HB 1113, introduced by Rep. Miller, passed the House by a vote of 94-0 and is moving to the Senate. It requires a person building a Class 1 Structure with a public address system in a Class 1 or Class 2 city to consider installing an audio frequency induction loop system (AFILS). (Class 1 structure in Class 1 or 2 city basically means a public building in a city with a population of more than 35,000 people). It also requires audiologists and hearing aid dealers to provide information about telecoil and audio frequency induction systems when they are fitting or dispensing hearing aids. Telecoil and AFILS is a technology used to transmit audio directly to the hearing aid which lets the audio be heard despite the crowd.

This bill has a pretty light touch, requiring only that people building these structures consider telecoil so it’s tough to argue against it from an undue burden standpoint. Advocates of the hearing impaired might argue that it doesn’t go far enough. The one concern I have — and I’m not at all well versed in the subject matter, so I don’t know how valid it is — is that the telecoil technology might become outdated in the near future. I don’t know how hard it would be to swap out or supplement the newly built PA systems with something new when that comes along. Nick Hunn (in a blog post urging the FCC not to approve the new or modified proprietary standard Apple wanted to substitute for telecoil requirements in smartphones) says of the technology:

[T]elecoil tech is now long in the tooth, and the limitations of its 1970s-era capabilities are becoming all too apparent. Take frequency response. That’s just one area where it no longer cuts muster. Telecoil tech is still adequate for speech, sure, but it’s miserable music. And there’s the antenna problem: Telecoils need them, but try fitting these antennaes into modern phones and hearing aids. Talk about an engineering challenge.

There appears to be work afoot to develop “a new version of the Bluetooth specification that will replace telecoils. This new standard will at once provide better audio quality and be simpler and more cost effective to install in buildings.”

Because its intent is laudable (help those with difficulty hearing) and its impact is minimal (only requires “consideration” of telecoil), I imagine this will pass. Hopefully people building these structures will be able to perform their construction in a way that lets them help hearing impaired people now while allowing them to upgrade to the new standard when it comes along.

Rep. Lucas has introduced HB 1253 concerning handgun training for teachers. The heat I’ve seen surrounding the discussion of this legislation seems to go beyond what it actually does. I’m not a supporter because I don’t think we’re going to shoot our way to safety, but the practical impact seems fairly minimal. There’s a state school safety fund that can be used to make grants to various school safety initiatives (e.g. drug dogs, truancy enforcement, bully identification, etc.) This bill would add to permissible uses of that money by allowing grants to be given to teachers to receive handgun training. Among other things, the teacher has to receive approval from their school board to get such a grant. The legislation also sets a mandatory curriculum for a firearm training program to be eligible for grant money.

I think the idea that armed teachers will make schools safer is misguided. That said, I don’t think there is anything problematic about teachers knowing how to use firearms, and this leaves it up to school boards to decide whether they want teachers to request these grants. My only real concern is to what extent these firearm training grants will divert resources from the other uses of the school safety fund. I suspect (but don’t know) that the actual expenditures will be minimal.

The one item in the training curriculum that raised my eyebrow was the requirement that the trainer have NRA certification. On its face, this looks potentially like a bit of pork for the NRA, but it could very well be that any reputable trainer is going to have this certification. I’ve posed the question to someone knowledgeable on these issues and will try to update this when I find out.

SB 201 passed out of committee and is headed to the floor of the Senate. It expands the current law that says that a physician or employee of a hospital or other facility where abortions can be performed can’t be required to perform or assist with the performance of an abortion. The new legislation would say, among other things, that pharmacists and nurses can’t be required to administer or dispense an “abortion inducing drug” if they claim to have an ethical objection.

I don’t think this means that pharmacists and nurses can avoid being involved with, say, Plan B. “Abortion inducing drug” is defined by IC 16-18-2-1.6 as meaning  “a medicine, drug, or substance prescribed or dispensed with the intent of terminating a clinically diagnosable pregnancy with the knowledge that the termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the fetus. The term includes the off-label use of a drug known to have abortion inducing properties if the drug is prescribed with the intent of causing an abortion.” When Justice Kavanaugh and others call Plan B and other contraception “abortion inducing drugs,” I think they’re referring to the fact that the medication makes the lining of the uterus inhospitable for an inseminated egg. Even using that definition of “pregnancy,” however, I don’t think that it’s “clinically diagnosable.” Still and all, it’s probably going to be a headache for the pharmacy who wants to get rid of a grandstanding employee making it difficult for a customer to get Plan B or other contraception.

