Several Joint Resolutions have been introduced, proposing to amend the Indiana Constitution in various ways. The list of joint resolutions for the 2007 regular session is available here. Unless I’m missing something, the digest of the resolutions are available but the actual text is not.
- SJR 2 would allow the General Assembly to prescribe by law additional qualifications for the office of coroner. Presumably this resolution would amend Article 6 of the Indiana Constitution. This appears to be a response to the ongoing coroner problems in Marion County.
- SJR 3 would establish the Next Generation Trust Fund with a principal of $500 million. The General Assembly would be prohibited from touching the principal of the fund and could use the income from the fund only for highways, roads, and bridges. This is obviously an attempt to keep the greedy paws of future General Assemblies off of the money from the Toll Road privatization. I believe prior legislation prohibits raiding the trust fund, but, obviously future General Assemblies can simply change that sort of legislation.
- SJR 4 would require Senate confirmation of executive agency heads. This proposed amendment would allow the General Assembly to legislate offices for which the Governor’s choice could be rejected by the Senate.
- SJR 5 would allow the General Assembly to allow a non-resident to vote if the non-resident was 1) the child of a registered Indiana voter; and 2) met the Constitutional requirements to vote in Indiana aside from the residency requirement.
My initial knee-jerk reactions are that I am indifferent to #2 (coroners), but it’s probably o.k. I think I’m probably in favor of #3 (toll road privatization trust fund). And #4 (senate approval of the governor’s appointments) and #5 (non-resident voters) are probably bad ideas.
I believe that SJR 2 is in response to the Grant County misidentification problem.
I think Peter’s right — I’d be surprised if Grant County’s coroner problems aren’t part of the motivation for this.
For those who weren’t aware of it, the Indy Star had an editorial on 20 November about it.
SJR 2 sounds like a good idea. In some counties the job of coroner sounds like it’s a sinecure — and sinecure jobs tend to attract people who will screw up when the pressure is on.
SJR 3 seems like a good idea at first blush; hopefully such a thing will help prevent any future Republican General Assemblies from regarding the proceeds from the moronic sale of the Indiana Toll Road as some kind of surplus, and indulge in a so-called “tax rebate” that ends up bankrupting essential services.
Doug, I don’t see why SJR 4 is such a bad idea. This already happens at the federal level, and it’s hardly the case that the executive never gets its way. The executive gets its way *most* of the time, but at least there’d be some more public scrutiny of the nominees, which might prevent some more egregious examples of cronyism from being considered by the Governor in the first place.
I don’t have an opinion on SJR 5. Is this targeted at college student children of Indiana parents who go out of state to school, but live off-campus?
I agree with Branden on SJR4. Additional oversight on these appointments may help to prevent questionable assignments to office. It seems that many of these department heads are nothing more than either politicians or businessmen looking to pad their resumes before moving on to better, higher profile jobs elsewhere.
In any case, job knowledge is rarely the major consideration for their appointment. Instead, qualities such as personal loyalty to the Governor become of tantamount importance, rather than committment to job and state. This often leads to “the blame game”–of the previous administration, of the workers, etc.
Rather than outsourcing, maybe we should try competence at the departmental level.
At the moment, my opposition to Senate approval of executive branch appointments has to do with my reluctance to tinker with the fundamental underpinnings of government without a demonstration of real need. I just don’t see a pressing need.
But, if we were designing our government from scratch, I don’t think I would oppose the Senate approval requirement.
Well, in my example of cronyism, I was thinking specifically of Mitchell Roob.
Maybe Roob’s efforts to steer the privatization of FSSA to his previous employer ACS is the first nakedly self-serving thing he’s done in his career, but if not, Senate hearings might have brought them to light.
Roob’s relationship with ACS seems to me a kind of junior version of Dick Cheney’s with Halliburton.
And has Hershman not filed the Marriage Discrimination Amendment yet? I need to know what number to call it when I write against it.
Just wondering – does anyone know the motivation behind SJR 5 (non-resident voters)?
The title for SJR 5 is “military and overseas voters.”
Ok, here is a link to the text. (There is no link from the web page, but they use the same URL conventions, so I was able to just switch SJR 5-2006 to SJR 5-2007 and get the text.) But, unfortunately, the text doesn’t add much illumination to the motivation. It just says:
The “requirements of subsection (a)” are basically that you have to be 18 and a resident of the precinct.
Here is a link to the text of the coroner amendment. It amends Article 6, section 4 of the Constitution. That provision currently requires a county officer to be an elector of the county and a resident of the county for one year prior to the election.
Here is a link to SJR 3 concerning the “Next Generation Trust Fund.”
Ah, SJR 5 makes more sense to me now. It’s not about out-of-state college students, it’s about people overseas.
I was unaware that U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. forfeited their voting privileges.
It seems harmless enough. Distortion of our political system by expats comes in the form of campaign contributions and paid lobbying, not individual votes.