hoosier lottery - A Few Minutes with Becky Skillman

March 16th, 2008 · No Comments

hoosier lottery - After the Governor’s presser, and the usual round of retirement speeches and wide arrays of legislative mutual congratulations, your humble correspondent had a chance to sit down with Chris Mann of Veritas Rex and Josh Gillespie of Hoosier Access to talk with Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman.

Photos of the event are available here.

Josh and Chris did most of the questioning; I mostly took notes and tried to avoid twitching from the prolonged withdrawal from the Internet caused by the interview and my inability to politely use my computer during it (well, not really; they just covered all of the topics I was interested in, and my note-taking skills are not what they were when I was in college).

Nobody, Skillman noted, expected an early completion to the session.

This year’s batch of legislative interns, she noted with a wry smile, were not disappointed in the amount of activity required of them; the short sessions are usually boring for the interns, at least relative to the longer sessions when the budget is being written.

Veritas Rex being present, questions quickly turned in a social conservative direction, in particular HR 1153 and the expansion of gambling.

Some regions, Skillman said, have focused on gambling as an engine of economic development, though she noted that she personally (a distinction she wished to emphasize) prefers other avenues toward economic development.

She then noted that she always preferred the Reagan position on gambling.

Color me surprised to see The Gipper come up at all in this interview, since the Lieutenant Governor is not (insofar as I know) running for President.

I later looked the exact quote up in my handy and well-worn copy of The Quotable Ronald Reagan so that I could accurately transcribe it here:

“I would hate to see legalized gambling in California, nor do I favor a lottery. We ought to finance the state by the strength of our people and not by their weaknesses.”
- Ronald Reagan, Remarks at Boys’ State, Sacramento, CA, June 21, 1973

It was an artful dodge, but still a dodge; I get the distinct impression that the Governor is going to sign HR 1153.

It will be awful if he does; it’s bad public policy regardless of your views of gambling as a moral issue.

The LG was pleased with the property tax reform passed by the General Assembly (obviously), and noted that of particular importance were the greater restrictions on the growth of spending (the caps and the various referendum requirements in particular), and the increased levels of local control of spending (referendum requirements, again, and the subordination of the spending authority of non-elected boards to the County Councils).

Josh asked a question about a Congressional initiative to expand t
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