Senator Simpson’s SB 219 with respect to lactation support in the workplace passed the House without amendments and by a vote of 90 – 3.

It requires state and local government to provide for reasonable paid breaks for an employee to express breast milk for the employee’s infant child; to make reasonable efforts to provide a room or other location in close proximity to the work area where the employee can express the employee’s breast milk in privacy; and to make reasonable efforts to provide for a refrigerator or other cold storage for keeping breast milk that has been expressed.

Non-government employers that employ 25 or more individuals, to the extent reasonably possible, must provide a private location for an employee to express the employee’s breast milk during any period away from the employee’s assigned duties; and a refrigerator or other cold storage space, or allow the employee to provide the employee’s own portable storage device, for keeping the expressed milk until the end of the employee’s work day.

Exempts an employer from liability except in case of willful misconduct, gross negligence, or bad faith, for any harm arising from the expressing of an employee’s breast milk; or the storage of expressed milk; on the employer’s premises.

Rep. Murphy successfully added an interesting amendment to SB 62 which had previously been a bill that made some fairly uninteresting changes to the Sheriff’s duties with respect to posting notices of foreclosures.

Rep. Murphy’s amendment, which passed the House by a vote of 73-15, would require “settlement service providers” to provide copies of closing documents on home loans to borrowers more than 48 hours before the closing. The term “settlement service provider” is defined as “a person that provides services in connection with the closing of a real estate transaction, including the provision of title examinations or title insurance.” If the terms in the closing documents provided to the borrower at closing differ from the terms provided 48 hours before, the borrower is entitled to postpone the closing without penalty and without forfeiting the right to enter into the loan or purchasing the house.

I like the sentiment. While foreclosures have been skyrocketing, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard something to the effect that the borrowers deserved what they got because they should have read their agreements. That’s true as far as it goes, but in practical terms, borrowers often don’t get copies of closing documents until they are at the closing table, whereupon stacks of documents are shoved at the borrower with instructions to sign.

But, it seems that this amendment uses a cleaver where a scalpel is probably needed. Just flatly asserting that the borrower can postpone with no penalty seems to ignore that there are other parts of the equation besides the borrower and the settlement service provider. For example, there is a home seller who might need the money on the day of closing in order to go and close on the home the seller is going to move into; and there may be a lender, distinct from the settlement service provider, who can’t obtain the money tomorrow at the same terms it could obtain the money today. I’m not sure how you make sure the borrower gets the necessary time without wrecking the house of cards if the settlement service provider doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.

Sen. Delph’s SB 335 regarding illegal aliens passed out of the House Public Policy Committee on a 7-4 vote after being amended. Bill Ruthhart, writing for the Indy Star, has an informative article on the changes made in the House Committee.

The major changes made by the House Committee:
#The three strikes period was shortened from 10 years to 5 years.
#Enforcement will be by the state Department of Labor rather than by county prosecutors.
#Enforcement funding of $1.5 million was added.
#An exemption for seasonal workers was removed.

The addition of the $1.5 million in funding means that the bill will now move to the House Ways & Means Committee for review before potentially being called to the floor of the House for Second Reading.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, has an article entitled Economy could imperil tax plan. House Speaker Bauer says that Indiana’s slow economy might affect the State’s ability to assume school operating costs from local government. Part of the current proposal is that the sales tax goes up, property taxes go down, local government loses homestead and property tax replacement credits, and the State assumes local welfare and school operating costs. If the State doesn’t assume the school operating costs but there are still no property tax replacement credit or homestead credits, then property taxes wouldn’t go down as much.

As an advocate for local government, this feels like it has the potential for local government to be left holding the bag again — kind of like they did with the initial property tax spikes that were caused by decisions made at the State level. We’ll see. Maybe it’s just a high profile way for Speaker Bauer to rub Indiana’s slow economy in Gov. Daniels’ face.

Abdul at Indiana Barrister has a post up about the Jon Elrod flap entitled “So these are the new rules.” Elrod is a Republican state Representative who is currently running for Congress. At some point while he was at his seat on the floor of the House of Representatives during session, he was working on documents for his campaign and handing campaign literature to a House staffer. Democratic operatives caught wind of this, took a camera to the House balcony, and taped Mr. Elrod working on campaign matters on the floor of the House.

Abdul wrote:

But there is a bigger issue here. I was at the Statehouse today and from what I was able to gather, not a lot of people on either side of the aisle were too happy about how this all went down. As one lawmaker put it, “this changes the rules and we are going into new territory and opened a can of worms.”

What they meant was that anyone with a video camera can go into the House gallery and record what lawmakers are doing while sitting at their desks. This means they can get video of lawmakers playing solitaire, booking airline reservations, shopping on eBay and even visiting their campaign websites all with government computers on government time.

