SB 70, introduced by Sen. Landske, would make some changes to the public meetings and public records laws. Among other things, it would impose a civil penalty of $100 for the first violation and $500 for subsequent violations on a public official, personally, who violated various aspects of the public meeting laws.

If a public records complaint to a court alleges improper redaction, it requires the court to review the unredacted records in camera. (Meaning by the judge, in chambers, outside of the presence of the other party.) Judges will love this – they enjoy dealing with discovery issues. The bill would also allow the judge to impose a fine on a public official who: improperly discloses information in public records that is required to be withheld; or improperly withholds information in public records that is required to be disclosed.

The problem with this approach is that the General Assembly is not nearly specific enough with the language of the public records laws to reasonably impose a fine on a public official who fails to properly thread the needle the General Assembly has created for public records. Withhold this, don’t withhold that, make a mistake, get fined. Maybe they could create a safe harbor where they just require the General Assembly to come look at the records itself and disclose whatever it thinks appropriate and pay the fine if it can’t properly implement its own laws.

There is another provision that provides for inspection of records by the public access counselor that requires the public agency to deliver unredacted copies and prepare an index of claimed privilege. I’m sure the public access counselor is excited about the prospect of dealing with enormous document dumps. And, I doubt public agencies will receive any money to fund the costs of complying with this law. It’s dead easy to craft a public records request that requires thousands of dollars worth of time to respond to. This law will increase that asymmetry.

SB 49 imposes a penalty of up to $1,000 for a candidate or political action committee who makes a communication that contains a disclaimer “that is difficult to read or whose placement is easily overlooked.”

The legislator’s heart is in the right place here, but it’s just horribly vague. We’ve seen in the Charlie White matter that these election regulations are pretty much just going to be resolved on a partisan basis. The law will be strictly enforced against minority parties or minor candidates but major candidates in major races can pretty much do as they please.

What I’d like to see (but won’t) is a system where we have an online registry for communications that lets me see (before the election) the identity of the actual humans (i.e. not vaguely named corporations or PACs) making the communication.

Sen. Buck has introduced SB 53 which would allow a county to impose an income tax of up to 0.25% on non-residents who work in the county. The fee goes into a fund that is required to be used for various economic development purposes.

I doubt this will fly, but I can certainly see the rationale for such a tax. Earlier this week, I was having a conversation with someone who mentioned that it was a pretty sweet deal for someone living in Warren County to enjoy the pretty low taxes in that county while enjoying the income from a job in Tippecanoe County. Tippecanoe County has a lot more infrastructure to support with tax dollars but, at the same time, this infrastructure supports a much more vibrant economy than you’ll find in Warren County. The sort of Orwellianly named “county employment opportunity fee” would help mitigate this free rider problem.

On the other hand, it probably exacerbates the have versus the have-not counties. The counties with an already vibrant economy will get more revenue for economic development and, presumably, increase their lead over neighboring have-not counties. The have-not counties will continue to have their main economic development prospects involve things like CAFOs, garbage dumps, or, if they’re lucky, wind farms.

SB 14 would require the attorney general to represent judges in mandate actions and prevent the state from paying for a private attorney used by a judge in a mandate action. Maybe I’m just projecting, but this bill seems to reflect some annoyance at the practice of judges issuing mandates requiring the expenditure of public funds, then going out and retaining really high priced legal talent (usually out of Indianapolis) and requiring the public to foot that bill as well.

By way of disclaimer, my irritation with the mandate process comes out of my role in representing county government. In Indiana, the judiciary is an odd hybrid between a state and local office. (And, I had a minor role in one mandate action.) The judge is a state official and not accountable to the local officials. However, his or her court facilities and staff are generally supplied by the county. When the judge feels like his or her facilities or staff is inadequate or inadequately compensated, he or she can mandate the expenditure of more funds. Other departments of county government can’t do this. They just have to deal with the budgets set by the commissioners and the council. That said, most judges use their mandate powers responsibly or not at all. Still, there is a disparity that doesn’t seem entirely appropriate when it comes to allocation of county funds.

SB 5 would provide for an automatic reduction in the income tax rate if the state’s income tax receipts for a year exceed the previous year’s receipts by a certain amount.

A 3.1% increase in revenue results in a 0.1% reduction in the tax rate; a 4.2% increase results in a 0.2% reduction; and a 5.3% increase results in a 0.3% reduction. The statute sets certain floors for the income tax rate. The adjustment is only one way – if there is a decrease in revenue, the tax rate doesn’t automatically increase. Presumably, this would result in a ratcheting down of tax rates over the long haul until we hit the floor of 2.9% for people and 8% for corporations. Decreases would be automatic during good times. And increases probably wouldn’t happen during lean times with legislators generally opposed to raising taxes and being able to argue that we shouldn’t increase taxes during tough economic times in any case.

This might be necessary, but it looks like a continuation of the ongoing process of turning our teachers into social workers. SB 4 provides for the development of programs to educate teachers about child suicide and requires teachers to receive training on suicide prevention and the recognition of signs that a student may be considering suicide. Beginning in 2013, a teacher can’t get a license without providing evidence of having received such training.

Sen. Steele has introduced SB 3 which would allow great-grandparents to seek visitation of a child on the same basis as grandparents. It would allow both to seek visitation if they’ve had meaningful contact with the child in the past but, due to estrangement with the child’s parent, the grandparent’s or great-grandparent’s contact has been cut off.

