A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Twitter is abuzz with the news that Speaker Bosma will move HJR 6 / 3 and its “partner” HB 1153 from the House Judiciary Committee to the House Elections Committee. This is a very unusual move for a bill that the Speaker claimed was not a priority. It is not unheard of for legislation to be moved to a more favorable panel if it is dying in another committee. But, certainly, this extra effort shows that the bill is of more importance to the Speaker than he had let on earlier. It also suggests that the bill did not have the votes to make it out of the judiciary committee.

The members of the House Elections committee are, on the Republican side: Reps. Smith (chair), Richardson (vice-chair), Rep. Woody Burton, Rep. Casey Cox, Rep. Hamm, Soliday, Sullivan, Thompson, and Wesco; and, on the Democratic side: Reps. Bartlett (ranking minority member), Battles, GiaQuinta, and Goodin. Per Eric Berman, the committee will hear another round of testimony tomorrow (January, 22, 2014 – time to be determined at 3:30 p.m. in the House Chambers.)

This thing is like a sick dog. It’s the wrong thing to do. Even for those who disagree on the morality of voting for this resolution, the fairly straight forward first sentence is redundant because of existing state law. The second sentence is impenetrable and ill-advised. HB 1153 the “explanatory” companion legislation acknowledges the problems with the proposed constitutional language but raises more questions than it answers.

The Speaker should have let the resolution die a merciful death in committee.

Update Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has coverage of the development.

[Speaker Bosma] said he struggled with the decision over the weekend but had heard from a majority of the House Republican caucus – for and against the measure – that they wanted to vote on the bill on the House floor.

Bosma made a veiled reference to shadiness regarding the Judiciary Committee but would not embellish.

“I’m actually more concerned about the path by which the bill appeared to be being questionable in committee. It was a hard left turn that came kind of out of the blue,” he said. “I decided this was the right course to protect the institution.”

Shadiness in the Judiciary Committee? Now, I’m really curious.

Rep. Moed has introduced HB 1210 which would repay student loans for certain teachers.

Specifically, if the teacher graduated from his or her high school in the top 20% or in the top 20th percentile of the ACT or SAT exam; graduates from college with not less than a 3.5 GPA (on a 4.0 scale), and either teaches in a “critical shortage” geographic area or teaches science, technology, engineering, math, or special ed, then – at the end of the third consecutive year of teaching – the State would pay up to $9,000 of the teacher’s student loans.

The Department of Education would be in charge of determining “critical shortage geographic areas” which are defined as areas having or projected to have within the next twelve months a shortage of full-time licensed elementary or high school teachers. The teacher would have to apply to be part of the program within two years of graduating and would have to enter into an agreement promising to teach in one of the designated subject areas or geographic areas for three years. The teacher is permitted to teach at different schools if the eligible service is in consecutive years. No time will be credited prior to the teacher entering into the agreement. Only individuals who graduate from high school after June 30, 2014 would be eligible. With four years of college and the three year service requirement, it would be 2022 before the state would start paying out on this program.

This is reminiscent of the loan repayment program for doctors as an incentive to have them go work in an under-served geographic area. It’s probably easier for a teacher to pick up and move to a new school after serving his or her time than it is for a doctor to pick up and move his or her medical practice area. The subject areas are a bit “stickier” in that it’s less likely that, once trained in particular subject areas, a teacher would move on to other subject areas after the three years were up. Whether this bill moves forward probably speaks to that perennial question of whether we regard teachers as professionals or more like jumped up babysitters.

Senators Nugent and Tomes have introduced SB 301 which would prohibit political subdivisions from regulating the possession, carrying, transportation, sale, purchase, transfer, licensing, registration, or use of a knife or components used to make a knife.

A political subdivision would be prevented from regulating the manufacture of knives in a manner more restrictive than regulations in place for any other commercial good.

This bill paints with an awfully broad brush. It’s handy to have a knife around sometimes. And it’s annoying when you find yourself in a place with restrictions and you’ve forgotten to take a knife out of your pocket. I used to carry a small one on a keychain that, pre-9/11, caused me some slight delays at security screenings, but was never confiscated. Post-9/11, I just took it off my keychain, because I like the knife and knew that at some point I’d forget and it wouldn’t be allowed through security.

As for manufacture of knives, I have no idea what the potential issues might be or what political subdivisions are doing to regulate the manufacture. Under this law, however, if there was – say – some environmental concern about processing the metal involved with a knife, the political subdivision would not be entitled to address that concern because other commercial goods (without that metal) aren’t so regulated.

Senators Stoops and Randolph have introduced SB 214 which generally prohibits employers from using credit reports when making employment decisions about hiring, firing, and the like. Some exceptions are made, including exceptions for managerial positions, positions that involve access to money, positions with local government or the attorney general (oddly specific exception there).

I understand both sides here, I suppose. On the one hand, credit information generally was not intended to inform employment decisions and, to the extent the consumer/employee gave out the information, it probably wasn’t with future employment in mind. Furthermore, just because you have bad credit doesn’t necessarily make you a bad employee.

On the other hand, employers might well find that credit scores are a fairly reliable proxy for whether the employee will be responsible. If the employee can’t handle his or her own business, the employer might reasonably lack confidence in the employee’s ability to handle the employer’s business. And, while the proxy is not 100%, the labor pool is probably deep enough for the employer to miss a few good employees and still put together a good staff made up of employees with solid credit scores.

The state’s interest in this is that it puts potential employees in a vicious circle. Bad credit leads to few job prospects leads to worse credit leads to fewer job prospects leads to burden on the public safety net.

