Rep. Koch’s HB 1128 passed the House on a 78-18 vote. A casual glance at the roll call made me think it was mostly Democrats from northern Indiana who opposed this. It specifies that, for the purposes of the statute that provides financial incentives for clean coal and energy projects, hydrogen and “Coal bed methane derived from a naturally occurring biogenic process” count as “renewable energy resources.”

Trying to figure out what this coal bed methane business was about, I see that the Citizen Action Coalition has given a brief explanation:

This bill adds hydrogen and coal bed methane to the definition of renewable energy. CAC opposes this bill for several reasons. First, hydrogen has to be produced from something; therefore, it could be produced from nuclear and fossil fuels which would make it a non-renewable resource. The production of hydrogen from wind, solar, and water resources holds promise for the future, especially with respect to energy storage and transportation. However, since the bill does not specify the hydrogen be produced from a truly renewable resource, CAC opposed adding hydrogen to the renewables definition.

Second, there is nothing renewable about coal, including coal bed methane. While the language limits CBM to “coal bed methane derived from a naturally occurring biogenic process”, which would exclude CBM produced through hydrofracking, it is still coal, which means it is not renewable.

Third, it is highly problematic to continue to add resources to the Statutory definition of renewables. The new net metering rule, as well as the proposed feed-in-tariff refer to the Statutory definition. Which means, any future addition by the General Assembly will qualify (and we all know Sen. Hershman et all continue to believe that uranium, coal, and natural gas are renewable) and within both the net metering rule and the proposed fit are caps on how much total “renewable” energy can be added to the grid. By adding additional resources, especially when they’re not really renewable, the cap may be quickly used up, leaving no room for solar and wind projects to interconnect.

Rep. Crouch’s HB 1083 passed the House on a unanimous vote. It requires the criminal code evaluation commission to study whether there should be an increased penalty for a person who is at least 21 to solicit a child less than 14 years of age; and to study whether we should have a crime of “promotion of child trafficking.” Somewhat interestingly, this is a watered down version of the introduced bill which would have gone ahead and made these amendments to the criminal code.

The Senate passed Sen. Steele’s SJR 9 out of committee which amends the Indiana Constitution to provide, among other things, that the commercial production of poultry is a valued part of our heritage which should be preserved forever.

Specifically, it adds a new section to the bill of rights article of the constitution that reads:

Section 38. The people have a right to hunt, fish, harvest game, or engage in the agricultural or commercial production of meat, fish, or poultry, which is a valued part of our heritage and shall be forever preserved for the public good, subject to laws prescribed by the General Assembly and rules prescribed by virtue of the authority of the General Assembly.

I would suggest, respectfully (or maybe not so respectfully), that this is a waste of time. I mean, it doesn’t *do* anything. It says right in the text that the General Assembly regulate these things as it sees fit. And, really, is “harvesting game” (as distinct from hunting) a proud part of our Hoosier tradition?

Lest someone chide me for not decrying threats when they’re made against politicians with whom I usually disagree, I wanted to post to make sure it’s clear that I don’t see any place for this sort of thing in our politics:

Indiana State Sen. Mike Delph has received an e-mail saying the man suspected of shooting U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords should have instead targeted someone like him.

Actual and threatened violence is clearly beyond the pale. You should also not glibly use metaphors that allude to killing people with whom you disagree. The first two are subjects of legal prohibitions. The latter is not, and probably should not be. Not inviting them to parties, and not voting for them or giving them money to campaign is probably sufficient.

Bill Engle, writing for the Richmond Palladium-Item, has an article about HB 1131 introduced by Rep. Koch.

The bill says generally that a provider of video service can’t be required to pay a local franchise fee. The article reports that the bill would have the effect of eliminating the franchise fee that Comcast currently pays to the city of Richmond, a big chunk of which, in turn, goes to a local station, WCTV. Richmond mayor, Sally Hutton, made a statement that had some resonance with me as a guy with a local government bias: “what it boils down to is the state is continually trying to take money away from local governments. They try it every year.”

I expect Rep. Koch would say that he’s trying to get rid of a tax on someone trying to do business in the State. But, I’d say some sort of tax on cable providers is justified if they are using the public right of way, are able to benefit from eminent domain laws, and if there are laws in place insulating them from other cable providers stringing up their lines if they want to compete. Additionally, cutting local government revenue sources is problematic.

