Workforce Development Commissioner Steve Braun
Hayleigh Colombo over at the Indianapolis Business Journal has reported that the Commissioner of the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) Steve Braun has resigned his post. Hayleigh Colombo reports in her article:
Steve Braun, the state’s Department of Workforce Development commissioner, plans to resign from his post at the end of August.
Gov. Eric Holcomb’s spokeswoman confirmed the news Wednesday to IBJ but declined to say why he was leaving.
"You'll know soon," said Stephanie Wilson, the governor's press secretary.
Braun, a former state legislator, was hired to lead the agency in late 2014 by former Gov. Mike Pence and retained by Holcomb earlier this year.
Braun's resignation will be effective Aug. 30, Wilson said.
She said she did not have a resignation letter she could immediately provide and said it was up to Braun to explain his reasons for leaving. Braun’s spokesman did not immediately reply to IBJ’s request for comment.
Colombo also notes that Braun's brother Mike Braun is also a candidate in next years republican senate primary.
Word on the street is that Braun is going to announce soon that he intends to run for Todd Rokita's seat in congress. Steve Braun before he was made DWD Commissioner was state representative for former DWD Commissioner Scott Sanders. Scott Sanders is now the Executive Director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA). How Sanders ever got his current job after totally bungling DWD is a mystery to many. While Sanders was at DWD the states project to modernize its unemployment insurance system was completed in 2013. Over five years after it's original deadline for completion and at double the original cost.
Readers of Advance Indiana and Ogden on Politics may recall the story of whistleblowers who reported how mismanagement at DWD caused the state's unemployment insurance trust fund to go broke. Which necessitated the state having to borrow upwards of $2 Billion from the federal government to keep paying unemployment benefits. Indiana was one of the first states to borrow from the federal government and had to borrow from the feds from 2008 to 2015. Gary Welsh and Paul Ogden's accounts of the mismanagement of DWD can be read here, and here.
IR thinks that Steve Braun is simply another party hack who should be kept out of any public office.
Wouldn't a "real" Republican shutdown something like this agency? Is the guiding principle of Republicanism that government is alright as long as it is managed by us?
ReplyDeleteEric Morris
The IR gang thinks that Unemployment Insurance should probably not be a government run entity. Originally private insurance companies used to sell unemployment insurance. But the federal government dictates the state's provide unemployment benefits. Now if the government should not be doing that. Then the correct conservative-libertarian Republican approach would be to change the laws. Not waste and steal taxpayer money or break the law. There is no free market with unemployment insurance because only government is allowed to provide it. DWD has been a cesspool since 2005.
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