Daniels unsure of lobbying as Purdue president - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is having his legal staff determine whether he can lobby state lawmakers when he takes over as president of Purdue University in January.

Daniels said Friday he wasn't sure whether he could press members of the General Assembly on the university's behalf because of state ethics rules that require a one-year "cool down" for public officials after leaving office. If the law is unclear he said he would "lean" against lobbying in his first year at Purdue.

Daniels was named Purdue's president Thursday and will start at the university in January. The upcoming legislative session will be critical for university leaders as lawmakers craft the state's next two-year budget.

Indiana's public universities have struggled with state funding cuts and rising tuition costs in recent years.

Daniels says he was hesitant about accepting the job at first.

"Some of it was questioning whether I was the right model for them. Some of it was recognizing that there would be gaps in my background and I would have to work to fill, relationships with facility in particular and some of it was timing There was never any question of not completing the assignment I have now. There answer was that wouldn't complicate things, interim appointments are very common in higher ed, but still it hadn't occurred to me to make any decision about the future quite so soon," said the governor.

Meantime, Daniels says he'll live in the president's house once he takes over at Purdue University but will go back and forth to his Carmel home.

Daniels and wife Cheri chose not to move into the Indiana governor's residence after his election in 2004. They said the recently renovated home still needed $2.6 million in upgrades and that they planned to build a home in a gated community in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel.

The governor's residence had been empty before. No one ever lived in the second governor's mansion in downtown Indianapolis in 1827, and the house was torn down 30 years later.

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