bill:

Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye did not include funding for teachers in the measure the Senate approved in May because it was unclear if there was enough support to pass the bill. 

Supporters of the teacher funding will also have to overcome opposition from a group of 13 Democratic senators led by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who called the proposed cuts to education programs "unacceptable" in a letter to Inouye earlier this month.

"Choosing between preserving teacher jobs and supporting vital education reforms is a false choice and would set a dangerous precedent," the letter said.

Or school districts could utilize any number of other cost reduction methods instead of simply cutting teachers. If only that suggestion would become part of the common practice.

As of July 1, many new laws became effective in Indiana. Chief among those was the Chamber-opposed bill that allows employees to bring guns to work, favoring gun rights over businesses’ property rights.

Popsci reports:

Like an early, static version of Twitter, license plates have long allowed drivers to stamp a statement right onto their bumpers, as long as that statement is of extremely limited length. But lawmakers in California are deliberating a bill that would allow electronic license plates that would display advertisements and other messages when cars are not in motion, turning every car on the road into a moving billboard.

When cars are moving, the electronic registration would display the usual numbered and lettered identifier. But when parked or stopped for more than four seconds in traffic or at a red light, the plate would display anything from advertising messages to emergency information or Amber Alerts.

For the highly insolvent state of California, such ad-bearing devices could generate a good deal of revenue. For drivers, they could generate a whole new source of distraction on our already media-saturated roadways. But in heavily gridlocked places like California, it could provide a fast means to disseminate important information quickly and even provide emergency instructions to drivers who regularly deal with natural disasters like mudslides, wildfires, and earthquakes. And don’t worry, Los Angelenos: You’ll still be able to advertise your ride as “SMOKN” in between the paid messages.