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INDIANAPOLIS – The state’s gubernatorial candidates hit southwest Indiana on Tuesday to offer up campaign proposals on education and health care.
Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels started first with a stop in Evansville, where he said he wants to move forward with a previous initiative to get more dollars into the classroom and out of administrative expenses.
Specifically, he wants the legislature to require that schools work through the Indiana Department of Administration to buy goods and services unless they can show they can get better prices another way.
And he wants to provide incentives to schools that are doing a good job of spending efficiently, as well as give teachers a $50 tax break on state income taxes for supplies they’ve bought for their classroom.
“Only 61 cents of every dollar spent in our schools makes it to the classroom, even under a liberal interpretation of what counts,” Daniels said. “Each 1 percent of improvement would mean over 100 million new dollars to hire more teachers, pay them better, make class sizes smaller, reduce the costs of textbooks and so on.
“That’s a huge opportunity, and we must seize it.”
In Terre Haute, Democratic challenger Jill Long Thompson unveiled proposals to make health care more affordable and accessible to Hoosier families and businesses.
She will be in Fort Wayne today to tout the plan.
“We have a real opportunity to make some meaningful reforms that will not only provide more Hoosiers with health insurance, they will remove economic barriers and allow Indiana to stand out from the competition,” Long Thompson said. “This approach is really a win-win for everyone concerned.”
She and running mate Dennie Oxley want to create a quasi-governmental health insurance purchasing pool with financial incentives given to businesses that buy health insurance through the pool.
Long Thompson also wants to expand insurance coverage options for young adults and opposes privatization of the welfare eligibility system that Daniels has implemented.
nkelly@jg.net