Dorothy Schneider, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has an article about the progress of SB 32 which concerns the vote center model of conducting elections. The bill has passed the Senate and out of the House committee. It might get a full House vote this week.

The basic premise is that, rather than having to vote in your precinct, you can vote anywhere in the county but get the same ballot you would get if you had gone to your specific precinct location. This was a pilot project in Wayne, Tippecanoe, and (I believe) Cass counties. The model seems to have been pretty well liked in Tippecanoe County. The problem currently is that the original period of the pilot project is set to expire. If new legislation isn’t passed, we have to revert back to the old way of doing things which a) will cost money; and b) most people don’t seem to like quite as well. Last year’s bill got tied in with some other, more controversial, provisions and died. This year, the vote center bill seems to be moving pretty fast and, hopefully, can stay relatively clean and get passed without getting bogged down with other stuff.

This particular bill redesignates the original pilot counties as vote center counties. In addition, it gives other counties in the state the option and a procedure for switching to that model if they’d like. Exercising the option would require a unanimous vote of the county’s election board.

I came across this Washington Post article entitled, “States inspired by Arizona illegal-immigration law face tough fiscal realities.” The article itself is a little light on detailing those fiscal realities.

However, it did make me think to check the fiscal analysis report (pdf) for Sen. Delph’s SB 590 which emulates the Arizona immigration law. The costs that could be analyzed could run into the millions. And that’s without being able to calculate the cost for local law enforcement and local government to enforce the law, modify their contracts, and defend their actions against lawsuits.

Heather Gillers, writing for the Indy Star, has a report on Rep. Bill Crawford’s announcement that this, his 20th, will be his last term in the Indiana General Assembly. I guess 40 years is sufficient.

SB 192, introduced by Sen. Tallian, would require the criminal law and sentencing policy study committee to study marijuana & its effect on the Indiana criminal justice system, whether marijuana should continue to be illegal in Indiana and, if so, the appropriate penalties, whether medical marijuana should be implemented in Indiana, whether marijuana should be treated and controlled like alcohol, with controlled and regulated sales, and special taxation. It also gives the committee authority to study any other issue related to marijuana.

Deanna Martin, writing for the AP (h/t Joh Padgett) has an article about the bill.

A state senator is asking a question she hopes will spur debate about sentencing laws and possibly save Indiana millions of dollars: Should the state legalize marijuana?

Democratic Sen. Karen Tallian of Portage wants a criminal law and sentencing study committee to examine Indiana’s marijuana laws next summer and come up with recommendations. Other states have already decriminalized small amounts of marijuana or created programs to allow medical marijuana, and Tallian says it’s time for Indiana to have the discussion.

Seems like a reasonable step to me. Probably it’s just the crowd I hang with (overly educated, left-leaning, youngish (but aging)), but I can’t say I really know a lot of people who have any serious problems with legalization of marijuana. In college, I went so nuts with alcohol, it didn’t strike me as a great idea to venture beyond that particular drug; but it wasn’t because of any moral objection. From everything I’ve heard, marijuana is no more problematic than alcohol and, in a number of respects, less so. Convicting or imprisoning people for nothing other than possessing or using marijuana seems like a waste of our resources and the type of thing that diminishes peoples’ respect for the criminal justice system. So, based on the limited information I have, I suppose I’m in favor of legalization.

That said, I’m not a huge fan of medical marijuana. Where it is called for medicinally, I think it should be available. But, I wouldn’t like it if medicinal marijuana was sort of a fig leaf for general use; where the medicinal need is tenuous or fictitious. I think that kind of thing does more harm than good.

Eric Bradner continues his excellent reporting on legislative efforts to deal with the insolvent unemployment insurance fund. The fund is currently borrowing huge gobs of cash from the federal government, undermining the mythology of a certain federal government disdaining, budget balancing Governor. I hasten to add that the UI fund’s financial problems are not of the Governor’s making; but they also sure are not anything he’s done much to solve.

See some background here and here. In 2009, the Democratic House and the Republican Senate passed a compromise measure that raised taxes on business and cut benefits to the unemployed. In 2010, the General Assembly voted to stall implementation of that compromise. And, this year, with the political landscape changed to give the G.O.P. firm control of Indiana government, a bill is moving forward that will increase the burden on workers receiving money from the unemployment fund and decrease it (though not entirely) on business.