New Indianapolis Airport Authority Executive Director/CEO John Clark is looking at bringing more international flights to the state capital, which may be music to the ears of the state’s business community. Namely, he’s looking into more flights between Indianapolis and the European Union, which should also appeal to those who enjoy Oktoberfest, the Emerald Isle, and English food (ok, maybe just the first two).

Clark discusses with Gerry Dick of Inside Indiana Business. Watch the video here.

A recent Indianapolis Star article takes Indiana government to task for not providing online access to important public information. The story is based on a survey by journalism organizations that shows Indiana near the bottom of all 50 states when it comes to providing this information in digital form:

The days when tracking down pertinent public information required sifting through volumes of paper records have long passed. Or at least they should have here and elsewhere based on the technology now available.

We’re unaware of the state’s plans to increase information, but realize it will likely take years before state government provides the access businesses need. After all, we have had the same system of township government since the mid-1800s.

The Chamber’s own government information portal, IndianaNet, was not around during the Gettysburg Address, but has been supplying comprehensive online access to government information for many years.

IndianaNet provides regulatory information, agency information, meeting schedules and follows state legislative activity in real time. In addition to being a one-stop shop for complete government information, IndianaNet provides unique reporting capabilities and other powerful tools to ensure businesses are never blindsided by any state government or legislative action.

Click on the link to learn more about IndianaNet .

If you’ve been following our blog over the past year, you’ll realize we haven’t been too kind to Massachusetts. For evidence of our Commonwealth-bashing, see here and here – and for good measure, you better take a look at this as well. (Sorry, perhaps it’s just our Belichick aversion coming through.) But alas, the day has come to offer praise to the Old Bay State as we feature a column from former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith in Governing, in which he touts the reforms of Somerville, Mass. Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone:

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone has enacted transformative changes in the management of Somerville, Massachusetts, and has done so by championing the importance of cost and efficiency data for all city services to improve accountability and performance. These efforts led to the creation of the SomerStat program. His approach to reform serves as a particularly timely primer on how to establish new norms for tracking and improving service delivery, giving officials the tools to know where to cut costs, where to keep investing and where there are opportunities for innovation…

SomerStat has now taken Baltimore’s CitiStat program one step further by integrating real-time data into its arsenal. According to Hirsch, this has allowed the city "to intensify its reliance on data for decision making." The mayor’s office requires that all city data be centrally accessible by the SomerStat office. This means that data from more than 50 sources are reported to the SomerStat office, from enterprise-wide and stand-alone systems. In fact, Curtatone subsequently created a major new source of performance data by implementing a centralized 311 constituent center (the first such center in New England) that tracks and issues work orders for every resident request for city services.

The first success to come from SomerStat’s analysis of this data was when it revealed a persistent problem of excessive overtime in the police department. The biggest culprit was that overtime costs were incurred whenever an officer was needed to cover someone who was out sick. Police leadership immediately started working with the mayor’s office and the union to create a solution. By increasing the number of officers assigned to each shift, the police and the mayor were not only able to rein in overtime costs, but were able to improve their community policing efforts by maintaining higher staff levels for each shift. "We’ve reaped one of the first rewards of the SomerStat process," Curtatone said. "This is part of our overall effort to modernize city government, cut waste and improve services."

A new report card by Conexus Indiana contains some interesting findings regarding manufacturing in Indiana. On a positive note, the state ranks above average in terms of its global position. However, Indiana earns subpar marks for human capital:

Indiana continues to boast the strongest manufacturing economy in the nation, and is a leader in attracting foreign manufacturing investment – but long-term weaknesses in its workforce will undermine these advantages unless bold action is taken.

These are among the observations made in the second-annual ‘Indiana Manufacturing & Logistics Report Card,’ released by the Conexus Indiana initiative. The report card was discussed at a breakfast event hosted by Conexus in Indianapolis, which also featured a program focused on Indiana’s ‘clean technology’ sector, which offers manufacturing opportunities in areas like hybrid-electric vehicles and advanced battery technologies.

