HB 1106 contains a provision that would extend the status of Tippecanoe, Wayne, and Cass counties as “vote center pilot counties.” Under the original legislation passed a few years ago, the pilot status is set to expire. From my personal perspective, vote centers have been a great thing, and I think they have been well regarded in general. They allow you to vote anywhere in the county, regardless of your precinct. You get a precinct-specific ballot.
The Palladium-Item has an article on the snags for passage of the legislation.
State Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, said in a press release an amendment on no-fault, absentee voting is threatening to derail the bill continuing the vote centers. The amendment would allow voters anywhere to cast early ballots by mail, even if they don’t meet existing criteria for voting absentee.
. . .
“Hoosier voters and the local units of government operating in the three pilot program counties shouldn’t be punished because agreements can’t be made about absentee balloting,” Alting said. “The issue of absentee balloting should not hold this bill hostage, but rather absentee voting provisions should stand on their own in a separate bill.”
A study by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute showed the centers save significant costs.
Eric Bradner has an article in the Evansville Courier Press that sums up what legislators have on their plate to end the session. The biggest issue is unemployment insurance. The UI fund was ignored for years and went bankrupt. The Republican Senate and the Democratic House agreed on a fix in 2009. Part of the solution involved higher taxes on the employers. The Senate Republicans, at the urging of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, I believe, sought to undo that fix – at least temporarily. The House did them one better and proposed a bill that undid the compromise altogether. The UI fund continues to be empty and Indiana is paying its unemployed benefits by borrowing from the federal government. If legislators don’t come to an agreement, the 2009 fix will go into effect.
House Democrats are looking for some of the following to go along with the Republican version:
Topping that list is enhanced enforcement and harsher penalties on businesses that misclassify regular employees as independent contractors in order to skip out on payroll and unemployment taxes.
Democrats also want to remove the requirement that jobless benefit recipients apply for one job per week. The want to increase unemployment benefits in order to receive $148 million in federal stimulus funds. They’re seeking “claw-back” methods to recoup incentives given to businesses that fail to live up to their job-creation promises.
They’re also asking for items such as a tax credit that would give businesses that employ fewer than 150 people a $3,000 credit for each worker they hire through 2012, up to a maximum of $100,000; directions for the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to focus its attention on counties stung the worst by job loss; the allowance of businesses that employ fewer than 35 workers to qualify for certain tax credits; a tax credit for new businesses; and more.
Caught up in these negotiations are some other bills, most importantly to my local situation, one that would allow schools flexibility to use other funds to cover operating expenses – this would mitigate the need to cut so many teachers which has arisen due to the earlier decision to fund schools with the more volatile sales & income taxes instead of property taxes.
Bauer was particularly emphatic that House Bill 1367, to help schools cope with the budget crunch most are facing, should pass.
“That bill ought to go forward, period,” Bauer said. “We should continue to work on the unemployment bill if we can. If we can get a compromise, that’d be good. If we can’t, at least we’ve solved two or three problems and not leave two or three on the table because someone is upset about one not being solved — the unemployment bill.”
Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, said Republicans are concerned that if other issues are voted upon first, there is nothing to keep Democrats at the bargaining table to negotiate the unemployment bill.
“We’re going to try to reach an agreement on all those things and reach resolution on all of the issues,” Kenley said. “But we want to do it together.”
The Senate rejected, 20 – 21, a conference committee report for SB 171 which addresses penalties for motor vehicle accidents resulting in death. It would have made it a Class D felony to kill a law enforcement animal if you were driving while intoxicated. It also would have made resisting law enforcement while operating a vehicle a Class A Felony if it resulted in the death of a law enforcement officer while the officer was in the course of his or her official duties.
This conference committee report is a departure from the bill as it left the House in that it removes the increased penalties for failing to stop after a traffic accident in which a person was injured or died.
I was impressed by how little information was contained in an Indy Star article about the “Bring Your Gun to Work” bill. It was just a series of reactions from people whose knowledge base about the issue was never revealed.
