The Senate passed HB 1037, extending the sales tax exemption for the low income home energy assistance program until July 1, 2009. Passed 48 to 0.

The Senate passed HB 1075, Individual development accounts by a vote of 48 to 0. Provides that money withdrawn from an individual development account (IDA) may be used to pay for the rehabilitation of the individual’s primary residence. Raises from $300 to $400 the amount deposited in an IDA in a year that the housing and community development authority (authority) must match with state funds. Provides that the authority may match any portion of an individual’s deposit into an IDA each year that is over $400. Raises the limit on the amount the authority may annually match from $900 to $2,400 per account. Raises the number of IDAs that may be established annually from 800 to 1,000 beginning July 1, 2009. Provides that if the amount appropriated by the general assembly for IDAs is insufficient to make the required matching deposits, the authority shall proportionately reduce the amounts deposited into each account.

Passed by a vote of 48 to 0, HB 1381, neglect of a dependent. Specifies that a person having the care of a dependent commits neglect of a dependent as a Class C felony if the person’s abandonment or cruel confinement of the dependent: (1) deprives a child of necessary food, water, or sanitary facilities; (2) consists of confinement in an area not intended for human habitation; or (3) involves the unlawful use of handcuffs, a rope, a cord, tape, or a similar device to physically restrain the child. Brings to mind the case of Aiyana Gauvin in Lafayette.

Passed by a vote of 48 to 0, HB 1456, utility receipts tax. Exempts gross receipts derived from the sale of utility services between members of a controlled group of corporations or an affiliated group from the utility receipts tax if: (1) the seller is the producer of the utility service and the purchaser is the end user; and (2) the seller and the purchaser exist at the same location or adjacent locations.

Senate Bill 94 passed the House 88 to 1. As you may recall, this is the bill that merely edits the terms in the Indiana Code by which individuals with disabilities are referred. And it’s not like the current version uses the term Mongoloid to refer to retardation or anything. Rather, the bill wastes a lot of paper to do things like change “hearing, deaf, and hard of hearing individuals” to “individuals who hear, individuals who are deaf, and individuals who are hard of hearing.”

Other than killing a few trees, I guess the bill doesn’t hurt anybody. Still, to my jaded sensibilities, it seems a tad on the hypersensitive side.

[tags]SB94-2007[/tags]

House Bill 1059 requiring each school corporation to include a study of the Holocaust in each high school United States history course has passed the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development by a vote of 8 to 1. The Senate committee deleted a provision passed by the House which specified that “good citizenship instruction” included stressing the nature and importance of “respecting the dignity and value of others when they make decisions that the student believes are not the best.”

I certainly wouldn’t mind schools teaching kids about the Holocaust, but all-in-all, I oppose this bill because I really don’t like the legislature micromanaging school curricula.

[tags]HB1059-2007, education[/tags]

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article on HB 1678 entitled Bill spurs debate on mandatory ER at specialty sites. You may recall a previous discussion about the bill. My guess as to the problem being addressed was close. According to Rep. Charlie Brown:

Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, authored House Bill 1678 because of the new trend of doctor-owned, for-profit specialty hospitals that do not have emergency rooms.

He said emergency care is expensive and the move away from the service is unfair to community hospitals that do run an emergency room and are required by federal law to treat all patients regardless of insurance. The situation has worsened because some more traditional hospitals feel the newer boutique hospitals are siphoning off lucrative patients that have private insurance or Medicare coverage while not doing their share of charity work.

Technorati Tags: HB1678-2007, health care

House Bill 1269 would require headlights to be used on motor vehicles when weather conditions require the continuous use of windshield wipers. Current law requires headlights to be used whenever “due to insufficient light or unfavorable atmospheric conditions, persons and vehicles on the highway are not clearly discernible at a distance of five hundred (500) feet ahead.” So, I’m not sure what practical effect this will have other than, with the proposed legislation, you can make it simple for people: If you need your wipers, turn on your headlights.

It narrowly passed the House and has now been referred to the Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal, and Civil Matters. It got a write up in Land Line Magazine. The magazine describes the legislation as mandating “a practice that is second nature to many professional truckers and other motorists.”