“Manufacturing has been the primary source of economic growth and jobs in Indiana for generations,” said Steve Dwyer, President & CEO of Conexus Indiana. “This report card helps tell us in an empirical way how vital manufacturing still is here – and most importantly, the issues we need to focus on to keep it that way." …

Other key findings from the 2009 Indiana Manufacturing and Logistics Report Card:
• Indiana ranks first among states in per capita manufacturing employment and 9th in logistics employment per capita;
• The state ranks first in income derived from foreign-owned manufacturers and 5th in reach of foreign investment, reflecting strong success in attracting global manufacturing capital;
• While Indiana ranks second among states in workers compensation rates, the state places 28th and 33rd respectively in healthcare premiums and long-term healthcare costs, making healthcare an issue of concern going forward;
• With rankings of 29th in percentage of the workforce with a high school diploma and 42nd in college-educated workers, human capital remains Indiana’s biggest long-term hurdle to future manufacturing and logistics growth.

The full 2009 Manufacturing and Logistics Report Card can be viewed online on Ball State University’s web site.

I enjoyed an interesting weekend, but that’s not why you come to this forum. Except, in this case, there is a business-related angle. The enjoyment involved the NCAA tournament, the nation’s gaming capital and you can guess the rest.

The implications for business started with West Coast winds that rocked our plane back and forth while it was still sitting at the gate. Thus, a long delay … a late arrival in a southern city with what I believe still has the busiest airport in the world … a missed connection … unhappy fellow passengers wanting to stage a riot … an overnight stay.

On the anecdotal side, a fellow passenger who said he once worked for Southwest Airlines (not the culprit here), offers that the in-air claims of "we’re working with the gate agents to do everything we can to help you make your connections" are bogus. On the more factual side, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) offers a paper titled "What Happened to the Airline Industry?" 

Among the fact-based review of industry changes is the statement: "Delays and full flights had made passengers so averse to connecting flights that adding a layover to the route could reduce the number of passengers on it by almost four-fifths." I’m not sure about that total, but NBER has the breakdown here.

A brief but to-the-point column from Governing’s Christopher Swope attempts to inject some reality into the green jobs discussion. He notes that while it makes for admirable rhetoric to tout "green jobs," one must look deeper than a label to determine if a green job is actually green:

Suddenly, everyone is talking about "green jobs." Task forces in Connecticut, Minnesota and New Mexico, among other states, are looking at how to attract, create and retain them. Meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has been trumpeting a report predicting 4.2 million new green jobs over the next 30 years.

That sounds nice. But what exactly is a green job? It’s a maddeningly difficult question to answer. There’s more hype than there is good research on the subject, and just about any claim anyone wants to make seems to stick.

That’s unfortunate. Because throwing around wild numbers masks where the real economic opportunities are. For example, manufacturing and installing wind turbines would create brand-new job markets in a country that never really has had much of a wind-power industry. But most of the jobs that get labelled "green" these days are positions that already exist and bear only tangential relationships to the environment. A study done for the state of Colorado counts some Wal-Mart employees as green, because a percentage of the products the retailer sells are Energy Star-certified. Cashiers, janitors, accountants, secretaries, lawyers, even government officials — all can be "green workers" if their work touches energy efficiency in almost any way.

Not that using less electricity and putting people to work aren’t worthy goals. But rather than chasing buzzwords, policy makers should recruit specific industries that have realistic chances of success in their states. When you dig into the numbers being touted on green jobs, you find a lot fewer photovoltaic specialists and geothermal engineers — and a lot more cashiers and truck drivers — than you may want.

Companies and employees are rightfully worried about the ramifications of the Employee Free Choice Act — or card check as it is more commonly known. The removal of the secret ballot from the union organizing process benefits one group — union leaders.

If the Democratic majorities in Congress make this a reality, states want a weapon in their arsenal. Utah is the first to place a measure on the ballot that aims to pre-empt the possible changes. The Legislature passed a resolution that would have voters decide whether they want to amend the state constitution to require that the secret ballot elections be maintained.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who offered his support for the measure as the Legislature debated the issue, says,  "This constitutional amendment would ensure that individuals will be constitutionally guaranteed the right to a secret-ballot for these types of important elections." The resolution will go before the voters in 2010.

Advocates for the measure argue it was needed because of the possibility that Congress will enact the card-check bill.

GOP state Rep. Carl Wimmer, the bill sponsor, adds, "Is the secret ballot under attack? Right now there is a movement going through the federal government that will — regardless of what you’ve heard — do away, effectively, with secret ballots when it comes to employee representation and forming of labor unions."

Several other states are pushing similar efforts. The group Save Our Secret Ballot is working on initiatives to amend state constitutions so that union elections are required to be conducted by secret ballot.