Tammy Webber, for the Indianapolis Star has an article entitled, Natural resource managers fired. Mitch Daniels’ new DNR chief, 32 year old Kyle Hupfer formerly of Ice Daniels, fired “Paul Ehret, deputy director of regulation; Stephen Sellers, communications; Eric Myers, Heritage Trust and Natural Resource Foundation; Mike Nickolaus, oil and gas; Harry Nikides, soil conservation; Randy Braun, soil conservation; John Tryon, human resources; Janet Parsanko, deputy director and general counsel; Barbara Moore, land acquisition and Burney Fischer, forestry.”

Sellers, DNR spokesman for 10 years and editor of the agency’s magazine, “Outdoor Indiana,” said Hupfer’s cuts “went very deep, beyond what the Democrats did 16 years ago.”

“This was not a question of weeding the garden, this was a question of chopping down mature trees,” Sellers said. “You’re talking about some really talented and dedicated people.”

I think the jury’s still out, but I suggested back in January that a good way to tell whether Our Man Mitch was shaking up Indiana Government for good purposes or bad was to look at whether FSSA or DNR and IDEM suffered more of a shake up. I may be entirely out of line with this, but I view a shake up at FSSA as a badly needed change to a dysfunctional agency. I view a shake up at DNR as Mitch’s attempt to make it safe for business to pollute, thereby lining their pockets at public expense. To be fair, he’s not laying off of FSSA either, but it seems like the harshest personnel actions have been taken against DNR and IDEM.

The debtor exemption bill passed Second Reading in the Senate as Engrossed Version, House Bill 1262. Debtors will enjoy an exemption to execution on their property to satisfy a judgment or exemptions in bankruptcy in the following amounts:

Real estate increased from $7,500 to $15,000;

Personal property increased from $4,000 to $8,000;

Cash increased from $100 to $300;

Certain retirement account contributions in their entirety;

Certain tuition or education program contributions;

The debtor’s interest in an earned income credit under section 32 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Here is a provision I’m not sure about though. It’s talking about personal property being sold to satisfy a lien:

If indebtedness secured by a valid lien is chargeable against the proceeds of the sale, a bid may not be accepted if the bid is less than the sum of the amount of the indebtedness secured by the lien and the exempt value of the property.

So, let’s say you have a lien in the amount of $20,000. Say the debtor has a car worth $15,000 securing the lien. Is this provision saying that a secured creditor can’t force the sale of the car for $15,000, exempt the first $8,000, and pay the creditor the remaining $7,000? Because, as I read that provision, you can’t sell the personal property for less than $28,000 (the sum of “amount of secured indebtedness” + “exempt value of the property.”) That doesn’t seem right. Hopefully I’m misreading the provision.

On Second Reading, the House accepted Speaker Bosma’s Amendment to SB 18 – the inspector general bill. The basic structure of the Inspector General bill remains the same. However, with Speaker Bosma’s amendment (crafted by Rep. VanHaaften), the appellate court judge who reviews the Governor’s petition to have the IG appointed special prosecutor has the option of appointing an elected prosecuting attorney instead. However, the elected prosecuting attorney can’t be from the county in which the alleged crime was committed (because the elected Prosecutor has already reviewed the case at the IG’s request and decided not to prosecute.)

Representative Day’s Amendment was narrowly defeated 46-49. It would have left all of the beneficial aspects of the Inspector General Bill in place with the only change being that the Inspector General would be appointed by an appointment committee consisting of: the deans of the Schools of Law at Bloomington, Indianapolis, Valpo, and Notre Dame, along with the president of the Indiana State Bar Association, the executive director of the Indiana prosecuting attorney’s council, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. So, it’s pretty clear that proponents of the bill want the IG to be directly under the thumb of the Governor. And that is really questionable, out of recognition that maintaining a separation of powers is critical to limiting the potential for abuse by any one branch of government. It’s also questionable in that the IG cannot be a force to counter corruption in the Governor’s office should it ever arise.

Update: The Indiana Law Blog has more.

