Where are the jobs?
It will come as no surprise to northeast Indiana residents that the thousands of new jobs touted by the Daniels administration have not come to fruition. But an Indianapolis TV news report on inflated economic development success figures should prompt more honest reporting from the state.
WTHR-TV examined the Indiana Economic Development Corp.’s claim that the state gained more than 100,000 jobs and found it came up far short.
“There are empty fields and deserted factories where the state claims there are supposed to be thousands of jobs,” the report intones, over video that includes shots from a LaGrange County cornfield. “As many as 40 percent of statewide jobs listed as so-called economic successes have not happened, and most of them never will.”
The practice of staging VIP-packed news conferences and groundbreaking events certainly didn’t begin with Gov. Mitch Daniels. Elected officials from both parties always are eager to announce jobs and not-so-eager to acknowledge when they fall through. Central Indiana residents, with jobless rates as much as 3 percentage points lower than those in northeast Indiana, might be startled to learn that the job promises never materialized, but most Hoosiers were more skeptical of the initial announcements.
Still, the Daniels administration has been unusually bold in proclaiming economic success where none exists.
From the campaign commercial scrolling scores of new job sites to the State of the State jabs at neighboring states, the governor has offered up a rosy view. The IEDC’s annual report, labeled “Indiana’s Economic Successes,” was ripe for review. When questioned about it, the development corporation’s Chairman Mitch Roob tried to dismiss the label.
“I don’t know that we call it ‘success’ … what we call it is a ‘job commitment,’ ” he told reporter Bob Segall. When the reporter showed him a copy of the development corporations’ own report, Roob admitted that perhaps it should have been called, “the first step toward the path of successes” instead of “successes.”
Hoosier economist Morton Marcus calls it more clearly: “A commitment is not a reality,” Marcus said. “We need to be founded in reality. That’s the issue – where are the jobs?”
Unemployed Hoosiers have been asking that question for months and months now. The Daniels administration might not have control over the effects of a national recession, but it certainly controls how the state reports its efforts in coping with it. More honest accounting is needed.
•A woman has been charged with running “escort services” out of a Canterbury Green apartment. •People who have been charged with running a poker game out of Three Rivers Apartments are moving through the courts.