[tags]HB1269-2007, motor vehicles[/tags]

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article entitled Annual pay raise idea wins Senate nod. As usual, I’m a little bit torn here. I don’t mind legislators making a little more money, and I think the current system is a bad idea. The “part time” legislators have a base salary of $11,600 which has been the same since 1985. But, there are a variety of add-ons, most significantly their per diem, that turn the average compensation for legislators to about $40,000 per year. These back-door methods of compensating the legislators make the system feel a little corrupt even when they aren’t and even where legislators aren’t being unduly compensated.

But, it’s essentially the fault of the citizenry that the compensation system hasn’t been more forthright. We freak out every time anyone in the government considers a pay raise. The attempt to deal with that in the pending legislation is to tie legislative salary to judicial salary which has apparently been given an automatic pay raise mechanism. So, now we have automatic pay increases for legislators. That’s not necessarily a good thing either.

What I’d like is a system where legislative pay is forthright, where legislators themselves have to vote directly on future pay increases for themselves, and where the citizenry and political opponents don’t go ballistic if the pay increase is reasonable. However, because I’m not suicidal, I won’t be holding my breath until this comes to pass.

Technorati Tags: SB401-2007

House Bill 1308 Rep. Cheatham. Local review of confined feeding operations. Allows the department of environmental management to approve the construction after May 10, 2007, of a confined feeding operation only if the construction has been approved by the local health department and the local zoning authority. Establishes the procedure for local approval, including an appeal to the county executive of an approval or denial.

Passed 56 to 41.

[tags]HB1308-2007, CAFOs[/tags]

House Bill 1177 Loss of office due to delinquent child support. Rep. Dvorak. Requires a state or local government officeholder who has been subject to a judgment: (1) of at least $15,000 for delinquent child support payments; and (2) for more than 30 days; to be removed from office. Passed the House 92 to 2. The two nay votes were Rep. Vernon Smith and Rep. Vanessa Summers.

This bill arises out of the case of Roseland City Council member David Snyder. Snyder was prosecuted by Rep. Ryan Dvorak’s father, St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak. Michael’s wife and Ryan’s mother is apparently in charge of child support collections for the county. David Snyder’s current wife apparently ran against Ryan in the Democratic primary for the state representative seat. Snyder was about $90,000 in arrears for child support payments for his two teenage sons in Texas. Snyder had his real estate license yanked for his transgressions.

Some South Bend Tribune stories on the saga here, and here.

The law seems reasonable generally, my reservations with respect to laws introduced for particular cases notwithstanding. But, the Dvoraks’ frustrations with Mr. Snyder really resonate with me based on the facts described in the South Bend Tribune stories linked above. I’m a debt collector, so my tendency is to identify with creditors. However, I am perfectly aware that life gets out of hand sometimes and folks get into financial messes they can’t get out of. I work with folks who are at least making an effort to pay their debts. Some debt collectors immediately go the brass knuckle route. I generally have more success treating people with respect and trying to reach a reasonable accommodation. 

But some people just don’t get it. They are obstinate. They aren’t going to pay their debt, and they don’t care what a court has to say about it. Nothing gets my hackles up faster than someone telling me what they will or won’t pay. Tell me sweet lies about how you’re really trying, you’re really sorry, but you just got into a jam and really, you’re going to pay next month. But make the lies plausible, make an effort to pay, and above all, do not tell me that you’re not going to pay, and I can’t make you. Because if you do that, I’m going to bring as much of the heavy handed mechanisms of the law to bear as I can to collect the debt. And when I suspend your license for damages from your uninsured auto accident, I’m not going to be moved by your lamentations that you can’t get to work without a license. I’m not going to care that garnishing 25% of your take home pay doesn’t allow you to pay your other bills. If you got to that point, it’s because you didn’t pay the original creditor, you didn’t work out a plan with the collection agency, you didn’t work out a payment plan when I sent you an initial demand, you didn’t work out a payment plan when I filed a lawsuit, you didn’t work out a payment plan when I got a judgment against you, and you didn’t work out a payment plan when I filed the first proceeding supplemental.

So that’s where my head is when I read the South Bend Tribune’s article about Sanders being $90,000 in arrears and then complaining about “debtor’s prisons” and the Dvoraks after his real estate license got suspended. If the situation has gotten this far, at some point, you have to look into a mirror.

[tags]HB1177-2007, debt collection[/tags]