Mutz Splits With Daniels And Roob, Wants Clean Job Numbers

In a major embarrassment to the administration of Gov. Mitch Daniels, former Republican Lt. Governor John Mutz is demanding that the actual job numbers from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation get cleaned up in the wake of a WTHR Investigates report by Bob Segall that suggested the job numbers touted by the agency were grossly inflated. Mutz sits on the policy committee for the IEDC and formerly headed up Indiana's economic development efforts when he served under former Gov. Robert Orr. Segall reports on what Mutz is saying about those job numbers:

For months, Eyewitness News has been asking IEDC where are all the jobs it's been bragging about? And now, the agency is asking that question, too.


John Mutz is a veteran politician and businessman. The former lieutenant governor now sits on the policy committee of the IEDC, and he wants to know Indiana's real job numbers.

"The transparency issue has to do with whether we clean up our data often enough," said Mutz. "I thought it was important to get it out on the table today and we talked about it."

The discussion took place this week, behind the scenes at an IEDC board meeting. It comes after 13 Investigates showed the agency has been inflating the state's job numbers by continuing to report jobs that never materialized.

"We're going to insist on an annual basis that this takes place; alter those totals every year," said Mutz.

Mutz says IEDC needs to be more accurate and transparent and its annual reports must reflect real jobs, not just a laundry list of promises and projections that may never come true.

"If you have a company that went out of business and they're not going to create the rest of the jobs they committed, so you take them off the list. You got a company that's down a little because of the recession, they don't create the jobs as fast they would, so you alter their estimates. It's those kind of refinements that have to take place," said Mutz.

Each year, IEDC gives away millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives to help bring companies to Indiana and you're paying for it. This board members says that's why you deserve to get the truth - to see how many jobs you're getting for your money.


"I think it's important for the public to understand what this money has been used for to know if they grants have produced the results that the governor claims. That's a realistic thing to ask," said Mutz.

A few months ago, IEDC released revised job numbers but they still don't add up. That's because the agency does not acknowledge thousands of jobs that fell through at companies that decided to cut back. The former lieutenant governor says IEDC will now begin re-assessing all jobs previously reported by the agency, and that will hopefully result in much more accurate statistics.

Mutz' comments bolsters the efforts of House Speaker Pat Bauer and other Democrats to get IEDC to more fully disclose information it is shielding from public disclosure under claims of confidentiality on behalf of the businesses to which the agency awards incentives. This will also make it more difficult for the Daniels administration to claim the issue being raised by critics is all about politics. I can only imagine how peeved Daniels and Roob are with Mutz, but it's their own fault. Roob has made a complete mess of every management job he has ever held, whether it was during the Goldsmith administration or the current Daniels administration. Republican leaders continue to tout him as some boy wonder despite his horrendous track record and his knack for pissing off people through his condescending ways.