Jennifer Whitson of the Evansville Courier Press News has an article entitled State Urging Medicaid Changes. In it, she notes that there is an effort to cut Medicaid’s 10% growth rate in half. Medicaid constitutes a $1.4 billion per year expense to the state, or 12% of the state budget.

Senator Miller’s SB 292 died in her own committee. It would have given the Governor the authority to cut optional services (those not mandated by the federal government, but offered by the state of Indiana.) Senator Miller says that the idea would have been more popular had the bill specified the optional services that could be cut. However, the stuff that could be cut without much pain would also be the stuff that doesn’t cost much in the first place. Mitch Roob, head of FSSA, announced some ways to save, but I can’t say I understood what most of them meant. Sounded like bureauspeak to me.

Kevin Corcoran has an article in the Indianapolis Star this morning entitled, Bosma: Now not time to end costly health plan

The Republican leader of the Indiana House has killed proposals to cut back or eliminate taxpayer-subsidized health care for former legislators, even though several Republicans in key races were elected last fall after campaigning for the changes.

Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, who was swept into power after his party took control of the chamber last fall, acknowledged that offering lifetime health care to former lawmakers has become costly and hard to justify.

But he said now is not the time for legislative action.
. . .
The benefit is available to former lawmakers, their spouses, surviving spouses, divorced spouses and dependents. Twenty-two former lawmakers and one ex-lawmaker’s surviving spouse are signed up, House and Senate records show.

I’m not necessarily concerned about the the expense to the state, which the article mentions is a drop in the bucket compared to overall expenditures. My main concern is how this sort of thing insulates legislators from the concerns of average Hoosiers. If you aren’t faced with the full force of significant annual health insurance premium increases, your inclination to regard them as a problem is not as great.

Update: A few hours after posting this, I ran across a healthcare plan suggested for Members of Congress a couple of years ago by Michael Thomas in an online forum in which I participate.

At the beginning of each term each member would be assigned to a health care plan in proportions mirroring the situtations of average Americans; some will get unlimited budgets, some will be enrolled in PPOs or HMOs, and some will have no insurance and would have to present themselves to the DC public hospitals for treatment.

Members seeking care outside of their designated plan would be subject to immediate forfeiture of all of their assets and sentenced to life without parole. Medical providers providing care beyond that authorized would have their licenses revoked. The thought is that, if we already had the best and most equitable possible health care system, nothing would change. However, if there was room for improvement, you can bet we’d find it very quickly under that system.

Some thoughts on Robert King’s Once without a prayer, faith agenda emerging.

First, the specific proposals mentioned in the article:

HB 1029 In God We Trust License Plate. I don’t mind this bill because it involves religion. I mind it because it adds yet another plate to the at least 30 different plates Indiana already has. It flew through the House by a vote of 90-3, because, after all, who wants to vote against God? But, according to Mr. King’s article, Senator Garton sent it to the purgatory of the Senate Rules and Legislative Procedure Committee precisely because of the overload of license plates we already have.

HB 1190 which permits a school corporation to include as an elective, “a study of world literature, including the Bible and other similar great works of literature.” Nothing wrong with this, except for Rep. Behning’s concern about the legislature meddling too much in dictating the curriculum for schools. I can’t say I care for Rep. Denbo’s openly disingenuous approach to the bill:

“I think every child should be exposed to the Bible and have an opportunity. If you do it from the historic or literary standpoint, it makes it legal,” Denbo said. “And I’ll be truthful. I have other motives: I feel like it’s good for children.”

Had this passed, I think Rep. Denbo would be faced with some unintended consequences. First, I can only imagine the squawking from hard core Christians if their kids ended up bringing home the Koran when they signed up for a Bible study course. Secondly, it has been my experience that scholarly exposure to the Bible (as opposed to religious exposure) makes people less inclined toward belief, particularly when it is read in conjunction with other religious works. In such a setting, the Bible becomes *a* book, rather than The Book.

