The Hoosier Review brings up 4 bills before the General Assembly:
HB 1439 which requires a voter to produce state or federal ID at the polling place. On the one hand, sure, you want to minimize or eliminate voter fraud. On the other hand, I think this is probably being done to discourage voting by the wrong sorts of people. I don’t think it’s any secret that poor, disorganized, uneducated people who don’t have all of their papers in order are less likely to vote Republican. I don’t think they’re terribly likely to vote in any case, but if they do, they probably vote for the Democrats. By the same token, if you see Democrats pushing a bill that cites security problems with absentee voting, you can probably assume there has been a calculation that absentee voters are more likely to vote for Republicans. In any event, there are some interesting amendments proposed by Representative Mahern for this bill. One amendment would greatly expand the permissible forms of identification — gun permits, tax documents, vehicle title or registration, major credit cards, utility bills, bank statements, etc. Another amendment would require a county voter registration office to produce and issue an acceptable identification to a voter for free. A third amendment goes with the “good enough for Iraq, good enough for us” approach and requires a voter to submit a fingerprint with indelible ink that remains on one’s fingers. And, a fourth amendment would require the secretary of state to mail to each registered voter a notice of Indiana’s identification requirements for voting.
HB 1009 A voucher bill. I commented on this one a few days ago. The linked entry contains more commentary and a link to an Indy Star article on the subject. But, as I stated then, my main problem with vouchers is that some kids are more expensive to educate to others. I think we have 3 choices: 1) Decide we only want to spend $x dollars to educate a given child, let schools kick out kids who cost more than that to educate, and implement vouchers with no additional money; 2) Raise taxes so we can keep spending money on the hard to educate students and let kids migrate out of schools with hard-to-educate children; or 3) keep the system we have in place. I think society benefits in the long run if we educate every child we can, and I don’t really want higher taxes, so I’d vote for option #3.
HB 1726 Food and Beverage Tax for Monroe County. I have no idea what the needs of Monroe County may be, so I don’t particularly have an opinion on this bill. I do sort of think it’s ridiculous to pass these sorts of taxes county-by-county, year after year. A better approach may be to issue County Option Food & Beverage Tax and allow counties to implement it or not as their county councils and commissioners see fit.
HB 1434 Interior Designer Registration. Requires an interior designer to register with the secretary of state and pay a fee. Prohibits registration if the interior designer has a civil judgment against him or her for a breach of the standard of care for practice of interior design. This can’t be a pressing matter of state concern. My guess is that the National Council for Interior Design Qualification and/or whoever administers the Architectural Registration Exam is pushing for this one. See proposed IC 25-20.7-3-3 which requires that an interior designer pass an exam “administered by the NCIDQ or the ARE” before being allowed to register. My guess is that those exams aren’t given for free. Just remember the Latin phrase cui bono (who benefits) when you see ridiculous bills like this. (I’ve probably butchered the Latin phrase now that I went and used it gratuitously.)
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