A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

HB 1006 – Criminal Code Rewrite

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Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports that HB 1006, which overhauls the Indiana Criminal Code has passed the House Ways & Means Committee and is headed to the full House. The introduced version of the bill was written by the criminal code evaluation committee; so this is not something being undertaken lightly.

It’s a large document, so I haven’t read it (in fact, my browser is only loading through Title 9 of the Indiana Code – when the meat of the bill presumably takes place in Title 35.) However, the digest reads as follows:

Makes various changes to the criminal code, including changes to the law concerning community corrections, probation, sentencing, probation funding, drug and alcohol program funding, involuntary manslaughter, communicable disease crimes, battery, hazing, obstruction of traffic crimes, interference with medical services crimes, kidnapping, confinement, criminal mischief, railroad mischief, computer crimes, theft, deception and fraud crimes, timber spiking, offenses against general public administration, criminal gang activity crimes, stalking, offenses against public health, child care provider crimes, weapon crimes, drug crimes, protection zones, rape and earned credit time. Repeals the law concerning criminal deviate conduct, and consolidates the crime of criminal deviate conduct into the crime of rape. Changes the phrase “deviate sexual conduct” to “other sexual conduct”.Repeals laws concerning carjacking, failure of a student athlete to disclose recruitment, and credit restricted felons. Removes the current four level felony penalty classification and replaces that classification with a six level felony penalty classification. Assigns new felony penalties to each crime. Urges the legislative council to require an existing study committee to evaluate the criminal law statutes in IC 7.1 and IC 9 and to make recommendations to the general assembly for the modification of the criminal law statutes in those titles. Makes technical corrections. Makes conforming amendments.

According to Kelly’s report, the goal of the legislation is to make sentencing more proportional to the crime – increasing penalties for serious offenses, reducing penalties for drug offenses; as well as diverting low level offenders from the Department of Corrections to local programs. It also changes the good time credit from a (nearly) automatic 50% to a requirement that offenders serve 75% of their sentence. In addition, it restructures the felony levels from the current 4 (A-D felonies) to 6.

As a person interested in local government, I’ll want to take a look at the proposed changes to the Community Corrections program — if more offenders are going to be using those local programs, increased funding at that level will be necessary; and hopefully some control designed to make sure that local government has some method of checking sentencing decisions if those decisions are sending more offenders to the local programs than the funding can serve.

Washington’s Birthday / President’s Day

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Happy President’s Day/ Washington’s Birthday. According to Wikipedia the designation “President’s Day” is more of an advertising thing that started in the 80s. Washington’s Birthday is Feb. 22, but this day at least started as a commemoration of his birthday.

I’ve always respected Washington and admired what he did, but his Presidency never had quite the emotional appeal to me as some others. I think it’s because his time in history seems so far removed as to be an abstraction for me — moreso than even, say, Lincoln. Maybe it’s the imagery with the powdered wigs and whatnot.

Be that as it may, Frank Herbert wrote in “Dune” that “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.” With Washington we are fortunate that he was mindful of the balances and, while I’m sure we could quibble with this or that, he did a fine job of it.

HB 1002 – Indiana Career Council / Workforce Intelligence System

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Rep. Bosma’s HB 1002 creating the Indiana Career Council seems more aspirational than prescriptive. But, it passed the House 99 – 0, so maybe it actually does more than is apparent to me.

It creates the Career Council and populates it with various government officials, the President of Ivy Tech, and a few people representing labor, education, and the life sciences industry appointed by the Governor. It sets before the Council the broad tasks of coordinating the state’s education, job skills development, and career training system, and matching education and skills with the job market.

It also mandates the development of the “Indiana Workforce Intelligence System” “to improve the effect of the state’s educational delivery system on the economic opportunities of individuals and the state’s workforce, and to guide state and local decision makers.to improve the effect of the state’s educational delivery system on the economic opportunities of individuals and the state’s workforce, and to guide state and local decision makers.” The legislation mandates certain inputs into the data system and requires that it “effectively organize, manage, break down, and analyze educational and workforce data.” The Department of Workforce Development, the Department of Education, and the Commission for Higher Education to feed data into the system.

The bill gives the Career Council until July 1, 2018, to contract for the development of the system, and, after that, gives that authority to the Governor. The Career Council is charged with administering the system once created.

Having data that matches job market demands with job market supplies is not objectionable. But, I thought this was the sort of thing that the free market was supposed to take care of. Where supply is inadequate to demand, the market provides a signal about the mismatch in the form of rising price offered for the skill set needed; creating an incentive for suppliers to develop that skill for fun and profit. In other words, if employers need certain skills, the one offering the highest compensation will get the limited supply. Meanwhile, workers wanting to make more money will start learning the skill. If it’s true that the Skills Mismatch theory of Unemployment really is more myth than truth, then this Career Council and Intelligence System is likely to be little more than a boondoggle in favor of whoever gets the contract to develop it.

