by Doug on February 8, 2010
Rep. GiaQuinta’s HB 1324 would give counties options for disposing of vacant lots acquired at tax sale.
Permits a county to sell a vacant parcel acquired by the county in a tax sale to the owner of a contiguous residential parcel for $1 if the contiguous parcel is entitled to the standard property tax deduction. Allows the county to establish criteria to identify vacant parcels eligible for sale. Establishes procedures for conduct of the sale, transfer of the vacant parcel, and consolidation of the vacant parcel with the contiguous parcel. Provides that the consolidated parcel is entitled to an exemption from property taxation in the amount of the assessed value of the vacant parcel at the time of consolidation until the earlier of the following: (1) the next transfer of title after the consolidation; or (2) five years after the transfer of the title to the successful applicant.
This passed the House on a 88-7 vote and is waiting to be heard in the Senate.
by Doug on February 7, 2010
In honor of the Super Bowl, I thought I’d flag a story I thought was true but turned out to be just another myth regurgitated by media and others. In this case, it’s that supposed statistic about domestic violence spiking on Super Bowl Sunday. Turns out – not true.
The claim that Super Bowl Sunday is “the biggest day of the year for violence against women” demonstrates how easily an idea congruous with what people want to believe can be implanted in the public consciousness and anointed as “fact” even when it has been fabricated out of whole cloth.
Domestic violence has been a problem all too often ignored, covered up, and swept under the rug. Many well-intentioned and successful efforts have been made in the last few decades to bring the issue to public attention – to get the word out to women that they need not suffer silent, helpless, and alone; to advertise that there are organizations victims can turn to for help and support; and to educate others in spotting the signs of abuse. Unfortunately, nearly every cause will encompass a sub-group of advocates who, either through deliberate disingenuousness or earnest gullibility, end up spreading “noble lies” in the furtherance of that cause. The myth of Super Bowl Sunday violence is one such noble lie.
Trudy Schuett has the time line of how the myth got into the public consciousness and some of the ways it has been recycled even after it was debunked. (Though, I have to say the end of the linked editorial has me a little skeptical of the writer’s intent.)
by Doug on February 7, 2010
SB 251, which has passed the Senate, permits schools “to rent textbooks using an average fee for each student if the average is determined using the same total rental fees that would be charged under the per student method.”
Current law permits schools to rent the books at 25% of the purchase price of the book or 15% under some circumstances (I think if the book has already been paid for.) This law would allow an averaging of the 25% fees with the 15% fees – I suppose if you had a mix of paid for and unpaid for books?
Since the Indiana Supreme Court has declined to find that textbook rental fees violate the state Constitution’s prohibition on tuition, I expect textbook fees are a revenue source that cash starved schools will want to go back to more and more often.
by Doug on February 7, 2010
I intend on supporting the local franchise in the upcoming sporting event.
Stampede Blue, as always, is doing fantastic work covering the Colts.
by Doug on February 5, 2010
Just a little shameless self-promotion here – former Representative Dave Crooks does a radio show in Southern Indiana about Indiana politics on Saturday mornings. He was nice enough to invite me on to talk about blogging about Indiana politics. The show will air tomorrow (2/6/10) at 9 a.m., and you can listen live with streaming audio or archived audio. It’s out of my range, but for those in the area, the radio station is WAMW 107.9 FM/1580 AM out of Washington, IN.
Also on this edition will be Spencer Valentine of A Loyal Opposition.
Update The show archive is available here.
by Doug on February 5, 2010
The Associated Press is reporting that former IU player and basketball announcer, Todd Leary, has been arrested in connection with a real estate title scheme. Rebecca Green of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a more comprehensive story.
Leary, 39, of Carmel, is accused of conspiring with [insurance broker Joseph] Garretson between July 2008 and February 2009 to commit a variety of felonies, including conspiracy to commit conversion or misappropriation of title insurance escrow funds, conspiracy to commit theft and conspiracy to corrupt business influence. The majority of the charges are Class C felonies, with penalties of up to four years in prison each.
Garretson is accused of [and is awaiting sentencing for] arranging mortgage refinancing loans for area clients and failing to use the money to pay off the initial loans, causing mortgage holders to default.
. . .
According to court documents, Leary’s former teammate, Brian Evans, cooperated with state investigators to uncover the scheme.
Garretson claims that Leary pressured him on a number of occasions for more money, threatening to reveal Garretson’s misdeeds.
Leary played for IU from 1990 – 1994. Evans played for IU from 1991 – 1996.
Crimson Quarry offers these thoughts:
It’s hard to know what to say about this. Obviously, the allegations are very serious, and Leary’s career as an IU broadcaster probably is over. Still, it will be interesting to see the authorities’ rationale for making this arrest when and where they did. It seems like an effort to humiliate Leary and an effort to gain publicity for the allegations. Again, I don’t mean to downplay the serious allegations, but he is entitled to a legal presumption of innocence. That presumption of innocence doesn’t bind those of us who want to talk about it (i.e., we’re under no obligation to pretend that OJ didn’t kill his ex-wife), but it does bind the authorities.
by Doug on February 3, 2010
HB 1255, concerning evidence of collateral source payments, passed the House on a vote of 57 – 40. This would seem to be a reaction to the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Stanley v. Walker this past May.
