A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Indiana legislators fight non-existent Sharia menace.

Sen. Raatz (800-382-9467) has introduced SB 56, this year’s iteration of the perennial Sharia bill that at least Senators Kruse and Steele have introduced before him.

If they’re just going to re-introduce the same bills, I guess I’m justified in just regurgitating the same analysis:

I believe Sen. Kruse’s SB 90 is properly understood as part of the non-existent Sharia menace.

Prohibits the enforcement of a foreign law (defined as a law established and used outside the jurisdiction of the United States) if the enforcement would violate a right granted by the Indiana or United States Constitution.

This part strikes me as gratuitous. What court in the U.S. is subordinating constitutional rights to foreign law? The whole scheme of statutory construction is premised on the notion that laws are unenforceable if they violate the constitution. So far as I know, foreign law is recognized as, at most, persuasive authority. That can change if, for example, parties have contracted to have their rights determined under a choice of law in a foreign jurisdiction, in which case the courts can be asked to determine the intent of the parties as to their rights under the contract by interpreting the law of a foreign jurisdiction.

The bill goes on to say that a foreign choice of law provision in a contract is void if it would violate someone’s constitutional rights. I think this is already a principle of contract interpretation, but it mostly does not come up because constitutions typically constitute the bounds of appropriate government behavior and not relations between private parties. So you can, for example, enter into a non-disclosure agreement without violating the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. On the other hand, a contract to enslave yourself is unenforceable.

I don’t know that this bill has any practical application. I think it’s properly understood as another chapter in the Great Sharia Freakout. See also.

Rep. Shackleford (800-382-9842) has introduced HB 1060 which would create the “healthy food financing program.” It creates a fund, the purpose of which is to “provide financing for projects that increase the availability of fresh and nutritious food in underserved communities,including financing for retailers to open, renovate, or expand grocery stores.”

The Indiana Housing and Development Authority is charged with overseeing the fund and with setting program criteria that can then be delegated to a non-profit for administration. Projects eligible for financing include construction of grocery stores, grocery store upgrades, and farmers’ markets. (Interestingly the provisions about grocery store upgrades and farmers’ markets have some conditional language about making fresh produce available that isn’t necessarily specified for new grocery store construction.)

The applicant for funding has to be able to demonstrate a likelihood that the project will be financially sustainable. The applicant also has to accept SNAP (food stamps), SSNP (WIC), have 50% space for perishable foods, and promote the hiring of local residents. The bill calls for the appropriation of $10 million over two fiscal years for the program.

This seems to be part of an ongoing legislative effort to address “food deserts.” In 2014, Indianapolis ranked worst in the nation as a food deserts.

Bill would provide $25,000 per year for wrongful incarceration

Rep. Steuerwald (1-800-382-9841) has introduced HB 1062 which would create the DNA exoneration fund and provide a mechanism for wrongfully convicted individuals, exonerated through DNA evidence, to receive compensation from the State.

It states that a person whose conviction is vacated (in whole or in part) on the basis of DNA evidence is entitled to compensation in the amount of $25,000 for each year that the person was wrongfully incarcerated in the department of correction. It initially appropriates $200,000 to the fund and directs the attorney general to administer the fund and investigate claims. In return for receiving compensation under this mechanism, the person is required to waive any further claims against the State.

This seems like a generally positive initiative, but I wonder what the rationale behind including DNA-based exonerations but excluding non-DNA exonerations. Maybe related to the relatively more objective nature of DNA versus other potential methods of exoneration?

Reps. Thompson, Bartlett, and Lawson are co-authors.

The fiscal note is pretty interesting. The analyst found nine cases of DNA based exoneration in Indiana. One of them is David Camm who the Indiana Law Blog has been following for a dozen years or so. Convictions on that list range from 1985 through 2002 and exonerations from 1993 – 2013. The longest case of incarceration was David Scott at 23 years from 1985-2008 who would be entitled to $575,000 under this methodology. (The bill would only apply to exonerations that take effect after June 30, 2017).

Sen. Delph (800-382-9467) has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 2 which would amend the Indiana Constitution to provide for redistricting by a redistricting commission. The current constitutional provision provides that the General Assembly elected in the year of a federal decennial census shall fix by law the number of Senators and Representatives and apportion them among districts, as revealed by the federal decennial census.

As amended, the Constitution would allow any General Assembly to change the number of Representatives and Senators (not just the General Assembly elected during a census year). (Another provision caps the numbers at 100 and 50 respectively, so if the numbers were altered, they could only be reduced.)

The amendment would also charge a commission established by the General Assembly with drawing the congressional and legislative districts (current law doesn’t specify congressional versus legislative districts) according to the number of inhabitants in each district “and other criteria established by law.”