Carroll on Medicaid Expansion

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Aaron Carroll’s Testimony on the Medicaid Expansion to the Indiana General Assembly.

One of the things Indiana has to decide this year is whether to expand Medicaid to include those up to 138% of the poverty line. The Affordable Care Act reforms were designed assuming that the Medicaid expansions would happen. The Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench into that assumption by saying that the state expansions should be optional. (Seemed a bit like legislating from the bench; but given the alternatives, not necessarily the worst thing that could have happened in that ruling.) Folks above the 138% mark can get subsidies to buy insurance under the ACA. But, absent state expansion, people in the no-man’s land between the current Medicaid levels and the 138% mark will be left out in the cold.

Carroll makes an important point, which often gets lost in the noise: Medicaid is good for health. These are people’s lives. The only ones they’ll ever get. Making those lives better is one of those bleeding heart things that never really shows up in the spreadsheets. But we shouldn’t forget it. This decision will affect something like 400,000 of your fellow Hoosiers. I think that works out to something like 6% of us in that middle ground between Medicaid and subsidies.

Through 2019, Indiana pays $478 million versus the federal government’s $8.5 billion. I’m always a little leery of this talking point. It’s important because we’re going to be paying these federal tax dollars regardless; the question is whether we’ll do what’s necessary to get health care services in return. But, it leaves opponents feeling smug because they’ll ask, “yeah, but what about after 2019” as if they just caught the grifter palming the ball in a shell game. But, at the end of the day, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and nothing in this world is certain. Other countries have been managing to provide health services to their populations for many years. We probably just have to have faith in ourselves that we can do at least as good.

Carroll argues that this will actually save us money though. In addition to the direct costs we currently incur with the Healthy Indiana Plan, we also will save in areas such as the provision of uncompensated care for the indigent and hidden expenses such as cost shifting and higher premiums caused by care provided to the uninsured.

Small Government Watch: Sunday Liquor Sales Continue to Be Banned

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Chris Sikich, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled Indiana legislature to continue ban on Sunday carry-out alcohol sales. House Public Policy Committee Chairman Bill Davis (R-Portland)has decided that a bill lifting the ban on Sunday sales of alcohol won’t get a committee vote.

Indiana will, therefore, remain the last state in the country banning Sunday sales of beer, wine, and liquor on Sundays at retail stores.

This law is a pointless anachronism, and it ought to be opposed by those ostensibly in favor of the free market and small government. At least rhetorically, Hoosier lawmakers are in favor of those things. There is no real reason why we should treat package liquor stores differently than other kinds of merchants who, all things being equal, would rather reduce competition with big box stores.

Of course, when it comes to Sunday alcohol sales, my real concern is not with those big philosophical issues. I can dress up my personal concerns in clothing of broad political and economic policy positions. But, in reality, I just want to be able to buy beer on Sundays. If this were a Tuesday ban on scrapbooking materials, I doubt the issue would ever grace this blog; because I would not care. Saturdays and Sundays are the days when I’m most likely to get out to a store. Beer is one of my favorite things to buy. So, it’s not infrequent that it occurs to me on a Sunday that I’d like to be able to pick up some beer.

And, that’s really the point, I think. It’s not just that liquor store owners want a day off. It’s also that Sundays are one of the days when customers are most likely to be in a big box store for something or other. If liquor is an option, customers will pick that up at the big box store while they’re out. On the other hand, if the customer has made his or her trip to the box store on Sunday; then has to make a separate trip for beer or wine, there is a bigger chance the customer will just drop by the package liquor store rather than hassling with the ginormous parking lot and crowds of people between him and his 6-pack.

Still, I’m selfish, the plight of the liquor store owner does not keep me awake nights when I’m contemplating my desire for slightly more convenient access to alcohol. But, fortunately, all is not lost. The General Assembly does permit me the liberty of going down to People’s Brewing and picking up a growler of Mr. Brown on a Sunday if I’m so inclined.

SB 280 – Member of General Assembly’s Individual Standing to Defend Challenged Legislation

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Rumor has it that SB 280 introduced by Sen. Delph will get a committee hearing tomorrow.

It begins by specifying that the legislation does not apply to litigation covered under IC 2-3-8 or 9. Those chapters give the General Assembly authority to employ private attorneys (rather than the Attorney General) to defend challenges to legislative or Congressional districts; and to employ private attorneys (rather than the Attorney General) to defend lawsuits against individual legislators, agents of the General Assembly, or the General Assembly as a body.

Sen. Delph’s bill would give an individual legislator standing to intervene in an action challenging legislation if in the opinion of the legislator the legislation is not being “adequately” defended. This right is given to the legislator designated as the first author of the legislation.

If the legislator can’t get a private attorney to work on the case for free, the Attorney General has to foot the bill for the litigation.