This put me in mind of a post I wrote back in July of 2005 of which I am inordinately proud entitled Internet Panopticon. Back in the day, Jeremy Bentham proposed a design for a prison with a tower in the middle of a donut shaped building. The prisoners would be in the donut in back lit cells. Guards would be in the tower. The point of this was that the prisoners would know that they were visible at all times. Furthermore, at any given time, they couldn’t tell when they were being watched. The idea is that the prisoners would self-regulate for fear that they were being watched.

Foucault’s description of the principle:

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.

Technology is potentially bringing this principle to bear in lots of areas of modern life. If the Elrod business really is changing the rules of the game as Abdul suggests, then perhaps the Panopticon is coming to the State House. I’m actually not that excited about the idea of putting our legislators in a fish bowl, viewable by the public at any given time. However, I would support that arrangement before I would support having the general citizenry in a fish bowl viewable by government authorities. Hopefully our legislators will be mindful of the Elrod matter when legislation comes across their desks that has the effect of putting citizens under unwarranted surveillance.

Deanna Martin, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article about a voting bill moving through the legislature. The bill has two main provisions: voting centers and “no-excuse” absentee voting.

The voting center provision would allow any county to opt for using these voting centers. Basically, they are polling places where anyone in the county can vote, regardless of the precinct in which they live. You go to the center, get the ballot appropriate for your precinct, and vote. There was a test run of these centers in Tippecanoe County where I live. There were some kinks in the implementation that need to be worked out, but I liked the concept. I was downtown working and voted for one of the centers there instead of having to go back to the south side of town to cast my vote.

I guess I’m a little cautious about absentee voting. Actually, my main concern is less about not physically going to the polling place and more about casting one’s vote earlier than the majority of citizens. Elections are essentially a snapshot of the will of the electorate at a given point in time. A longer voting season results in voters casting their ballots based on different sets of information. The early voters don’t have information available to the later voters, and the later voters may have forgotten the information that heavily influenced the early voters. I guess this highlights the difficulty of trying to capture the “will of the people” more than anything else.

All he wants to do his promote the rule of (some) law, and, as “always” happens, someone pulls the race card. The race card! In an immigration discussion of all things.

Cracking down on illegal immigration in Indiana will turn employers into racial profilers and lead to a mass exodus of much-needed workers, opponents predicted Wednesday.

“I think you are opening the door for prejudice directed at minorities who are not white,” state Rep. Vanessa Summers, D-Indianapolis, told Delph during one heated exchange.
“Maybe it’s the color of my skin. I look at it differently,” said Summers, who is black.

“I think,” Delph responded, “people are sick and tired of people playing the race card every time they stand up for the law.”

I think Sen. Delph raises some valid concerns with his immigration bill. Making sure employers don’t break the law by hiring illegals so they can reduce wages is an entirely legitimate goal. But getting indignant over people bringing up race in an immigration discussion makes him look silly. It’s like getting upset when people talk about cars in a discussion over speed limits.

The basic equation isn’t that tough, less property tax revenue equals reduced local government services. According to testimony heard by the House Ways & Means committee, the circuit breaker provisions that cap residential property tax at 1% of assessed value, local governments stand to see a significant reduction in revenue. Potentially this means things like reduced fire protection, fewer police officers, elimination of recycling programs, and charges for trash collection. But then, the way I hear it from some quarters, government can’t do anything right and ruins everything it tries, so I guess we won’t miss government interference with the infallible free market in areas such as fire protection, police protection, and waste disposal.

From a more cynical perspective however, I will note that it’s good politics for government entities facing cuts to trot out the services citizens value most. But, that raises the problem that these folks are seldom given very specific direction on what programs to cut. Citizens don’t do a good job envisioning that the much talked about but seldom specified “wasteful” spending encompasses any of the services they enjoy themselves. To the extent people have specific ideas at all, it’s usually the service being provided to the other guy that is “wasteful.”

SB 139 concerning violation of probation and home detention passed the House and is on its way back to the Senate with (I think) minor amendments. The bill specifies that a violation of a condition of probation can be sanctioned in one or more of the following ways:

(1) Continue the person on probation, with or without modifying or enlarging the conditions.
(2) Extend the person’s probationary period for not more than one (1) year beyond the original probationary period.
(3) Order execution of all or part of the sentence that was suspended at the time of initial sentencing.

Current law seems to limit the court to picking one and only one of those options.

The House amendment has to do with allowing a community corrections program in one county to monitor an offender in an adjacent county.

SB 104 has passed second reading in the House and is on its way to a final vote on third reading.

Requires certain information be given to the department of natural resources before a person may reconstruct an abode or a residence that is located in a floodway and is substantially damaged. (Current law requires the substantial damage to be by means other than floodwater.) Requires the lowest level of the abode or residence to be at least two feet above the one hundred (100) year flood elevation. (Current law requires the elevation to be at or above the one hundred (100) year flood elevation.) Removes the state board of finance from the administration and approval procedures concerning the flood control revolving fund.

Floodway reconstruction issues are always tricky. The public policy is generally sound — unless they take precautions like elevating the home, you don’t want people rebuilding in an area that is going to get flooded again and again. But, when the floods come, it gets tough to tell people they have to leave their home.