Hoosier thoughts

School consolidation
Journal & Courier

LAFAYETTE - Schools across Indiana began consolidating roughly 40 years ago, merging small community schools - almost neighborhood-like high schools - into larger schools.

Combining schools improved and deepened financial resources and offered broader, bigger and often better educational options for students.

The Kernan-Shepard report published last year suggested that school corporations with fewer than 2,000 students should consolidate for the same reasons it made sense more than 40 years ago.

Adding motivation to consolidate is the way schools will be funded after the property tax restructuring earlier this year.

School districts' general funds will be financed from sales tax and the money will be doled out from Indianapolis. Larger school corporations will receive more money, making it difficult for some small school districts to compete for funding or stretch their meager general fund portion into richer academic pursuits.

Changing demographics and population trends - as well as changes in education - require periodic reviews of how public schools are structured and financed. This is an optimum time for districts to look for ways to better serve students and taxpayers - if not through consolidation, at least through better cooperation.

Legislative pay
The Indianapolis Star

Applause rang out far and wide in 2007 when the Indiana General Assembly made a deal with the taxpayers. Now that the ovation has died down, it's rather easy to see who got the better of the deal, and it's not us.

Lawmakers had not voted themselves a pay raise since 1989; yet the sums they were pocketing for their part-time service had quietly swollen thanks to health insurance and pensions far sweeter than other state employees and most Hoosiers in general received.

In the face of public outrage, legislators voted to eliminate the health-care perk and cut in half the taxpayer contribution to their pension plan beginning in 2009.

In exchange, the legislature would be "up front" about pay. It would nearly double the base salary - to $20,700 a year - and peg any future increases to 18 percent of what judges made.

Hitching onto the judiciary means base pay raises at a regular, even annual, clip without the political hazard of having to vote on the matter again. And the doubling of that salary means the 2-for-1 pension match starting in 2009 will be just about as lucrative as four-for-one has been.

Veteran state Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, recipient of more than $100,000 in tax-paid pension wealth along with his $77,000 salary from the state-run Ivy Tech Community College, told The Star nobody cares about the issue except a "vocal minority."
Until and unless that vocal minority becomes a majority, he has tens of thousands of reasons to be blasé.

Mortgage crisis
The Herald-Bulletin

ANDERSON - In the past year the number of home foreclosures nationwide has been a sobering and frightening statistic. Many of them can be traced back to a subprime loan, which were given out in droves by mortgage brokers who saw more people getting an opportunity at home ownership and, of course, indebtedness to the broker.

A subprime loan is given to people with a less-than-stellar credit history. The interest rate is usually low enough to attract people. A couple of years later, the interest rate shoots up and the person holding the mortgage can't pay. When the mortgage stops being paid, foreclosure is set into motion.

It was an insidious practice to begin with. Now it's crashed and politicians are scurrying to protect the investment firms from going under and the families who are losing their home.

One way Indiana is being proactive is a law that went into effect Aug. 5. Mortgage brokers will have to pass new standards in order to maintain their licenses in Indiana. State Rep. Scott Reske, D-Pendleton, proposes legislation that will do away with pre-payment penalties. These penalties are used by brokers to keep borrowers from refinancing too soon. Reske also wants to see lenders put taxes and insurance into mortgage payments.

If such regulations had been in place, the foreclosure crisis would not have been as severe and many people who lost their homes would still be in them.