Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2004 > State Government 2004 Edition
State Government 2004 Edition
Indiana's legislature, the General Assembly, is in short session (just a month or two) this year.
Pardon the ad hominem comment, but one is so naive if one
takes the Hoosier governor's first State of the State address
too seriously. None of his goals will ever be met. There are
few jobs and barely a cent in tax money to carry them out.
Indeed, the state itself is looking at a deficit of just over a
billion dollars by mid-2005.
Indiana's legislature built its budget with fanciful income
projections last year, only to find its revenues keep falling
short. And now we have the governor promising that the budget
will be in surplus by 2005 without raising taxes. Um … okay.
It is optimism at its most drunken that makes someone propose
full-day kindergarten for all public schools in the state without
money to pay for it, and a massive jobs-training program with no
jobs out there. And it is optimism at its most blind that makes someone
ask for a line-item veto that his enemies will not give.
At least he is focusing on biotechnology instead of information
technology as the jobs generator of the future. That is a smart
move. When companies now export programming and other information
technology jobs overseas, how can there
be a future for IT?
The governor's only sensible proposal is the reform of the state
government itself, which has proven itself rife with fraud and
incompetence. If the governor wants to spend money that isn't
there, he might start by pegging state worker salaries to cost of living.
You can't expect a state clerk not to look for "side-income" while
being paid the same in Indianapolis (with its high cost of living) as in
Marion or Fairmount. If the governor successfully restricts his energies
to governmental reform, he will have something to brag about when he
campaigns for re-election this year.
I see no sign
of UCITA
rearing its vile head, so we Hoosiers are safe for
the moment. Most bills deal with the property tax reassessment
and its effects on taxpayers. Some are the usual attempts to
restrict abortion, or to abolish or restrict the death penalty.
Here's my sample of bills; house bills appear only if they differ from senate ones:
senate bills
- Gives three million dollars to dredge Cedar Lake, made nefarious in
a Jean Shepherd short story as a crappie pond where men go to drink beer,
to get away from their wives, and (incidentally) catch crappies (SB38).
- Bans cities and towns that own their own utilities from taxing property to
pay utility bonds unless that property is served by those utilities (SB51).
As an example, if a house isn't connected to a town's water or sewage lines,
the town can't tax it even if it's located within the town limits.
- Allows a state tax deduction for active volunteer firefighters (SB77);
bans an employer from punishing a volunteer-firefighter employee for responding
to an emergency, and lets such an employee sue his employer for doing so,
but lets the employer deduce earnings against time lost during the emergency (SB316).
Most of this will make my ex-boss, a volunteer firefighter in a rural township, happy.
- Provides for a professor of a state university as a nonvoting member
of the university's board of trustees (SB82). The cause of this is obvious:
Ball State, whose trustees have angered its professorate with their mishandling
of the search for a new president.
- Bans knives of any kind inside public schools outside of in-class
coursework (SB91). Leave the pocket knives at home, boys.
- Puts requests for merchant power plants inside Indiana under the
jurisdiction of the state utility regulatory commission (SB95). This came
out after it was found, during recent struggles between residents in Grant
and Henry counties and power companies wanting to build gas-fired plants in
their backyards, that the utility regulatory commission had no authority to
intervene in the struggle.
- Lets school districts pay bonuses of up to $10,000 to qualified high-school
math and science teachers (SB102). The bonuses can be paid outside
collective-bargaining agreements. The bonuses are for college-track
courses like algebra, geometry, and calculus, and for the physical sciences.
Courses like business math and psychology don't count. I can see whence this came,
but I'm not sure the teachers' unions will stand for it. And it doesn't do my
sister Tina any good anyway: She taught junior-high science.
- Makes it a fineable offense (up to $1000) to chatter on a mobile phone
while driving except in an emergency (SB131). It's about time the state crack
down on those oversocialized idiots.
- Bans the use of credit reports by auto insurance companies as a factor
in issuing insurance policies (SB140). This is a serious problem in Indiana:
Hoosiers must have auto insurance to own cars but many of them have bad credit
or none at all.
- Makes killing someone in a car crash while legally drunk punishable by
ten years in prison instead of the current four years (SB173).
- Makes running an Internet gambling site illegal (SB186). My local state
senator wrote this and, yes, it is unenforceable since most such sites are overseas.
- Allows two or more neighboring townships to merge by mutual consent,
provided they are in the same county (SB187). This is another bill by
local state senator. I've more to say on townships below.
- Sets up a state license for "geologists in training" (GIT) and allows geologists
to incorporate like doctors and lawyers (SB198). This makes my friend, a geology
major at Ball State, very unhappy because the GIT license is just another
expensive hurdle she has to jump. It also makes you unpresentable in Britain.
- Compels public schools to punish bullying (SB231). A law is necessary to
give schools legal cover in disciplining a bully when the parents object. You
know how parents are: A bully? My little boy?! How dare you!
I'll just have to see you in court!
- Makes burning a cross on someone's property in order to scare that person
a crime (SB241). How long do you think that will last until the courts shoot
it down as unconstitutional?
- Restricts a state university from hiking tuition for an undergraduate by
more than 3% for each of the student's four years (two years for two-year Ivy
Tech and Vincennes) (SB262). This was brought on by the double-digit
tuition-hiking habits of the universities' boards of trustees. It is
unworkable, of course, because many students study for more than four years,
esp. in fields like architecture.
- Allows computer software to be assessed by its fair market value (i.e.,
how much you would pay to replace it that the time of taxation) as the true
tax value starting in 2006 (SE282). This is another bill from my local state
senator, and makes allowance for the very rapid depreciation of software over time.
- Makes blocking child visitation a misdemeanor (SB331). That will make
a lot of ex-spouses angry: Marital alienation is not an excuse to start
your own police
record.
house bills
- Increases the minimum hourly wage to $5.65 on 1 September 2004 and
to $6.15 on 1 March 2005 (HB1022). I guess Indiana has to pick up the ball
for the refusal of El Dubya and
Congress to help folks who must live off a minimum wage.
- Bans an employer from making an employee join a labor union or to pay
union dues (HB1158). This is a "right-to-work" law, and in a strongly
pro-union state like Indiana it won't last long.
- Allows those local pork-barrel projects to get money approved from
the Build Indiana Fund before it was dissolved into the general fund during
last year's fiscal crisis (HB1169). Hope sprigs eternal, I suppose; but the
fiscal crisis is still with us, so this bill won't last, either.
- Bans hidden compartments in motor vehicles, and lets the cops seize
vehicles that have them even if there are no drugs or other contraband
inside them (HB1189).
- Makes a civics course in local and state government mandatory in
high school (HB1205). Evidently the presence of all those old folks
in city, town and county governments is causing anxiety about a lack
of participation by young people.
I heard there was another bill to abolish townships altogether and
give their functions to counties. But I haven't found it. But I did
find that Democratic leaders had discussed the idea. But the rural
counties will not tolerate something so disruptive, so my local
state senator's SB187 is a compromise.
It's just as well. As it is, Grant and Delaware counties are barely able
to carry out their own functions without adding to the mix poor relief, rural
fire suppression and rural property assessment. That's the whole idea of
separation of powers: If one entity fails, others can still work.
Copyright © 2004 by Andy West. All rights reserved.
Last updated 14 January 2004.