By Justin Wilmeth
1787 Society Vice President
One of the best things about being involved with the 1787 Society is the opportunity to be in the same room with some very important political figures.
At our monthly meetings, we’ve been lucky to host elected leaders including Congressman James Lankford and Congressman Tom Cole as well as other influential government and business leaders. I’m very much looking forward to Attorney General Scott Pruitt joining us at the next meeting of the Society on October 28th at noon. I hope you’ll be there!
Our Society is blessed to have great support from the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. Their ability to draw national figures into the state to speak to Oklahomans is nothing short of astounding. Some of their most recent guest have included Sarah Palin and Jeb Bush. They both visited the state within the past year.
This month, at OCPA’s Liberty Gala in Tulsa, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was the star of the evening, bringing his no-frills, common-sense recommendations to the Sooner State. I have an aunt that lives in Indianapolis and she has raved about what Governor Daniels has done for the land of the Indy 500, so I was very much looking forward to hearing from him.
Despite his shorter stature, Daniels towered over the attendees with his plain speaking style. Working without a teleprompter and only occasionally glancing at notes, Governor Daniels kept the attention of the attendees with stories about how he shaved down state government in Indiana and reversed the state’s budget from deep red and back into black. He had a dry sense of humor that I greatly enjoyed.
My favorite story was about “a penny on a tire.” The classic story shows how bloated Indiana’s state government was at one time. Upon Daniels' arrival in office, Indiana had one vehicle for every 2.8 state employees- an insane ratio for such a small state. So what did Governor Daniels do? Rather than announce the problem and give the agencies a chance to defend all the cars littered to and fro, he assembled a team that undertook a simple task. They placed a penny on each car's rear driver’s side tire and came back in a month. If the penny was still there when they came back, they took the keys to that vehicle and sent it to auction. It goes without saying there were a lot of pennies left on tires when the workers returned. That plan brought lots of cash into state coffers and cut unneeded overhead.
That is just one example of things Daniels did to turn Indiana’s budget problems around.
This simple approach is why Governor Daniels is so popular and had a loud crowd of supporters urging him to run for president. He ended up declining (this time around, anyway) but his legacy as Indiana’s governor is being noticed across the nation. The fact that OCPA brought him to Oklahoma for us to enjoy ties us back to my original point – that this group makes it possible for the average citizen to be exposed to the best minds out there – both in our state and our nation.
If you missed this year’s event, I hope you’ll consider coming out next time around. Each spring OCPA has its Citizenship Dinner in Oklahoma City with the Liberty Gala in Tulsa following in the fall. I am sure that there will be an upcoming keynote speaker you just won’t want to miss.
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