Beyond that, of course, there is the impact on women who want control over their own bodies. And there’s the question of why abortion should be entitled to special pleading when it comes to employee’s ethical concerns over their employer’s operations. What if a health care provider finds drug use immoral and objects to treating addicts? What if a gun store employee object to selling firearms to guys who abuse their wives? What if a bank employee objects to their employer’s lending practices? Usually we tell employees to go work somewhere else, but this legislation seeks to carve out a special exception for a medical service that, for the time being anyway, remains a Constitutional right.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article discussing efforts in the General Assembly to change the school referendum process. This is the mechanism by which local populations can increase tax support for their schools if they decide the state support for education is inadequate. One of the initiatives, apparently dead for the session, would have required that locals wait until the next general election rolled around to put the question on the ballot. The rationale is that more people vote in these elections, so you get a truer sense of the will of the community. First of all, delaying a year or two to have a vote can impose real hardship if there is an educational need for the money. Second, the extra turnout in a general election is going to contain a lot of voters who don’t know what the hell is going on. This raises a philosophical issue of whether quantity or quality is better for governance: lots of votes, or a higher percentage of votes from people who understand the issue?

There is also a “school safety” referendum where voters can vote specifically for money earmarked for school safety expenditures: metal detectors, etc. However, as I pointed out in the linked blog post, “a system where Hamilton Community School Corp can generate 14x as much per student as Cannelton despite having similar population sizes and 8x as much per pupil as Mishawaka despite having, I suspect, fewer security concerns, is not a great system.” More generally, I’m not a fan of segmenting the permitted uses of money from these referendums. It’s a cumbersome process, so eventually micro-targeting the permitted expenditures is going to get to a point where the money generated is not worth the time, effort, and expense of getting the referendum approved. At some point, you have to trust school officials to spend money where the education needs are the greatest.

A third issue up for consideration (not discussed in the linked FWJG article) is in HB 1641 which would, among other things, require school districts for whom a referendum is approved to give some of that money to charter schools in their district. The money would be distributed according to school population — so if a public school was educating kids who are more expensive to educate while the charter school was cherry-picking less expensive students, the money would nevertheless go to charter schools on an even per-student basis. This looks like just another way of starving the traditional public schools of resources.

Sen. Alting has introduced SB 474 concerning terms of probation for people convicted of an animal abuse offense. The legislation makes a list of animal abuse offenses (e.g. animal abuse, animal neglect, use of animals in fights) and then requires that the offender be prohibited from “owning, harboring, or training a companion animal.” It defines companion animal as an animal which is not a service animal under IC 35-46-3-11.5. My only concern with this legislation is with the drafting of the service animal bit.

First, (as I mentioned in a discussion of SB 169), I’m not confident that the definition of “service animal” in IC 36-46-3-11.5 tracks with the definition in the regulations surrounding the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the Indiana Code, “service animal” is defined in a way that the animal is servicing only a subset of people with disabilities (blindness, deafness, physical disability, or medical condition). I’m not sure how medical condition is defined, but this might exclude service of people with a mental disability. The ADA also includes as disabled, for example, a person with a mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities as well as someone who is perceived as having such an impairment. The Indiana definition of “service animal” says that it’s an animal that a person who is disabled (as described above) “relies on for navigation, assistance in performing daily activities, or alert signals regarding the onset of the person’s medical condition.” The ADA says that a “service animal” is “any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.” So, there are animals that would be “service animals” under the ADA but not under the Indiana definition and vice-versa. That’s bound to cause problems.

Second, if all you want to do is exclude service animals from application of this law, I think you probably just say that instead of creating the newly defined term of “companion animal.”

Those issues aside, I definitely support the intent of SB 474. Dave Bangert, writing for the Lafayette Journal and Courier, has an article highlighting the Tippecanoe County background of this proposed legislation. Several of the cases he mentioned are very familiar to me — as I handled the civil ordinance violation cases against Sanders, Hansen, and Kirts mentioned in that article and was able to obtain a civil injunction prohibiting at least Sanders and Hansen (can’t remember about Kirts) from having animals in Tippecanoe County for a set term of years and indefinitely thereafter unless they petitioned the court for permission.

I’m glad that Sharon Dull got a mention in that article. If the animals in Tippecanoe County have a bigger champion than her, I don’t know who that would be.

SB 352 introduced by Sen. Leising would amend the law concerning when a minor can consent to receipt of medical services. It failed to pass by a vote of 25 nays to 24 ayes. I believe that means it could be brought to the floor again because it wasn’t defeated by a majority.

