Tim Evans, writing for the Indianapolis Star, reports that Rep. John Barnes will introduce legislation proposing that schools test their air quality.

The lawmaker behind the proposal, state Rep. John Barnes, D-Indianapolis, said he was prompted to act after a recent Indianapolis Star report revealed potential air pollution problems near schools in Indiana and other states.
. . .
“My proposal is really very simple. It just requires officials to check water and indoor and outdoor air quality at school sites,” said Barnes, a teacher at Warren Central High School who was elected to the legislature in November.
“Everybody I’ve talked to so far sees this as a no-brainer. It’s something we do need to be concerned about.”

Joel Hand of the Indiana Department of Education says he is not sure what the bill will accomplish since existing rules could be applied to schools. Which, of course, raises the question of why they are not being applied if they can be applied. But, I see his point. You find bad quality air in a school, there isn’t any money for remediating the property to fix the air; what do you do? Now you’ve made the lawsuit and judgment against the school all the more likely.

Maybe authorize a bond issue for remediation to be paid for through a property tax levy? Hell no. The anti-tax crowd would be furious. Home schooling for everyone!

Sort of an odd report from Lesley Stedman Weidenbener on Gov. Daniels’ announcement that he would be cutting costs.

Daniels announced that he is taking 50 actions to cut more than $600 million in planned spending . . . [.] Although Daniels announced the 50 actions yesterday, he refused to list all of them and would not provide details, including the amount of cuts to higher education. He said he ordered 3 percent cuts in most agency budgets and in grants, placed additional restrictions on hiring and capital spending, and banned most out-of-state travel.

I’m not saying he’s wrong to make cuts; in fact, he’s almost certainly right. But, as a state citizen, I’d like to know what government services I can expect less of.

The upcoming budget is likely to freeze spending at current levels, and special interests have been urged not to come calling with new spending ideas.

The article closes with an exchange that suggests that Gov. Daniels and Speaker Bauer could take it on the road if this governing thing doesn’t work out for them:

Daniels said that means the state should be able to adjust without turning to a tax increase or dipping into the state’s rainy-day fund.
. . .
But Democrats said they would consider taking money from the savings account if it meant providing adequate funding to schools.

“The rainy-day fund is for a rainy day,” Bauer said. “It’s raining.”

When I was drafting bills for the legislature, one of the most important lessons I learned is that few of the ideas for legislation are truly original. A big chunk of them had been introduced at some point in the past. So, before drafting on a bill request, one of the first steps was to go looking for prior legislative efforts before recreating the wheel. This was easier for some bills than others. The “cooling off” legislation reported by Mike Smith for the Associated Press would be one of the easier ones to locate since it was introduced just last year.

Sen. Pat Miller and some others will apparently be introducing legislation that would require a cooling off period period before former lawmakers can lobby the General Assembly. This sort of legislation has been resisted, ostensibly because legislators don’t want to create a perception that they need to be regulated by such things as a “cooling-off” legislator-to-lobbyist period.

Guess what? That perception is already out there. Most, if not all, legislators are acting in the best interests of their constituents and are not being corrupted by the chance to become a lobbyist after they leave the General Assembly. But the perception of lobbyist-induced corruption is out there, and a cooling off period would do a lot to combat that perception.

But some lawmakers bristled at testimony that hinted at perceptions of shady politics. Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, was among them and still opposes a one-year waiting period.

“If a person has spent 20 years in the legislature and is well thought of by colleagues both in the hallway and the legislature, is a year going to mean anything?” Steele said. “Is he or she suddenly going to have less influence than 360 days ago?”

That pretty deliberately misses the point, I think. The point is not how much influence the legislator has when he or she does become a lobbyist. The point is that the legislator would have to figure out something else to do for a living for a year. Current legislators would know that there is a year long barrier between them and easy lobbyist money. (Assuming for the sake of argument that money for lobbying is easy and significant — probably one of those things that is more myth than reality in most cases.) More importantly, citizens would know there is a barrier between their elected officials and easy lobbyist money.

Senator Miller says she believes that one of the reasons that the bill died last year is because the testimony in committee was accusatory. That’s sad if it’s true. (See this entry from last year, suggesting that was in fact the case.) Our legislators have a pretty big responsibility; a responsibility for which they actively campaigned. Their tender feelings should not get in the way. That said, anyone testifying in committee pointing fingers at the legislators or impugning their integrity is remarkably stupid.

The recount is still underway in the Lafayette House race between Randy Truitt and John Polles. The recount commission is expected to announce a result on Sunday. In the initial count, Truitt held a 26 vote lead over Polles. The close margin of victory prompted a recount request. As it happens, this is my home district. I had to do a double take earlier this week when I saw Brad King from the Secretary of State’s election division eating lunch at a Lafayette restaurant.

