Governor gets earful about BMV
Friday, Sept. 2, 2005
By Diane Krieger Spivak / Post-Tribune staff writer
CHESTERTON — Eggs and coffee weren’t the only things on the lips of customers at Northside Diner on Thursday morning.
The closing of the Chesterton Bureau of Motor Vehicles branch, unions and Hurricane Katrina were on the menu when Gov. Mitch Daniels dropped in, sleeves rolled up, to press the flesh and eat breakfast with locals.
As he made his way from table to table, Daniels listened to concerns and more than once defended the closing of BMV branches throughout the state, including Chesterton’s, saying the closings were necessary to cut waste and make the bureau more efficient.
Indiana, behind only California and Texas in the number of BMV branches, wants more people to use the Internet and U.S. mail to conduct BMV business.
“There are still a lot of people who are never going to have access to computers,” Westchester Township Assessor Candy Crone, a Republican, told the GOP governor.
Her husband, former Chesterton Town Council member Bob Crone, told Daniels of one person who had to wait 31Ú2 hours at the Valparaiso branch.
Duneland school bus driver Karen Mitchell said she can’t conduct BMV business on the Internet because bus drivers must take several tests in person at a bureau.
“I don’t want to go 20 miles away to get to one,” she said.
Daniels said BMV improvements, including a major computer system upgrade would take time, but that changes including longer periods between renewals than were previously required should help in the long run.
Daniels said Burns Harbor could be directly affected by the hurricane since Louisiana’s port can’t operate, due to the hurricane.
“That could lead to more traffic in Burns Harbor,” Daniels said.
Indiana is sending assistance to the hurricane disaster area, concentrating in Mississippi, Daniels said.
Jerome Davidson, president of the Northwest Indiana Federation of Labor, and Dennis McCafferty, of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 21, gave Daniels a letter addressed to him and the governors of Illinois and Pennsylvania. The letter was asking for help toward Comcast cable workers’ struggle to form a labor union.
Daniels said he was comfortable with Indiana’s labor laws.
“If you can organize a labor union, more power to you,” he said.
Davidson also passed along his concerns about education funding, noting that his wife, a teacher with 30 students has no classroom aide.
“You’d be amazed how little of it (funding) gets to a classroom,” Daniels said. “Next year we’re getting more dollars into the classroom.”
Indiana is 48th of all states in the nation in percentage of money spent on teachers, he said.
“The dollars are getting swallowed up in something,” Daniels said.
Diane Krieger Spivak can be reached at 477-6019 or dspivak@post-trib.com.
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