Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal has an article entitled “Meeks changes course, favors a casino move.” Apparently Senator Meeks was instrumental in blocking a casino license for Clark County down in southern Indiana. Now he is seeking to have an existing license from the Gary area to Meeks’ own Steuben County. Clark County officials are “curious” about Meeks’ apparent change of heart. With everything else on the table for the session, such legislation is viewed as a long shot.

I have mixed thoughts about Rep. Bischoff’s HB 1045 which creates the “courthouse preservation advisory commission.” On the one hand, creeping government. Yet another commission when efforts are afoot to slash government. On the other hand, I think Indiana really has a lot of really great courthouses that provide an important anchor for their respective communities.

The commission would be charged with traveling to county courthouses to assess potential courthouse rehabilitation projects, including appraisal of the condition of the courthouse and rehabilitation cost estimates; providing early coordination for courthouse rehabilitation projects to encourage proper preservation practices; reviewing and providing recommendations on architectural plans for courthouse related projects; and providing county officials with information concerning funding sources for courthouse preservation projects.

I travel to 8 or 10 counties in the regular course of my practice. Most of them have excellent courthouses. Some do not. For example, Cass County courts are housed in what looks to be just another government building that conveys no particular sense of authority at all. White County is a little like that as well, but I’ll cut them major slack since their courthouse was wiped out by a tornado. These are major community resources that ought to be preserved. Whether this proposed commission will do much good is an open question.

SB 85 by Senator Steele legalizes switchblades but criminalizes “ballistic knives” which are knives with blades “with a detachable blade that may be expelled from the handle or frame of the knife.”

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article on the Shepard-Kernan recommendations for restructuring local government. She notes that it’s not clear whose responsibility it is to promote and shepherd legislation to implement the recommendations. That’s a hard job to sell, I would think. Quite apart from whether the recommendations are good policy (in my view, some are, some aren’t), support for the recommendations will be general and abstract. Opposition to the recommendations will be personal and fierce. That’s hard to fight against, especially during an election year.

If anyone has a duty to spearhead this thing, it’s the Governor (assuming, of course, that he agrees with the recommendations). Given that it’s an election year and how invisible he was on the property tax debate last session, I’m not sure if we can expect that kind of leadership from him. I don’t know if his absence from the property tax debate in 2007 was because he was too scarred from the Daylight Saving Time and Toll Road battles from previous sessions or what. I guess my sense is that he is following in the footsteps of his mentor, George W. Bush. Molly Ivins pointed out, before Bush became President, that Bush would take hard lines and push controversial measures the first year of a term. As the term progressed and elections approached, he would become more moderate in his positions and actions. I think Daniels would like to follow a similar path, but had the property tax issue thrust upon him due, in large part, to Marion County’s awful handling of the matter. Other counties can be ignored, but Marion County has way more influence on State government than any other locality.

More immediate tax restructuring proposals will take precedence, I imagine. Local government restructuring, billed as providing longer term property tax reductions, will probably have a hard time getting room in this short session during a big election year. (I’ll be interested to see numbers on how much money these proposals are supposed to save.) Just a guess. I’ve been wrong before.

Update The Indianapolis Star has a story on the proposal. Incidentally, a pet peeve of mine is use of the term “reform” by reporters writing supposedly objective news articles. “Reform” is a value laden word implying improvement. Maybe the proposals would result in improvements, maybe they wouldn’t. But I don’t think this is something that reporters can know.