Generally, it’s up to the parent to consent on behalf of someone who is under eighteen years old. There are some exceptions: e.g. the minor is married or emancipated. This legislation would add to the exceptions, permitting a girl who is at least 16 years old and pregnant, in labor, or within 60 days postpartum to give consent to the minor’s medical care relative to the pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum care.  The introduced version of the bill stated that it included consent to obtaining postpartum contraception but that was taken out in committee. (If I’m understanding Mary Beth Schneider’s reporting on Twitter about Sen. Leising’s statements, federal law makes contraception available to minors, so that committee change might be more symbolic than substantive.) The legislation also specifically excludes consent to an abortion from application of this legislation.

It’s hard to argue with Sen. Leising’s statement:

Leising said she can almost guarantee that if a girl comes to a doctor or ER when pregnant, even without parent, “she needs care.”

On an abstract level, I suppose one could argue that, if we require parental consent for a minor’s medical care generally, why should pregnancy be any different? I think the answer is that it’s because people aren’t entirely rational when it comes to the subject of their kids and sex. Decent parents are going to get their kid treatment for a broken leg or cancer — or at least try.

Because of the moral cruft that’s built up about sexuality and pregnancy over the centuries, otherwise decent parents might well fail their daughters when it comes to medical care related to pregnancy. Or, even if the parents would do the right thing, it may be that daughters can’t face what they believe will be the moral opprobrium coming from their parents and, as a result, they harm themselves or their babies by avoiding the discussions with their parents and, consequently, not obtaining necessary medical care.

Rep. Miller has introduced HB 1158 concerning bid requirements for public works contracts. The description calls the bill “fair and open competition for public works contracts.” I consider it a red flag whenever a bill is editorializing for itself. Let the policy do the talking.

This bill provides that a governmental agency soliciting bids for public works projects can’t require a potential bidder to submit any information which the bidder considers to be confidential or proprietary. It doesn’t define confidential or proprietary and, therefore, gives the bidder way too much control over the process. What if the governmental agency wants to know if you’ve been accused of sketchy labor practices in the past, used inferior quality materials, or have a history of delayed completion? The language of this legislation seems to make it too easy for a bidder to label inconvenient information as confidential or proprietary.

The bill also says that a governmental agency can’t limit the pool of potential bidders by requiring a certain sized company, certain background experience, or union membership. In the quest for the cheapest bid, this requirement would seem to put public works projects at a greater risk of poor quality work. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Finally, the bill dictates that a governmental agency not make union membership or contracting with labor organizations a condition of the bid. So, in this respect, it’s pretty straight forward anti-labor legislation.

Flood schmud. If I want a strip mine in my backyard, the nanny state government shouldn’t be able to tell me “no.”

Rep. Jeff Ellington has introduced HB 1531 which renews his efforts to limit local control on mining. Readers of this blog might remember his efforts last year to pass legislation which likely would have had an impact on the efforts of our folks here in Tippecanoe County — particularly near the town of Americus — to resist efforts of Rogers Group to place a mine near their homes. The language in his current HB 1531 isn’t so broad as last year but would likely have the same effect. Of particular interest to Americus is the following effort to amend IC 36-7-4-1103(c):

(c) ADVISORY—AREA. This chapter does not authorize an ordinance or action of a: (1) plan commission; or (2) board of zoning appeals; that would prevent, outside of urban areas, including flood plains, the complete use and alienation of any mineral resources or forests by the owner or alienee of them.

The key addition here is, “including flood plains.” This legislation seeks to overturn the Indiana Court of Appeals decision in Irving Materials v. Johnson County which held, “when the General Assembly empowered counties to regulate land use in flood plains, it created an exception to the rule that prohibits a county from regulating mineral extraction in non-urban areas.” When Rogers Group challenged the need to request a special exception from the Tippecanoe County Board of Zoning Appeals, the Indiana Court of Appeals held that “because Section 1103(c) continues to be subject to a flood plain exception, we affirm the trial court’s ruling that Rogers Group must obtain a special exception from the Area BZA if it wishes to mine in a Flood Plain zone.”

If the statute were to pass, it would likely eliminate the ability of Tippecanoe County to require that a mining operation in a flood plain obtain a special exception demonstrating that its operations wouldn’t, among other things, negatively impact the flood plain. In Irving Materials, the court reasoned, “Our goal in Indiana is to prevent the loss of lives and property caused by floods and to limit the effects of floods on the life, health and convenience of the people. ?Ind.Code §?14-28-1-1. ? Whether a flood plain lies in an urban or non-urban area, the interests of the community as a whole outweigh the interests of an owner or alienee of mineral resources.” Rep. Ellington’s bill would change that balancing of interests such that the interests of the owner of mineral resources would outweigh the interests of the community as a whole.