HB 1002 introduced by Reps. Brown and Soliday would allow the major moves trust fund to be used for every day highway needs instead of just major projects. According to the fiscal note, $200 million was transferred to the Major Moves Trust Fund on July 1, 2013 and another $200 million will be transferred in 2014. Under current law, that money may be used only for major highway enhancement projects. With this legislation, it could be used for ordinary maintenance.

Essentially, this looks like a transfer of cash from a capital fund to an operating fund. I’m not a financial planner, but my understanding is that you usually want to avoid such transfers because they have a tendency to mask structural deficits at the expense of future assets.

Rep. Washburne has introduced HB 1149 which would raise the speed limit for larger vehicles. Specifically, it would increase the Interstate speed limit for vehicles over 26,000 pounds would be 70 miles per hour. Currently the speed limit for such vehicles is 65 miles per hour.

I don’t know enough about the physics to know whether this is a good idea, a bad idea, or a wash. You have to think that heavier vehicles moving faster increases the risk or will at least increase the damage when accidents do happen. On the other hand, speed differentials are probably just as dangerous as trucks moving an extra ten miles an hour faster. Another consideration is probably fuel conservation. I imagine trucking companies would like to maximize fuel economy, and increasing speed limits may make it more difficult to do so.

Sen. Leising continues to push to make cursive a mandatory part of the school curriculum with SB 113. Paige Clark, writing for the IBJ, reports that the bill has passed out of committee.

Sen. Leising has been tilting at this particular windmill for years since the State Board of Education made cursive discretionary for schools to teach. Advocates of cursive come up with post hoc rationalizations for why they care so much. It’s for the children, of course. But the justifications are specious:

“They need to be able to sign their name.”
Fine, spend a few hours one day teaching them to sign their name.

“It affects brain development.”
You get the same development from printing.

“They need to be able to read the original Declaration of Independence.”
When they get to this point, proponents of mandatory cursive are grasping at straws.

The fact is that cursive is the slide rule of writing. Nostalgia is the motivation for hanging on to it. The world is changing, and that’s upsetting. The offered rationales are pretexts to justify the underlying nostalgia. If we just discovered cursive today, we would be in no rush to force it on our kids.

If teachers and schools decide to spend limited class time on this mode of manufacturing letters, it’s not the end of the world, but making it mandatory is not a useful or necessary use of the General Assembly’s power.

The Indiana Law Blog has been a fantastic resource for longer than I have been blogging. It most generally provides solid information while avoiding opinion. So, when it does take a position, it’s worth taking notice. Today the ILB has an entry entitled “Indiana Law – Some thoughts on HJR 3: The time to speak out is now“.

I was a law student during the civil rights movement, a young attorney during the women’s rights movement, and now in my 70s feel privileged to be witnessing a revolution of gender equality.

But while barriers to same sex marriage are coming down across the nation, some of us in Indiana are determined to put in place new fortifications, ones that could take years to remove (except through the federal courts), and ones that may assure years of legal battles at the state level.

I think this General Assembly should stop HJR 3 now, before needlessly damaging our State’s reputation as a welcoming, 21st century place to live and work. The optimal time to stop HJR 3 would be to never vote it out of first house committee.

I agree. And, as I’ve mentioned before, the “let the people vote” rationale for sending it out of committee is disingenuous. It’s disingenuous because there is no “legalize gay marriage” option on the ballot. There is no “a legal status substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall be valid” option. For same sex couples, the vote is a “heads you win, tails I lose” vote. The General Assembly should strangle this constitutional amendment in its cradle.

I will tread lightly on this one because: a) I do not have a great familiarity with the subject matter; and b) it’s in my back yard, and that increases the danger of me stepping into something I don’t want to step into. That said, Rep. Truitt has introduced HB 1216 which addresses the modification of zoning commitments after annexation. Under IC 36-7-4-1015, a decision to rezone or approve a subdivision plat or a special exception or the like can be made contingent on the property owner committing to use or develop the land in a certain way. Generally, modification or termination of the commitment can be made only with the agreement of the plan commission or board of zoning appeals to whom the commitment was made. HB 1216 would shift that authority to the legislative body that annexes the property if the commitment is made after the effective date of the bill (July 1, 2014) and annexation is made after the commitment.

I don’t know of anything specific, but because this is a bill introduced by Rep. Truitt and because West Lafayette is in the process of a fairly significant annexation process, my guess is that this bill is targeted at the area due to be annexed by West Lafayette.

SB 191 introduced by Sen. Yoder provides that a records request to a city agency by a city legislative body or an individual member of that body isn’t treated the same as other public records request. In particular, the records cannot be redacted, the recipient is limited in further disclosing the record, and there are protections for the city agency that discloses a record that would otherwise be nondisclosable.

A good number of the mandatory exceptions to the Access to Public Records Act would also be nondisclosable under this statute. With respect to records that can be withheld at the discretion of the agencies, agencies would still have the discretion to withhold investigatory records, attorney work product, and records that would expose a vulnerability to terrorist attack.

I’m not sure that amending the public records law is the way to go here. First, this seems to be an internal municipal government issue. So, the answer would seem to be that you want to define the city legislative body’s authority in such a way that they have discretion to access the city agency records. However, that probably ties in to my second critique which is to question whether the authority should be vested in the hands of individual members of the city legislative body. The will of the individual isn’t the will of the body. The individual acting independently of the legislative body is a member of the public – no more, no less. He or she should not have special rights. Finally, it seems peculiar to confine this legislation to cities. Why not other political subdivisions? If it’s sound governing policy for one kind of unit, why not others?