A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

What to think of the current standoff in the state House of Representatives now that House Democrats have exiled themselves, bringing business in the House to a standstill for lack of a quorum?

The House G.O.P. reminds me of one of those receivers that catches a deep pass in the open field, then starts showboating short of the end zone before being stripped by a second-stringer too dumb or stubborn to know the game is supposed to be over. It’s all the more maddening because the guy who stripped the ball is a short dude with bad hair.

For years, it’s been a field position game with the Democrats and Republicans going back and forth across the 50 yard line. The Democrats would have the Governor’s mansion, the G.O.P. would have the Senate and the Congressional delegation, and they’d ebb back and forth with control of the House. Then, the G.O.P. took the Governor’s mansion, but ended up losing the House and Congressional delegation. This year, however, the Republicans connected long – keeping the Governor’s mansion (however gently that house actually gets used), increasing their perpetual majority in the Senate, taking a monstrous 60-40 lead in the House, capturing Bayh’s Senate seat, and taking a 6-3 majority in the Congress.

Publicly, anyway, Gov. Daniels sounded like the seasoned quarterback – when you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before. Tone down the social issues, focus on conservative economic priorities, and leave right-to-work alone. Sadly, no. House Republicans seemed to have started their victory dance at about the 20 yard line – a Constitutional Amendment discriminating against gays; lots of abortion stuff; and then, the bridge too far – right to work. That provided the opening for the uninspiring, but undeniably gritty, Pat Bauer to come and strip the ball by staging a walkout. Now, instead of walking into the end zone, the Republicans find themselves facing a goal line stand from about the 2 yard line. They may well punch the ball in anyway, but now they’re going to have to work for it.

While the Indiana House was at a stand still due to the House Democrats’ labor supporting exile, the Indiana Senate moved a lot of paper. A couple of the more contested issues:

SB 575 – eroding teacher collective bargaining options. Passed the Senate, 30-19. It was a losing effort, but I was pleased to see my Senator was one of the few Republicans voting “nay.”

SJR 10 – More mucking about with the constitution and union busting. In this case, a constitutional amendment requiring a secret ballot vote for organizing a union at a place of employment to the extent allowed by federal law. Passed by a vote of 32 – 16.

SB 328 – A whole bunch of anti-abortion provisions – the doctor has to tell the patient a lot of stuff to make the woman feel bad about what an awful thing she’s doing; there is increased bureaucracy for a medical provider, and the state department of health has to have abortion information on its website. Passed 39 – 9.

SB 192 – Directing the criminal sentencing study committee to study issues related to marijuana, such as whether it should be illegal and, if so, at what amounts and whether medical use of marijuana should be permitted. Passed 28-21. Passage of this one really surprised me.

Out of time for now.

Robert Enders, an Allen County Libertarian, I believe, has some interesting thoughts on “right to work” legislation. I recommend the whole post, but here is the gist:

Employers have a right to require an employee to join a union, just as they have a right to insist that a worker receive training or attend certain classes. Admittedly, many now wish to give up this right and have lobbied the state legislature to that end. . . . The government has been used as a weapon by both labor and management against each other in disputes. It’s wrong when either side does it.

The right to work legislation is intended to limited the freedom of an employer and a union to contract. In particular, it prohibits union shop provisions in labor contracts. I suspect employers want this limitation. It’s easier to point at the law, and say, “nope, we can’t put this into a contract” than it is to stand firm on negotiations.

Proponents of this law say it’s all about the rights of potential employees who might not want to be part of a union shop. But, since when has there been overwhelming concern about potential employees objecting to a condition of employment? Almost universally, the response in Indiana anyway is along the lines of “tough shit. You don’t like the terms, go work somewhere else.” But, suddenly, when the condition is paying union dues or their equivalent as opposed to, say, cutting your hair or dressing professionally or having reliable transportation or whatever; suddenly, it’s a moral imperative that potential employees be able to disregard an employer’s condition of employment.

House Democrats have apparently left the state in an effort to deny the House a quorum to vote on the “right to work” legislation. Today is the deadline for the House to adopt committee reports one of which is HB 1468 – a right to work bill voted out of the Labor Committee. Under the House Rules, February 25 is the deadline for bills to pass third reading.