Normally I refrain from commenting on politics in my neck of the woods — not wanting to crap in my nest, as the saying goes. But, as a citizen of the district, I think I can say this much without fouling any professional obligations. I think Polles was running an adequate campaign on his own – maybe enough to win, maybe not. However, I think the state party’s efforts on behalf of Polles were tin-eared and counterproductive. I have limited knowledge of the underlying facts, but the negative attacks on Truitt looked like stretches beyond what’s expected in political races. I know voters always say they hate negative campaigning and then, for whatever reason, the negative campaigning works. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case here. On the eve of the election, I remember seeing a state party television commercial attacking Truitt, cringing, and telling Amy that I thought the commercial probably cost Polles some votes. Just my two cents – I have no data and for all I know, the commercial gained more votes than it cost. But, from what I could see, it didn’t look that way.

Leadership and chairmanships in the Indiana House are starting to take shape for the 2009 session. Bryan Corbin, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has an article entitled Dems’ roles in House expanded. The main focus of the article is that, having expanded their majority in the House, the Democrats have elevated Dennis Avery (D-Evansville) to the chairmanship of the Budget Subcommittee of the House Ways & Means Committee.

Other positions noted in the article are: Kreg Battles (D-Vincennes) being promoted to the chairmanship of the House Elections and Apportionment Committee. (Battles will always have a place in my heart as replacing Troy “I’ll Never Vote For It” Woodruff who renegged on his promise not to vote for Daylight Saving Time and subsequently losing his seat.) Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon, again will chair the House Public Policy Committee. And Rep. Russ Stilwell, D-Boonville, again will be House majority floor leader and vice chair of the House Rules and Legislative Procedures Committee.

This is a reminder of what a huge thing even a small majority is in the House of Representatives. By having more than 50 votes, a party gets to appoint the Speaker of the House who, in turn, gets to appoint all of the committee chairs. The Speaker assigns all of the introduced legislation to a committee. The committee chair for a particular committee gets to decide whether a piece of legislation gets a hearing in committee and becomes eligible for a vote.

Tim Evans, writing for the Indianapolis Star, reports that Representatives David Frizzell and Charlie Brown will be calling for oversight of the Department of Child Services “because they believe confidentiality laws have made it impossible to fully investigate the powerful agency when children die in its care or when it faces complaints.” They want an ombudsman to oversee the agency.

Unlike police, an ombudsman would focus on whether DCS did everything it should have to help and protect a child in the state’s care. DCS annually investigates about 20,000 families and removes about 7,000 children from their parents.

An ombudsman also would review complaints from families and children involved with the agency.

My suspicion is that the underlying problem is that there are too many abusive parents out there and not enough money in the system to take care of the children in those families. From what I’ve seen of these ugly domestic situations is that it takes a ton of resources just to make the situation less horrible — almost nothing would serve to make the situations “good.” And we probably don’t have the political will to allocate those resources. If we did, I’m not positive it would be the best thing to do. That probably sounds cold, but consider a hyperbolic example: What if we could save one child’s life if we raised taxes to the breaking point and then spent every dime on social services for that kid and his family? Would that be the right thing to do? I don’t think so. At some point, the resources allocated outweigh the benefit — even a really important benefit like saving the life of a child. Obviously that doesn’t answer the question of whether we are anywhere near that tipping point with our current allocation of resources. I have no idea.

The ombudsman? Probably won’t hurt too much, but it probably won’t make a huge dent in the overall problem. My guess is that with an ombudsman, ground level social service workers will, if in doubt, cover their asses by recommending a child be removed from a home.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article that does a pretty good job explaining some of the challenges ahead for school funding this year. The short version is that resources are scarce. There is a good chance that funding will be flat which is effectively a cut since, among other things, there are more students to be educated every year. In addition, the elimination of property taxes as a source of revenue for operating costs will limit options. Sales taxes, which were increased last session, are less dependable and more sensitive to market conditions.

It’s not much, but I’ve been deprived of legislative material for too long. The General Assembly apparently introduced two simple resolutions:

Senate
* SR 0002 — Postmaster
House
* HR 0001 — Honoring Sue Tokoly on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

and three concurrent resolutions:

Senate
* SCR 0002 — Wrestling State Title
House
* HCR 0001 — Recognizing the Indiana Economic Development Association’s 40th anniversary.
* HCR 0002 — The House of Rep & the Senate to meet & adjourn separately throughout 116th Gen.

The text of the resolutions is currently unavailable.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, has an article on Indiana’s General Assembly’s Organization Day. She notes that the legislators won’t deal with much substance today, but some legislators commented on the challenges ahead. Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson notes a decrease in revenue and an increase in responsibilities will make things tough. Senate Republicans don’t seem to see much new money for schools whereas House Democrats want to find some.

Another issue likely to cause friction is whether to move beyond the property tax caps already placed into law by enshrining those caps in the state constitution. House Democrats want to see how the tax caps work in practice under state law before stampeding to the Constitution. House Republicans are ready for the stampede.

Also on the agenda will be local government restructuring. State government restructuring does not seem to be on state lawmakers’ radars. Presumably it’s easier to fix someone else’s house.