HB 1429 Faith-based transitional prison dormitories. This allows the Dept. of Corrections to create transitional dormitories that try to get prisoners ready to function in the outside world through, among other things, religious instruction. Again, I don’t have much trouble with the premise of this bill. But, money is going to be a big problem. First, the House GOP budget flatlines prison spending. So, there isn’t a nickel of extra money to get this thing off the ground. Something else would have to get cut. Second, the inmate population being what it is, you will have inmates looking for trouble and special treatment demanding that every religion under the sun be accommodated. Trust me on this. I spend a lot of time defending my county against complaints from the inmates in the county jail. The hard-core complainers are nothing if not creative and persistent.

SJR 7 Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Thank God the Indiana General Assembly is protecting me from activist judges who would force me to marry another man and leave my wife.

HB 1607 Fetus Viability. I find this bill offensive. It legislates the viability of a fetus at 24 weeks. I’m of the opinion that when science flatly contradicts religion, science wins. Legislate the value of pi, legislate the earth round, legislate the sun to revolve around the earth, legislate evolution as fiction. It doesn’t do any good. It just reveals the government of the state to be wilfully ignorant.

Now, to expound upon something a bit more general. The assertion that “America was founded as a Christian Nation.” Bull. I found hints of this in Rep. Woody Burton’s explanation for the “In God We Trust” license plate.

Rep. Woody Burton, R-Greenwood, has long been concerned that judges are chipping away at the Judeo-Christian foundations of America. And he thought his “In God We Trust” license plate idea would give drivers a chance to express that concern, too, by paying an extra $3.90 to cover the cost of making the special plates.

While it’s heroic of Woody to try to save us from the Heathens with a license plate, Woody seems a bit ignorant of the Founding Father’s peculiar relationship to Christianity.

The United States was founded, first and foremost, on principles of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was very much a break from the religious traditions that had dominated Europe prior to the 17th Century. Enlightenment thinkers looked to find truth through objective observation of the world around them rather than through revelation from a higher power. To be sure, many of the Founding Fathers and most American citizens would have called themselves Christians. And, in fact, the Puritans were one Christian sect that fled Europe to get out from under the control of other Christian sects. But, it’s hard to believe that the Founding Fathers intended their government to owe any particular fidelity to Christianity. They were well aware of the way wars conducted by government in the name of religion had ravaged Europe in the centuries immediately prior to the writing of the Constitution. A number of them were Deists, which is to say that they believed in a Creator, but not in the absolute truth of the Bible or in the Trinity. They simply believed that a clockmaker God had created the rules of nature, wound up the Universe and let it run.

Consider the following quotes from some of the Founders and see if they sound like the words of individuals striving to create a Christian Nation:

As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,–as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquillity of Messelmen, –and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohammedan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever interupt the harmony existing betweenthe two countries”–Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 (Ratified unanimously by the U.S. Seante)

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. — Benjamin Franklin

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith. — Thomas Jefferson.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State. — Thomas Jefferson

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. — Thomas Jefferson

Our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry. –Thomas Jefferson

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together. — James Madison

I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to that book (the Bible)– Thomas Paine

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.–The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420

A good debunking of the Christian Nation myth can be found here.

Robert King for the Indy Star has an outstanding article this morning on faith-based legislation, entitled Once without a prayer, faith agenda emerging. It discusses the mostly Republican efforts to enact religiously based legislation important to some Christians. Perhaps I will be able to comment further later on, but at the moment, I am working on my own pro-family agenda. That is to say, my wife gets to sleep in on Sunday mornings, and I get to hang out with the boy. (Who is dining, this morning, on a fine meal of mostly grapes, bananas, and milk.)

Rebecca Helmes for the Palladium-Item writes an article entitledLocal legislators seek to revive bills. Sen. Allen Paul believes this might be the most intense session in the past 19 years. That is saying something, because that would include the days when the Boy Governor (Evan Bayh) faced off against Senator Garton and at least 2 sessions involving a 50-50 split in the House. This session you have one-party rule. Seems like the Republicans have enough resources to make the session go smoothly if they throw the Democrats a bone or two every once in awhile.