In response to the House Democrats procedural move to prevent a quorum, I’ve seen some online discussion about how they are cowards and need to come back to do their jobs. Regardless of what you might think of their policy preferences, I’d argue that it takes more effort and courage for them to do what they’re doing. It would have been dead easy and required no courage for them to go meekly like lambs to the slaughter and warm some seats for a few hours while the House majority passed its agenda.

Their job is to negotiate for the best policies they can (as they see it.) Maybe they won’t have any luck negotiating anything better. Maybe they’ll get punished at the polls. But, the 2010 election results suggests that obstruction can be rewarded. I wasn’t a huge fan of the unprecedented filibustering in the U.S. Senate. But, those were the rules of that particular game, and that filibustering engendered no apparent backlash. The House Democrats are using the last arrow in their quiver. Time will tell if it hits its mark, flies wide, or wounds some of their own. And, if future general assemblies don’t want to deal with this kind of thing, they’ll need to re-write the quorum rules.

The superintendent of my school district has written a letter urging that parents, teachers, and taxpayers contact their representatives (in our case, that would be Rep. Truitt) to express opposition to HB 1003 concerning school vouchers.

According to our Superintendent:

If House Bill 1003 passes, it will decrease funding to traditional public schools for over 1.1 million public school students and divert those public tax dollars to help pay for about 20,000 students’ private or parochial school tuition. This type of education reform does not help all students, but rather undermines the quality of public education available for all children.

It does not take many students using vouchers to have a significant impact on one school district. For example, using the statewide funding average, if just 150 students use vouchers, that results in more than $1 million less funding for one single public school district alone. Vouchers will reduce funding available for public education.

Our legislature needs to hear from you that you believe private school tuition should not be paid for 20,000 students at the expense of one million public school students.

More generally, I’m not in favor of these “money follows the student,” per capita school funding philosophies. These are not student entitlements. The money is not for the student’s exclusive benefit. Everyone in the community – with or without children – pay to support the schools. The schools are for the benefit of the community. An educated population is a public good. Typically vouchers propose to give individual students or families authority to re-allocate funds well in excess of money they’ve actually contributed to the school funds.

The per capita funding mechanisms also ignore the fact that some students are more difficult to educate than others – some have learning disabilities, others lack interested parents, and probably a million other variables. Pretending that each student is entitled to or requires exactly the same amount of money to educate throws the system out of whack. So long as we are committed to public education for everyone, our funding mechanisms have to recognize the fact that some students require more effort than others.

One aspect of legislation that remains a mystery to most people, including many in the legal profession, is the non-code section of a statute. Most legislation amends the Indiana Code in some fashion – it modifies an existing part of the code or adds a new code section. But, at the tail end of some legislation you’ll see provisions that don’t amend any sections of the Indiana Code.

Typically, these non-code provisions are used for transitional measures or other provisions that won’t be law long enough to justify having them clutter up the Code for years or decades after they become inactive. For example, let’s say you want to create a board of 3 people with staggered 3 year terms such that, every year, a new board member is replacing an old one. For the first couple of years, you’d have board members with abbreviated terms – Member 1 has a one year term, Member 2 has a two year term, and Member 3 has the standard three year term. After that, everyone has the standard three year term and, because of the abbreviated initial terms, the following standard terms are staggered. There is no very good reason to make the language concerning the initial staggered terms into permanent additions to the Indiana Code. So, you write them as Non-Code provisions – having the force of law, but which don’t show up in the Code.

Anyway, the Legislative Services Agency and the Code Revision Commission of the General Assembly have put forth the extraordinary effort of cleaning up the mess that has accumulated in the Non-Code stables since 1984. SB 490, authored by Sens. Holdman, Delph, and Taylor contains a general repeal of Non-Code provisions with a laundry list of exemptions. The bill is generally impenetrable, even to a legislative geek like myself. So, I’ll just trust in the LSA and the Code Revision Commission to have done it right as they so often do.

And, once again, I’ll take the time to comment on how much better our code of laws is than most of the others I’ve seen. Say what you will about the stupor inducing language of legislation; the Indiana Code is generally a relatively easy to read document, particularly when compared to the United States Code and other state codes. And we owe that to the employees of the Legislative Services Agency, the legislators and experts who serve on the Code Revision Commission, and the leadership of the General Assembly which has generally been willing to put aside their other differences to agree on rules that have made our Code a very usable document.