I think I’m generally supportive of this notion, but I’m not entirely sure it’s necessary. It seems like, under the current Constitutional language, the General Assembly could require a commission to recommend districts, and then pass those as recommended. Obviously one problem is that it lacks the political will to adopt districts in a politically neutral way (or at least there is a perception that this is the case.) But I don’t know that the problem goes away with this amendment. You still have a legislatively created commission that isn’t necessarily independent creating districts according to instructions given to it by the General Assembly.

You can disregard a lot of the prior paragraph because it seems that Sen. Delph has anticipated this earlier argument (which I’ll just leave as-written instead of restructuring my blog post)  because he’s introduced SB 136 which has alternate provisions that both go with the commission’s recommendations with somewhat different procedures depending on whether the Constitution requires the General Assembly to vote for districts directly.

Under SB 136, the commission would be composed of nine members. The Speaker of the House, Senate President pro tem, House minority leader, and Senate minority leader would all appoint two members. Those members are directed to appoint a ninth member to be the chair and, if they can’t agree, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will make the appointment. The ninth member must be a retired judge. There are provisions designed to exclude politicians and lobbyists (at least on the state or federal level) as members of the commission.

The bill recommends equal populations in each district as ideal but permits deviation of a few percentage points to accommodate compactness of districts and respect for boundary lines of political subdivisions.

I have little to no experience in districting issues, but I’m not finding much to fault with this bill.

Education is big money for Indiana’s budget.

Kevin Allen, writing for the South Bend Tribune, has a good article on education legislation. In it, he quotes Rep. Dvorak who points out that it’s probably not that tough to get testing that does what we want (or what we should want, in any case): “a one-day test that gives a general overview of student performance . . . What parents want to see is how their kid measures up to the other kids in their grade, whether they need to do some extra work, whether there is a problem at a school.”

The problem, as Dvorak also points out, is that ISTEP is tied to a lot of money.

“The test is hinged to so many other parts of the bureaucracy and money that the test is not really about students anymore. It’s about millions and millions of dollars in education funding,” Dvorak said. “It’s not an argument about coming up with the test. It’s an argument about what the test is used to measure and fund.”
. . .
[earlier in the article]
“Every session for the last couple years has dealt more and more with education legislation,” said Rep. Ryan Dvorak, D-South Bend. “In my opinion, we’ve done more to screw up education in the past couple years than we did in the past couple decades.”

Education is big money for the state. There are roughly a million students (a number which has held steady for a long time). So, every dollar-per-student a policy pushes this way or that means a million dollar swing in the state budget.

Rep. DeVon thinks we have problems because we’re spending too much on administrative expenses and not enough on the classroom. I see this idea thrown around from time to time, but I’m not sure the evidence supports the claim. It strikes me as one of those evergreen “fraud, waste, and abuse” pieces of rhetoric: it’s a political winner to pick on “fraud, waste, & abuse,” and on “bloated administration,” and there are probably examples of each that could be addressed. But it ignores deeper structural issues that are politically thornier.

The article also talks about the prospects for applying for a federal prekindergarten grant that Gov. Pence botched a couple of years ago as well as incentives for dealing with the teacher shortage.

Some short bills that didn’t seem necessarily worth a full blog post of their own:

SB 29 (Koch) – Requires schools to offer an Indiana studies course. I’m a little torn. I’m not a particular fan of the General Assembly dictating curriculum, but I really think we should know more about our state, its history, and its culture. My bicentennial project gave me some notion of how ignorant I am about our history.

SB 30 (Koch) – Requires the Department of Education to provide reports to school corporations, letting them know which schools are receiving voucher students from the school corporation’s district. This strikes me as reasonable. I’m a little surprised it’s not already happening.

SB 43 (Tomes) – Generally, employers are prohibited from having a rule that precludes employee’s from having a firearm in the trunk of their car (usually at the employer’s parking lot). There is a list of exceptions (e.g. colleges, day care centers, public utilities) where the employer can enforce such a rule. This legislation removes penal institutions from that list.

SB 45 (Zakas) – Shortens General Assembly’s “long” session by 8 days and lengthens the “short” session by 7 days. I don’t have strong opinions on this one. Within some limits, it seems like the amount of legislation will expand to accommodate the available time, and it seems like progress on anything vaguely controversial will be made only under deadline pressure.

SB 68 (Breaux) – Repeals the unconstitutional language in the Indiana Code about same sex marriages being void.  These types of legislation can be a little tough to pass, I think. On the one hand, you want unconstitutional language out of the code. On the other hand, where something has been declared unconstitutional, there might be a lot of legislators who are going to be bitter about the declaration of unconstitutionality.

SB 81 (Boots) – Permits cold beer sales at grocery stores and drug stores. I’m in favor!

SB 86 (Leising) – In which Sen. Leising continues her misguided crusade to make cursive mandatory in schools.

SB 87 (Leising) – Requires schools to use letter grades on report cards.