The year coming to an end naturally makes me look backward. So, I took a look at my posts from January 1, 2006, and enjoyed this post:

Sylvia Smith, ordinarily the Washington Reporter for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an opinion column in which she asserts that the Democrats are delusional fools for having the audacity to dream of a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives. We’ll see, but it’s good to see where Ms. Smith is coming from on the issue.

Unfortunately, the column I linked to is no longer available on the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette so I can’t say how fairly I characterized what Ms. Smith wrote, but in any event Democratic aspirations toward majority apparently weren’t so far-fetched.

Sectarian prayer for the Indiana House of Representatives was also at issue with a law professor opining:

We’re just increasingly sensitive to both religious partiality in general and to evangelical Christianity’s attempt to be politically and culturally aggressive. Both of those things are going on in that Indiana setting.

And, finally, there were several articles looking at the then upcoming 2006 legislative session. Among other things, toll road privatization was on the agenda as was property tax relief and Republicans trying to “get right” with their constituents after the 2005 session. They got Toll Road privatization done, they enacted a band-aid fix to the property tax problem, and, by and large, they didn’t get right with their constituents.

(Via The Indiana Law Blog ) The General Assembly has appointed John Rowings to be the new acting director of the Legislative Services Agency. Congratulations to John. He’ll do an outstanding job. He will be replacing Phil “Satch” Sactleben (who, if memory serves, was “acting” director for quite some time before they went ahead and made his appointment permanent.)

The Legislative Services Agency, which serves the General Assembly, has three primary divisions — the Office of Bill Drafting and Research (OBDAR), the Office of Code Revision (OCR), and the Office of Fiscal and Management Analysis (OFMA). John was my boss for a few months after he became the director at OBDAR and before I became a deputy director at OCR. He was great to work for and, particularly judging from the time of night some of his e-mails were time stamped, worked hard himself. I think he has a nice balance of intelligence and communication skills. It seems to me in that position, there is the danger of having a schmoozer who can speak the language of the glad-handing legislator but who doesn’t have the time or inclination to pay attention to details. That sort of person is going to lose the respect of the staff. On the other hand, there is the danger of having a policy wonk who knows the ins and outs of every piece of legislation and every parliamentary procedure but who can’t communicate effectively with the legislators. I think John will thread that needle particularly well.

Now, I’ll be interested to see who will be taking John’s place as the director of OBDAR. I knew a few drafters in that office who are supremely capable and would do a fine job, but I wonder if they’ll want the extra hassle that goes along with the job.

When I worked there, I got along with the legislators just fine. But I only had to deal with a hand full of them at a time. Seems like a tall order to try to satisfy 150 customers, most of whom are accustomed to getting fairly deferential treatment back home, who have competing and often adverse interests.

And we’re off. Some of the bills introduced in the Senate have been posted to the Legislative Services website.

• Senate Bill 8, introduced by Senator Heinold, would require the Governor to petition the USDOT to initiate proceedings to put all of Indiana in the Central Time Zone.
• Senate Bill 2, introduced by Senator Drozda, creates a new credit class for offenders where they only get 1 day of good time credit for every 6 days served. I believe the typical credit class gets offenders a day of good time credit for every day served, effectively cutting a sentence in half (Class I), but there are also currently credit classes II (1 for 2) and III (no credit). Sen. Drozda’s bill would create Credit Class IV for individuals convicted for “crimes against the person” (assault, murder, and the like); controlled substance offenses, and handgun offenses among others. A “tough on crime” bill to be sure. I wonder what the price tag would be for this expansion of incarceration time.
• SB 6 introduced by Senator Ford would require cell phone providers to disclose your cell phone location to law enforcement officers in an “emergency” situation. Emergency isn’t defined, so I wonder if it would be an emergency if law enforcement thought you were up to no good and really, really wanted to know where you were.
• SB 9 introduced by Senator Howard would allow a municipality or county to adopt an ordinance that regulates the “use” or hours of use within the county or municipality, provided the regulation is not more lenient than state rules. Given the confusion over jurisdiction on fireworks laws, I would suggest a provision specifying that the Sheriff’s Department and/or the police department are entitled to enforce such ordinances.
• SB 19 introduced by Senator Steele would allow the governor, the lieutenant governor, and members of the General Assembly to solemnize marriages, a privilege currently reserved to members of the clergy, judges, mayors, and city and court clerks.
• SB 25 introduced by Senator Bowser, would increase Indiana’s minimum wage to $7.25, up from $5.15 per hour. (The $5.15 minimum wage has been in place since March 1, 1999.) Employers could pay teenagers $6.25 per hour for their first 90 days of employment (up from $4.25 per hour.)
• SB 28, introduced by Senator Waltz, would allow the State to get a restitution order against an offender for the costs of prosecuting the offender. If this legislation moves forward, I would recommend an amendment instituting debtors’ prisons to facilitate collecting these fees. In my experience, offenders frequently have trouble paying the restitution and very often have trouble paying the community corrections fees and other assorted costs. As a matter of justice, it seems appropriate to make criminals pay out the nose. However, as a practical matter, if a guy is inclined to rehabilitate himself but you immediately pound him with a mountain of debt to go along with the life he wasn’t doing a very good job of managing in the first place, you can probably expect to seem him incarcerated again sometime soon.

There are a number of other introduced bills, but those were the ones that caught my eye on my first pass.

Update I wanted to add a couple of bills that Joe flagged:

SB30 would allow school corporations to give taxpayer money… to endowments of some sort. Sounds shady. I didn’t realize Center Grove schools had that much money.

SB 31 would ban ATM’s from riverboats, would require they install clocks (digital, no less), and would require casino operators to give breathlyzers before folks can ask for a line of credit from the casino.

[tags]sb8-2007, sb2-2007, sb6-2007, sb19-2007, sb25-2007, sb28-2007, sb30-2007, sb31-2007[/tags]

(H/t Taking Down Words) The privatization fetish continues, apparently. The Daniels administration seems to be floating an idea to privatize the operations of the Indiana lottery to fund higher education.

Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee Chairman Luke Kenley said Tuesday that he was not aware of the nature of the governor’s announcement.

However, he said the Daniels administration had approached some legislative fiscal leaders a month ago about leasing the operations of the Hoosier Lottery to a private company to raise cash for the state’s universities.

Kenley said the administration’s proposal would have earmarked money for student financial aid and for professors’ salaries to keep the state’s universities competitive with their peers.

“We weren’t particularly encouraging about it,” Kenley said. “We questioned the long-term relinquishment of an asset in exchange for money that might be used upfront in a non-capital way. We didn’t encourage the administration to pursue that.”

With gambling, I’d go the other way. I’d just go ahead and make the state the only gambling operation in town. Back in June, I put it this way:

I think if the State is in for a penny, it should go in for a pound. Why be content to merely take a rake off the casino profits — why not have the State run the casinos directly and take the whole pie, reducing taxes accordingly? Normally you don’t want state run businesses — you want the private sector to be as innovative and efficient as possible. But I don’t think those policy goals really apply to gambling. I don’t think, as a State, we ought to be particularly enthusiastic about a booming gambling business that draws in more and more customers and convinces them to spend more and more of their money. So, I don’t think the normal free-market concerns about state-run businessess apply to gambling even though I’ll concede that private businesses would almost certainly deliver a better product more efficiently.

As for the moral concern, I’m reminded of the joke that ends with the punchline, “We’ve established what you are, ma’am; now we’re just haggling over the price.” We’re not somehow morally superior because the State doesn’t run the casinos and other gambling concerns directly. We’re just suckers for letting private business keep the lion’s share of the profit on this particular enterprise.