Statements like that of Rep. Pflum don’t really help though:

“We don’t have the numbers to stop the bills, but we do have the right to dissent,” Pflum said. He said House Democrats provided support for much of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ legislation, but are worried that a governor-appointed inspector general with prosecutorial powers eliminates necessary checks and balances in government.

I’m with him so far. Checks & balances were of vital importance to the Founding Fathers. I was reading the Federalist #48 where James Madison writes eloquently about the need for practical checks between the branches of government. (Yeah, I know how to live it up on a Saturday.)

But, then Pflum goes on to say:

This is like a Gestapo, folks.

No need to bring the Nazis into this. In online discussion, there is a principle known as Godwin’s Law. Basically, “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Whoever mentions Nazis first, loses.

What I thought were relevant passages from the Federalist #48:

It is agreed on all sides, that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others.
. . .
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. For this reason, that convention which passed the ordinance of government, laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time.

Having an independent inspector general insulated from the pressures of elections and local politics is not, in and of itself, objectionable. However, having that office tied to the will of the Governor is objectionable. The potential for the Governor to use his power against the legislative branch or local government is too great. I have not thought this through very much, but a less objectionable IG bill may have the Governor nominate a panel of, say, 3 to 5 candidates. The Supreme Court would select one of those candidates. And the IG would serve at the pleasure of the Supreme Court or the General Assembly, either of whom could cause the IG to be removed. (See my prior entry for an explanation of the Inspector General bill.)

Michele McNeil has an article in the Indy Star entitled, State lawyer won contract from his boss. The Attorney General’s office awarded a contract to defend the state in civil suits to former deputy Attorney General, John Lewis, who was chief of the tort litigation division. The contract award has at least the appearance of impropriety. If I’m reading this right, Lewis contributed information for the drafting of the Request for Proposals for outsourcing the division’s work, then turned around and bid on the project.

Aside from that, I’m wondering how the economics of this is going to work. When doing the work in-house, the Attorney General had 12 staff positions to deal with the cases, (3,000 of them filed in 2004), and now the private firm of Lewis and Wilkins will do the work with 4 people. (Or maybe I’m misreading the article and the number of Lewis & Wilkins attorneys is not specified, just there will be 4 who used to work at the AG’s office.) In any event, I don’t see how a private firm is going to have a competitive advantage in this case. Normally you outsource peripheral duties. But litigation ought to be a core competency of the AG’s office. Furthermore, AG attorneys generally work cheaper than the private practice attorneys. And, overhead is not as much of a direct problem. There is almost certainly relevant information I don’t have in analyzing this situation, but from what I have it seems that, either this outsourcing will end up costing a lot more than the $650k that was bid or Lewis & Wilkins will end up taking a financial hit from this contract.

I believe the contract is available here. (Scroll down to Lewis & Wilkins). I was unable to view the PDF document, but that could very well be a problem with my software and not the document itself.

The Indy Star has an editorial entitled: Memo to FSSA: Let them speak The editorial board is critical, and rightly so, of the Family and Social Services Administration rule prohibiting employees from speaking with state lawmakers, their staffs, lobbyists and the media before checking with supervisors. According to the FSSA, “The purpose of this rule is simply to ensure that FSSA speaks with a consistent voice on legislative and policy matters.”

Frankly, if my experience as a staff member of the Legislative Services Agency assisting a legislative Autism study committee was any indication, getting information out of FSSA before this kind of rule was already hard enough. Because of that experience, I was very disappointed with Joe Kernan’s choice of Kathy Davis as a Lt. Gov. candidate. Anyway, back in the day, the Autism Committee asked me to get Davis who was director of the FSSA to testify. No contact with Davis directly, no return telephone calls, no response to my letters. Nothing. Now, if I can’t get a response from FSSA while dropping words like attorney, LSA, Legislature, Senator, Study Committee, testify, etc. what chance does someone have who actually needs FSSA’s services and is likely poor, powerless, and uneducated?

So, if the FSSA culture hasn’t changed in the last 6 years, then this new policy adds insult to injury. One of my hopes is that the new Daniels administration can make positive changes to FSSA. This memo indicates changes, but in the wrong direction.