Indy Star Opinion on 6 bills under the radar - A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Sunday’s Indy Star had a column entitled Legislation flying under the radar wherein the paper weighs in on 6 lesser known bills:

HB 1530 Mandatory school attendance age.

Raises the age of mandatory school attendance from 16 to 18 years of age. Specifies that a student may withdraw from school before becoming 18 years of age only for the reason of financial hardship, provided the student is employed and supporting the student’s family or dependents. Requires a student who seeks to withdraw from school before becoming 18 years of age or graduating to sign a written acknowledgment that the student and the student’s parent or guardian understand that withdrawing from school is likely to reduce the student’s future earnings and increase the student’s likelihood of being unemployed or incarcerated in the future. Requires the department of education to develop a written consent to withdraw from school form for a school corporation to use in implementing the written acknowledgment. Expands the reasons a work permit and driver’s license may be denied. Requires the principal of the school the student last attended to notify the department of child labor and the bureau of motor, if a student has not received consent to withdraw from school and the student fails to return to school.

The intent is laudable which the Indy Star notes while pointing out that it could boomerang. As a student, I recall being glad when I got to a grade where the dropouts had left the school. That’d just be another factor I’d urge the General Assembly to consider: the effect on the other students of forcing kids to be there who have absolutely no interest in their own education.

HB 1484 Capital funds for charter schools. Allows the state to use interest from the Common School Fund to seed charter schools. The Indy Star notes that this would help charter schools get federal matching funds and help them get on a more even footing with regular schools. I have nothing against charter schools, but in a time of such budget austerity where schools are losing funding or having meager funding increases, I don’t think Indiana has the money to spend on experimental start ups. I think our biggest problem is that we pay our teachers very, very poorly and, by and large, we get what we pay for. Another real problem we have is that working class wages have fallen such that both parents have to spend a great deal of time away from their kids to earn enough to make ends meet. I don’t expect the legislature to solve this problem through school funding, obviously.

HB 1174 Jury duty. Gets rid of exemptions for IPS board members, veterinarians, and dentists; lets potential jurors off the hook after one day if they show up and are passed over. The Indy Star focuses more on the elimination of exemptions than the quick release provision. Symbolically, I can see why. But I don’t think the elimination of those exemptions will matter a great deal to the jury pool. The quick release provisions will probably lead to quicker rotations in the jury pool. I don’t know if that will have any important implications or not as far as the performance of the jury, but it will probably mean you can get called to jury duty more often.

HB 638 Merger of townships. I commented on this one earlier. The Indy Star notes the merit in this proposal. My take is that I haven’t personally seen townships perform functions that couldn’t be performed by another unit of government. I don’t know how much redundancy there actually is or how much it costs, but if it is significant, then merger is the way to go. This bill provides a county with the option but doesn’t require it. It might also be useful to allow counties to simply dissolve the township level of government and choose to perform the functions at the county level. I also discovered a significant amount of blogging on the subject (links at my previous blog entry.)

The remaining commentary concerns SB 8: Arbitrations in Family Law Cases and SB 422: Clarifying Law Concerning Adoptions. I avoid family law in my professional life and I’ll avoid it here. I would take issue with the Star’s characterization of SB 422 as “clarifying” the law. To say you are “clarifying” a law implies that the law exists in some form that simply has not yet been precisely articulated. You are not changing it, you are simply expressing it more clearly. This is inaccurate because the law is entirely a human construct. It is nothing until it is articulated. So, by passing a law or an amendment, you are not “clarifying” the law, you are making the law. When writing digests, I always liked to use the term “specify” when lobbyists urged me to say that the law is being “clarified”. Just picking a nit — I’m sure my blog here would be easy pickings for anyone who wanted to apply the same level of scrutiny.

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