I haven’t followed the issue of grandparent visitation, and I know there has been a fair amount of activity along those lines. But my general sense is that if a parent-child relationship is basically functional, then the parent should be able to make the determination about how much or how little visitation the grandparent has. I can certainly see where this might suck for the grandparent, but in most cases I don’t see where this adversity for the grandparent really justifies engaging the wheels of the legal machinery which mostly doesn’t grind fine enough to deal with this sort of thing very well.

Another session of the Indiana General Assembly, another attempt (SB 2) by Sen. Steele to allow the governor, lieutenant governor, or members of the general assembly to solemnize marriages.

He has introduced this bill several times in the past. I don’t understand his persistence on this particular subject but also don’t understand why he’s had such a tough time getting it passed.

Maureen Hayden, writing for CNHI, has an article on bill requests being made by legislators and being drafted by employees at Indiana’s Legislative Services Agency (LSA). She reports that there have been about 900 bill requests so far this session.

I used to work for LSA back in ’96 – ’99. Ms. Hayden reports that LSA currently consists of “about 80 lawyers, fiscal analysts and support staff.” Most of the bill requests are drafted by the lawyers in the section of LSA called the Office of Bill Drafting and Research (OBDAR). There were 18 of us when I was in that office. The lawyers had fiscal analyst counterparts in the Office of Fiscal Management and Analysis (OFMA). The fiscal analyst provides a report on the fiscal impact of a given piece of legislation. A third branch of LSA is the Office of Code Revision. After my stint at OBDAR, I became a deputy director at OCR. Our job, during session, was to edit the bill drafts submitted by the OBDAR attorneys.

The way it worked was, a legislator would come in and meet with the director of OBDAR and tell him what he or she wanted, generally, in terms of legislation. The director summarized the request and assigned it to a bill drafting attorney. (I don’t know how, exactly, the OFMA analysts got assigned, but there was a corresponding assignment to a fiscal analyst.) The drafting attorney would, in a lot of cases, just draft the bill without having to do a lot of extra research. A good chunk of these bills are simply repeats of requests from prior years. A fair number of others are pretty basic — e.g., change the speed limit from 65 to 70 mph. But, there are still plenty of requests that are complicated.

For the complicated ones, you work out the questions that need to be answered, and try to get in touch with the requesting legislator. This can be a challenge – these folks are very busy. Then, you have to get the legislator to slow down enough to pay attention to the, usually boring, details of the issues you need to work through. A lot of legislators are frenetic, big picture types — not generally inclined to put everything on hold to really bear down on niggling details.

A lot of times, lobbyists are involved – either the legislator is carrying water for a particular group or that group is a trusted source of information and policy advice for the legislator. So, you’ll have to talk with those folks. Not uncommonly, you’ll get a draft piece of legislation that has originated with the lobbying group. Often, these drafts are horrible messes that don’t really pin down who gets to do what to whom and under what circumstances. They require an extra step. Before you can get to work, you have to discern what these drafts are actually trying to accomplish. Only then can get to work on drafting language that actually accomplishes the goal.

Because of the legislative calendar, the bulk of bill drafting season coincides with the holiday season. Elections take place in early November. Legislators get organized through early November. Bill requests really get going in the latter half of November. What’s really fun is when a legislator pops into LSA on his way to the airport in Indy to drop off a pile of bill requests before he or she flies off to a Christmas vacation some place warm with the family. Anyway, you end up with long days and nights of drafting through the end of November all of December and into January before the General Assembly kicks into gear the first or second week of the new year.

The good folks at LSA are a little like legislative elves, slaving away in Santa’s sweatshop, churning out bills for good little representatives and senators to introduce at the beginning of the session.

As for the number of bills produced, from talking with folks who have been at LSA for a long time, it seems that the number is essentially a function of the technological ability to produce the documents. It used to be that setting the type and producing the paper was more of a barrier to creating bills. With word processing and reproduction getting easier and easier, that has allowed the number of bills to increase over thee years.

Ken Kusmer, writing for the AP, has an article indicating that state lawmakers are looking to cut Medicaid benefits in the upcoming session. This makes sense, since it’s a huge part of the budget. However, the noises some are making about opting out of Medicaid strike me as just so much grandstanding.

The federal government picks up about 2/3 of the tab for our state’s Medicaid program. That money comes with a lot of strings attached about what services you have to offer and to whom as part of your Medicaid program. I’m sure those strings chafe a little, but if you want to provide medical services to poor people in your state (a big “if,” I suppose in some quarters), then you just have to put up with the red tape if your money is getting matched 2-to-1.

As Sen. Kenley says, Medicaid is the elephant in the room. It’s very expensive, because health care is very expensive. Medicaid is getting more expensive, because Indiana – contrary to the assertions of a certain Indiana state Governor – is not on an economic “hot streak” and is not an “island of growth.” The economy is tough, people are getting poorer, and they are becoming eligible for Medicaid.

One thing that raised a flag for me, however, was that a lot of this discussion seems to be driven by some projections put together by FSSA in reaction to the national health care reform bill. Gov. Daniels opposition to health care reform has a very significant political component to it, and I would take projections on the legislation from his agencies with a grain of salt, if not an entire salt lick.

I agree that we have to work to keep medical costs under control. Spiraling health care costs seem to be a parasite, sucking the life out of our economy. Health care is killing us, as it were. But, if all we have is opposing national health care reform and opting out of Medicaid, what we’re left with is “don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly.”