Some recently passed bills - A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Passed the House:

House Bill 1022: Military base protection act. Establishes a military base planning council. Requires IDEM to give military bases preferential treatment. Creates immunity for military bases for damages arising out of noise within 2 miles of base and telecommunications interference within 5 miles. Requires local government to give notice before rezoning within 3 miles of a base. Passed 91-0.

HB 1051 Tweaks the wage claim statute. It does a few things, but the main thing is to allow assignment of wage claims from the laborer to the Commissioner of Labor from $800 to $3,000. (The Dept. of Labor will review a wage claim and send a demand out to the employer which may or may not get a response. If there is no response or an insufficient response, the Dept. of Labor will farm the claims out to private attorneys who have to make their own arrangements with the employee as far as a fee is concerned. Usually this means a contingency. The Dept. of Labor stopped farming them out to me after I kept sending them back as too cheap and too messy to work with. The increased limit may help, but there are still going to be a bunch of word verses word situations with no documentation that, as a practical matter, make private attorneys reluctant to handle the case.)Passed 93-0.

HB 1069 – Home and Community Based Services Passed 94-0.

HB 1097Establishes fair market value as the amount that must be deducted whenever the value of computer application software is allowed to be deducted from the true tax value of tangible personal property. Provides that the rules of the department of local government finance must require the use of nationally recognized valuation guides when determining the true tax value of mobile homes that are not assessed as real property. (Computer software and mobile homes? Two great tastes that taste great together!) Passed 92-0.

HB 1262 Increases exemption amounts for property you can keep when you declare bankruptcy or someone is trying to execute on a judgment. Doubles the homestead amount from $7,500 to $15,000; doubles the personal property exemption from $4,000 to $8,000; triples the cash amount from $300 to $600. Eliminates the $10,000 cap. (So, I could have a $1,000 judgment against a couple, and they could stiff me even though they have $47,000 in assets and a pile of retirement money. I thought a Republican controlled government was supposed to be about personal responsibility not about coddling debtors!) Passed 63-33. (Looks like the nay votes were pretty well mixed up between R & D.)

SJR 4 The Constitutional right to hunt and fish. Passed 83-15. The Joint Resolution page doesn’t seem to have the roll call vote available, so I can’t see who to applaud for voting against this garbage. I mean, I’ve got nothing against hunting and fishing. Some of my best friends hunt and fish. But do we really need to muck up our Constitution with this crap? Say what you will about the gay marriage proposal, at least it’s a topic that rises to the level of a Constitutional question. What’s next? A Constitutional right to have a logo of Calvin peeing on stuff? Update: The Evansville Courier Press seems to share my take on this:

The Indiana Constitution is a document best left as it is, to protect our basic rights and guide us in the conduct of public policy. That is not to say it should never be amended; rather, that process should be reserved for a true crisis or for those eventualities that require adjustment of a document adopted more than 150 years ago.

To amend the state constitution for anything less is to risk opening the gates to every special-interest group in search of the precious protection of our constitution.
. . .
Proponents, in referring to hunting and fishing, say they want to guard “a valued part of our heritage.”

Let us suggest that Hoosiers need to guard another valued part of our heritage, the Indiana Constitution, by quashing this ridiculous and totally unnecessary effort to alter that constitution.

Passed the Senate

SB 196 Licensing and permits for boxing a/k/a the Don King Bill. Passed 47-0.

SB 102 Foreign judgments. Provides that defenses raised by a foreign judgment debtor must be ruled upon before the foreign judgment: (1) may be enforced by execution; or (2) constitutes a lien. Provides that a foreign judgment creditor is entitled to the same prejudgment remedies as an Indiana judgment creditor. Authorizes an Indiana court in which a foreign judgment is filed to preliminarily litigate certain postjudgment motions. Passed 46-0.

(The Senate bill information kept generating error pages in a lot of instances, so my Senate information is a little sparse tonight. Also, the House information isn’t comprehensive, but I think I got most of it.)

Passed the House:

Passed the Senate

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