neal.mcnamara@heraldbulletin.com

Five hundred in Daleville. Some 600 to 700 in Muncie. More than 2,000 in Fishers and Castleton. And now 500 in Anderson.

With companies like IBM, Sallie Mae and now Affiliated Computer Services, call centers seem to be de rigeur in Madison and its contiguous counties.

With Tuesday’s announcement that 500 jobs will be brought to Anderson by 2010 via a call center run by Fortune 500 company Affiliated Computer Services, the question seems to be, why here?

According to Greg Dodge, Affiliated’s vice president of human resources, Anderson was chosen because the company likes the community.

The company was also offered incentives from the state and city.

Dodge also said that location and the availability of a work force sweetened the deal. However, he expressed concern that a close-by call center in Daleville might hurt the volume of potential employees.

When IBM announced in May that it would open the Daleville call center, it cited the town’s proximity to highways and colleges as its reason for coming to the town.

The massive Sallie Mae building in Fishers employs thousands in its call center. The student loan company, however, is in the process of being bought out by a private equity firm. And recently, according to published reports, 40 jobs have been moved from Fishers to two other states.

But companies like IBM and Affiliated have a larger stake in the state than most companies. IBM, with help from Affiliated and other companies, is overseeing the privatization of the state’s welfare system, a Mitch Daniels initiative. Daniels asked companies interested in the privatization to create jobs for state residents. The call center in Daleville, and the one planned for Anderson, are part of that.

“Today, with Affiliated Computer Services, Anderson gets the second half of the bargain with 500 jobs,” said Daniels at a news conference Tuesday.