Person 1: “When I come out at night, I don’t know who is going to be in that parking lot. Responsible gun owners know how to take care of the situation. It’s the idiots who aren’t careful that will have the law sidelined.”
Person 2: “I don’t see much risk as long as it’s locked and somehow disabled. If you can carry a gun on your person, then I don’t see why people shouldn’t be able to keep it in their car. I’d rather people leave them in their car than walk around with a gun.”
Person 3: “People are always attacking guns one way or another.”
Person 4: “I don’t think anyone should bring a gun to work. You never know a person’s attitude or what they go through on a daily basis.”
Person 5: “”If someone gets upset, you never know what could happen. They could easily go to the car, grab a gun and start shooting. There are a lot of people injured in shootings, and this bill could help protect them. But there’s too much risk. I disagree with the bill.”
Person 6: “My cat’s breath smells like cat food.”
O.k., I added that last one. It was Ralph Wiggum. I’m surprised that Dept. of Workforce Development employee shooting didn’t find it’s way into this “what people are thinking” story.
The Lafayette Journal & Courier has an editorial pleading with the General Assembly not to let the vote center pilot program expire. Tippecanoe County, along with Wayne and Cass Counties, was allowed to create voting centers where anyone in the county could vote, regardless of the voter’s precinct of residence. The person was given a ballot specific to their precinct.
Personally, I like them because they’re very convenient. For example, I can vote downtown during the day when I’m at work. The Journal & Courier editorial tells me it’s also less expensive. However, legislation to extend the program is apparently tangled up with other proposals before the General Assembly and the voting centers may expire. I hope they don’t. But, that’s big time politics for you.
The AP is reporting that the Indiana House of Representatives did not adjourn sine die as it had hoped to do. Instead, the House has adjourned until next Wednesday and will reconvene to see if some final compromises can be worked out in this year’s short session.
In particular, measures hang in the balance that would allow schools access to some funds that would help mitigate the some of the spectacular shortfalls that have resulted from the decision to shift the funding of school operations from stable property taxes to much more variable sales and income taxes.
Unfortunately, for some reason, that issue seems to be tied to the even thornier issue of the unemployment insurance fund. After largely ignoring the underfunding of the UI fund for many years which caused it to run out of money and has required Indiana to borrow money from the federal government to stay afloat, in 2009, lawmakers reached a bipartisan compromise even though nobody had any particular appetite for the needed fix. But, now there is a push afoot to undo or at least delay that fix even though it probably requires borrowing even more money from D.C. (nevermind about our constant bellyaching about the federal government). The Senate has pushed a measure to delay the solution for a year. The House has adopted a measure that would scrap the solution altogether and “crack down on employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying jobless premiums, expand eligibility for benefits in order get $148 million in federal stimulus dollars for the fund, and increase weekly maximum benefits.”
So, I guess we wait another few days to see what happens. I’m sure the teachers in my school district, among many others, are waiting anxiously.
Updating my Schrodinger’s Gun II: Electric Boogaloo post, HB 1065 contains the “bring your guns to work” language prohibiting an employer from adopting a rule that prohibits an employee from bringing a gun onto the employers property if the gun is locked in the employee’s car. Jim Shella tells us the conference committee report was approved by the House on a 74 – 20 vote. Johnny Cash tells us why this is a bad idea:
Police say an Indiana Department of Workforce Development auditor who had just received a poor job review shot at co-workers at the agency’s office in Portage. . . . Sgt. Keith Hughes says the 60-year-old man became upset during his job review and told his supervisor he needed to go to his car. After he retrieved a shotgun, a manager locked the front door and ordered the other 15 employees to the rear of the office.
I got to wondering about the Indiana Department of Revenue’s service for posting tax warrants online. At one time, this was the proper link.The page says:
This site is temporarily unavailable. INDebt information will be available beginning Spring 2006.
According to the 2005 fiscal report (pdf), the INDebt program brought in $2 million in two months. For a cash-strapped state, not taking advantage of a system to collect delinquent taxes is inexplicable. Well, not “inexplicable,” but the potential explanations that come to mind aren’t generally that acceptable.
