Mitch Daniels: Governing by the Numbers

Businessweek has a fascinating piece about what makes Mitch Daniels an effective Governor of Indiana:

Indiana is one of 10 states that has seen its unemployment rate go down in the past year, from 10.5 percent in May 2009 to 9.8 percent in April 2010. It has a budget surplus and a triple-A bond rating. Property taxes and the state payroll have gone down. For the first time since the 1970s, more people are moving to the state than leaving.

Cruising past one of the state's abundant cornfields on June 9, Governor Mitch Daniels (R) has more reasons to feel good every day. An hour before, the former Eli Lilly (LLY) executive announced that a computer-design firm rebuffed the advances of Virginia and will expand into what was a Noblesville food mill. Checking his BlackBerry, he reads that Chrysler will invest $300 million to upgrade two Kokomo transmission plants. Now he's headed to Marion, to announce that the town will soon be home to a Chinese furniture maker's first assembly and wholesale center in the U.S.

"Government's the last great monopoly, overcharging and underserving its customers. It's not a business but can be more businesslike," says Daniels during a diner stop for a Styrofoam cup of black coffee. Daniels has tried to turn his administration into a case study of how a private-sector mentality can transform public policy. Partly by tying cash and tax incentives to job creation, Indiana, a state with just 2 percent of the nation's population, has generated 7 percent of the nation's new jobs this year. He saved millions of dollars centralizing and contracting out state services, including printing to Pitney Bowes (PBI), computer purchases to Dell (DELL), and prison food to Aramark, cutting the cost from $1.43 a meal to 99 cents in the process. "And," says Daniels, "the food's better"

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