The issue, generally speaking, is how to compensate personal injury victims for their medical bills. The Indiana Trial Rules say, basically, the plaintiff can introduce their bills and that’s prima facie evidence of the reasonable value of the medical procedure. But this ignored the fact that the medical providers often took discounts, sometimes rather steep discounts, as payment in full of the debt. Collateral source payments are payments toward the victim’s injury from sources other than the defendant(s). Some collateral source payments are excluded — the biggest one of these is insurance. You don’t want the defendant to get off the hook simply because the plaintiff was prudent enough to buy insurance. And, in any case, the insurance company has a lien on any settlement the plaintiff gets; so they get paid back if the defendant ends up paying.
The sticker price on a medical bill is often as reliable an indicator of its actual price as the sticker price on a car. The Supreme Court said that defendants could counter by showing that the provider wrote off some of the medical bill. This is different from an insurance payment where money actually changed hands. Without allowing evidence of a discount, you’re just putting extra money in a plaintiff’s pocket for bills they didn’t have to pay. (And, since negotiations about general (pain and suffering) as opposed to special (medical bills) damages frequently revolve around multiples of the special damages, the windfall to the Plaintiff can be compounded.
HB 1255 would undo the Supreme Court’s decision by prohibiting evidence of “a writeoff, discount, or other deduction associated with a collateral source payment.” Actually, the statute itself is kind of self-referential. It says, “the court shall allow the admission into evidence of . . . proof of collateral source payments other than . . . a writeoff, discount, or other deduction associated with a collateral source payment.” So, you can provide evidence of a collateral source payment but not a discount associated with that payment. Strictly read, that’s ridiculous.
As I mentioned, there are certain collateral source payments, primarily insurance, that are excluded as evidence. What I think they mean is that discounts associated with excluded collateral source payments.
This runs counter to the policy expressed by IC 34-44-1-1: “The purpose of this chapter is to enable the trier of fact in a personal injury or wrongful death action to determine the actual amount of the prevailing party’s pecuniary loss; and to provide that a prevailing party not recover more than once from all applicable sources for each item of loss sustained.”
Hiding the amount of medical discounts from the jury prevents it from accurately determining the actual amount of the plaintiff’s pecuniary loss and enables the plaintiff to recover amounts never paid by the plaintiff or on the plaintiff’s behalf.
by Doug on February 3, 2010
Jennifer Niven’s book, The Aqua Net Diaries, has just been released. My interest is that it was written by a woman, Jennifer Niven (nom de plume of Jennifer McJunkin) a couple of years ahead of me at Richmond High School in the 1980s. It’s a memoir of her days at Richmond.
The Palladium-Item has a write up by Rachel Sheeley. Apparently Jennifer’s buddy Joe Kraemer figures prominently in the story. Joe’s brother was one of my sister’s best friends.
Now, as luck would have it, I have warm memories of Jennifer and Joe who were, I believe, seniors, when I was a freshman on the school’s speech team. As I recall, I wasn’t any good on the speech team at the time, but they were awfully nice to me anyway. I don’t suppose they have any particular memory of that – mighty seniors make a greater impact on lowly freshmen than the reverse.
So, it’s great to see some hometown kids making good – particularly when they were (so far as I knew anyway) good kids who treated people well.
That’s my long way of encouraging anyone with interest in such things to pick up a copy of the book.
by Doug on February 3, 2010
The Indianapolis Public Schools announced that they were going to delay their start time by two hours on the Monday after the Super Bowl, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2007 when bus drivers called in sick en masse after the Super Bowl. This resulted in them having to cancel classes entirely that day. Abdul is reporting that the proposed two hour delay solution is running into static from the State.
[T]he Indiana Department of Education tells Indiana Barrister News that state rules mandate students must be in school the entire time and delays can only be used for emergency situations like the weather.
The State says IPS would have to make up the day later in the school year, or let school out two hours later on Monday. A Department spokesman says IPS could ask for a waiver to allow the 2-hour delay, but it’s unlikely it would get it for the Super Bowl.
To which I say: buncha kill joys. This strikes me as inflexible bureaucracy at its finest. The two hour delay is a reasonable solution to a real, albeit somewhat frivolous, problem. Is education more important than football? Well, yeah. But that two hours of school time isn’t going to make or break the kids, and the Super Bowl isn’t an every day issue.
Once upon a time, local leaders would be able to make these common sense gestures as a matter of civic pride. Now there is a mechanized bureaucracy that abhors flexibility and ad hoc solutions.
by Doug on February 2, 2010
Senator Miller’s SB 177 passed the Senate on a vote of 33 – 17. It caught my attention when I saw a Facebook group joined by friends of mine of distinctly opposing political views. The Indianapolis Star has an opinion piece opposing the bill.
I’ll confess to only having a vague idea of what is going on with this one, but it looks like it gives the Metropolitan Development Commission the power to review decisions made by the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission. According to the Indianapolis Star:
Currently, the commission deals from strength in setting limits to demolition and disfigurement of distinctive properties. Its decisions have to be appealed to the city prosecutor and the courts, essentially on narrow legal grounds. Under Senate Bill 177, rank could be pulled. Besides halving the current four-year terms, it would make rulings appealable to the body above the Historic Preservation Commission, the Metropolitan Development Commission. Originally, even worse, it was to be the City-County Council. Either way, members would be watching over their shoulders.
The proposal to weaken the commission does not reflect its overall record, which is collaborative and results in rare rejections. Rather, it stems from two incidents, one involving windows in an Irvington house and the other a historic church in Cumberland threatened with demolition for commercial development.
It’s one of those deals where I have to kind of scratch my head and wonder why the state is getting so deeply involved in local matters.