The tax warrant information has been largely unavailable, so far as I’ve been able to tell, since Gov. Daniels’ tax amnesty efforts back in 2005.
But, I guess there was a change in the law that became effective on Jan. 1, 2010 which reduces the amount of public information provided. The old version of IC 6-8.1-3-16(j) stated, in pertinent part:
[T]he department shall compile each month a list of the taxpayers subject to tax warrants that:
(1) were issued at least twenty-four (24) months before the date of the list; and
(2) are for amounts that exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000).
The list compiled under this subsection must identify each taxpayer liable for a warrant by name, address, and amount of tax. The department shall publish the list compiled under this subsection on accessIndiana (as operated under IC 4-13.1-2) and make the list available for public inspection and copying under IC 5-14-3.
The department shall prepare a list of retail merchants whose registered retail merchant certificate has not been renewed under IC 6-2.5-8-1(g) or whose registered retail merchant certificate has been revoked under IC 6-2.5-8-7. The list compiled under this subsection must identify each retail merchant by name (including any name under which the retail merchant is doing business), address, and county.
Here is that list, which is, in my opinion, much less helpful. The Indiana Law Blog has had a number of posts on “suprises” contained in the 2009 budget bill.
Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indy Star, reports that House and Senate leaders are meeting behind closed doors to discuss a solution to the unemployment insurance debacle. The insurance fund has been operating in the red for quite awhile and has been running on loans from the federal government. Last year, lawmakers negotiated a fix to the problem. But, the Senate put that ball back into play, seeking to delay the increased contributions required from employers to make the safety net solvent again. The House responded by escalating things and proposing to repeal the bipartisan, negotiated fix altogether. Speaker Bauer contends that he was tired of taking a bunch of crap from House Republicans for acting responsibly.
The senators and representatives held a private meeting, behind the locked doors of a Statehouse committee room, to forge an agreement. So far that has eluded them, and time is running out. House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, has scheduled tomorrow as the session’s final day, though by law the session can last until March 15.
I’ll just take a paragraph to point out that the legislative body that requires other units of government to operate under open door laws has no problem operating behind closed doors itself. There. That made me feel better.
Ms. Schneider reports that the closed door negotiations are often useful in obtaining compromise instead of posturing. Honestly, I don’t see this one getting solved. If both sides do nothing, the solution negotiated in 2009 kicks in. Business takes its lumps, but maybe we don’t have to keep borrowing from D.C. That should be good news for anyone planning on running against Obama in 2010. After all, you wouldn’t want to take gobs of cash from Washington and then complain about the federal government spending too much.
WTHR has an interesting, if perhaps overly breathless, story about how the governor and his economic development corporation, now run by Mitch Roob, puffed up its record of attracting jobs. The short version is that they chalked up victories when companies announced intentions to locate or expand employment in Indiana but didn’t take them off the “success” list when the jobs failed to materialize. I can’t imagine the Daniels administration invented this technique, but it does remind me a little of how Enron booked profits when a deal was struck rather than waiting to see if the profits ever materialized.
Since its creation, IEDC boasts more than 100,000 new jobs on its success list, and when the agency and the governor talk about job numbers, the “Indiana Economic Successes” list is what they are talking about.
But 13 Investigates discovered many of the state’s “economic successes” aren’t really successes at all.
They are empty fields and deserted factories where the state claims there are supposed to be thousands of jobs.
More notable to me was that Mitch Roob still has a job in Indiana government. My memory might be failing me, and I can’t find anything after a quick search of my blog, but it seems like there was some unusually large compensation package for Mr. Roob, ostensibly because if he didn’t receive extra compensation, we’d lose him to the private sector.* In any case, he was a big part of the FSSA debacle involving welfare eligibility privatization and his former employer, ACS, along with IBM.
*A further search suggests maybe I’m thinking of a compensation package for Richard Rhoad who worked for FSSA.