In my mind, this is a departure from proper separation of powers and a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of what a law is. A member of the General Assembly, acting alone, is just an ordinary citizen. Absent the legislative process and requisite votes, the laws he writes are just words on a page. There is nothing magic about them absent the consent of the body. And, furthermore, there is nothing magic about the fact that an individual legislator came up with the idea and wrote those words on the page. He or she has no individual ownership in the legislation such that he or she should have standing to take control of the litigation beyond the right given to the rest of us citizens.

Acting in concert with the rest of the body, the legislator is entitled to exercise power. Outside of that body, he or she is just another person. This bill would undermine that notion.

Yet Another Reason to Hate Calhoun

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Long time readers know I get a bit intemperate when the Old Confederacy is at issue. Here is more fuel for that particular fire with a modern spin. Sam Tanenhaus has an article in The New Republic that’s getting a lot of attention entitled Original Sin. He talks about the modern conservative’s roots going back to John C. Calhoun by way of William F. Buckley and the National Review.

The true problem, as yet unaddressed by any Republican standard-bearer, originates in the ideology of modern conservatism. When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s, they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually fierce South Carolinian John C. Calhoun. This is not to say conservatives today share Calhoun’s ideas about race. It is to say instead that the Calhoun revival, based on his complex theories of constitutional democracy, became the justification for conservative politicians to resist, ignore, or even overturn the will of the electoral majority.

Calhoun was a voice of aggrieved elitism that seems to have characterized the planter class. As Samuel Johnson put it, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Echoes of Calhoun will end up hurting the modern conservative; just as his nonsense led to the ruin of the South when Gen. Sherman undertook to show them what oppression really looked like, if only for a time.

That said, however, I don’t buy the notion that the GOP is in any real danger (let alone “grave” danger) of ceasing to be a national party. They’ll re-calibrate sooner or later, and then the Democrats will be on the defensive nationally.

SJR 7 – Constitutional Right to Hunt & Fish passes Senate

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By a vote of 38 – 10, the Indiana Senate passed SJR 7 regarding the “right to hunt & fish.” It’s already passed through the General Assembly once. (See the prior discussion here from 2011; and a proto-version of the bill from 2005) If it passes the house, it will go on to the ballot for the public to vote on.

It would add to the state constitution a provision that says:

The people have a right to hunt, fish, harvest game, or engage in the agricultural or commercial production of meat, fish, poultry, or dairy products, which is a valued part of our heritage and shall be forever preserved for the public good, subject only to laws prescribed by the General Assembly and rules prescribed by virtue of the authority of the General Assembly. Hunting and fishing shall be the preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife. This section shall not be construed to limit the application of any provision of law relating to trespass or property rights.

Is this addressing a problem? Does it limit the government in some fashion that should be more explicit? It’s either so innocuous it shouldn’t be cluttering up the Constitution, or so opaque in its intent that its intent should be made more explicit. But, who wants to be the legislator who votes against hunting & fishing? Somebody ought to float a puppy amendment.

Krull on Pence

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John Krull has a column in the Louisville Courier Journal on the new governor entitled Gov. Mike Pence’s ‘Roadmap’ for Indiana still wandering.

Gov. Pence’s legislative history never suggested a love for policy details. He’s more of an “idea man,” particularly, I think, where those ideas are abstracted from the facts on the ground. Facts are messy things and don’t lend themselves well to the sort of uncompromising ideology that has been a hallmark of the governor’s career so far. (I think an effective legislator has to approach his or her ideology in much the same way Capt. Barbossa approached the Pirate Code (“the code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”)

In any case, whether this is the problem or not, Krull discusses some restlessness in the General Assembly about Gov. Pence’s tepid policy leadership so far. The campaign was vague, the inauguration was vague, the State of the State was vague, and 1/4 of the way through the long session, the governor’s office has not apparently been very active on specific policy initiatives.

Krull concludes, “. . . at some point, Mike Pence will have to stop waving his roadmap around, get behind the wheel and drive the state somewhere. The question that remains is where he wants to go.”

Howey on Gerrymandering

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Brian Howey has a good column entitled HOWEY: Gerrymandering prolongs lack of fair representation. He’s quick to point out that it’s a bipartisan enterprise, but this cycle gerrymandering seems to be advantage: Republican. Nationally, they received 1% fewer votes than the Democrats but won 54% of the House seats. In the state, they took 54% of the vote but 69% of the House seats.

This go-round, Republicans are making soothing sounds about how redistricting should take place, but you can be reasonably sure nothing will happen. Democrats are probably a little more earnest about a non-partisan redistricting plan simply because they’re on the losing end of it. My guess is that Libertarians, if asked, would give you an earful about electoral reforms that need to happen; gerrymandering being only one.

The problem is that structurally, the people who have to agree to the changes are the people who (in the short term anyway) necessarily have benefited from the status quo.

The only way significant changes are likely to be made is if it gets attention and a critical mass from below among the people.