A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Paying work has kind of taken over my life the past couple of days. Sorry ’bout that. I hear the legislature has been doing stuff though. Feel free to discuss it.

Sen. Becker has introduced SB 171 which would require health insurers to report medical loss ratios. In the health insurance biz, money spent on actually paying for health care is regarded as “medical loss.” Sen. Becker’s bill would require health insurers to report what percentage of premiums are used to pay for health care as opposed to other stuff like salaries, marketing, hiring staff to deny claims, etc. The idea – for customers, anyway – is that the best health insurer is the one that is best able to translate premium dollars into health care payments. Investors and other stakeholders might prefer that premium dollars get diverted to other pockets.

The bill requires accounting for specific categories of expenditures, including: Chief executive officer and executive salaries and benefits; Advertising and marketing expenses; Travel and entertainment expenses; and State and federal lobbying expenses.

Senator Vi Simpson has introduced SB 141 which tries to exempt contraception from the abortion laws.

It defines contraception as “the use of a drug or device that has been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration to prevent pregnancy.” Then it says that “contraception” is not subject to IC 16-34 which sets forth the public policy on abortion and criminalizes the performance of an abortion except under specified conditions.

It’s remarkable how often the same people who oppose abortion also seem to oppose contraception or sex education. Credibility for the argument that the real concern is the sanctity of human life would be enhanced by support for reproductive rights when they clearly do not involve the life of a child. Widespread contraception and sex education are much more effective at reducing the need for abortions than, say, abstinence only education.

I have not come to a full understanding about why conservative morality so frequently seems to involve controlling a woman’s sexuality. And, by “conservative morality” I’m not talking specifically about politics in the United States in the 20th and 21st century. This sort of thing seems to crop up in conservative strains of different religions in different times. At some point, I guess I ought to try to understand the source of the impulse to control women in this fashion.

The House passed HB 1001 and HB 1002 by votes of 97-2 and 61-38, respectively. HB 1001 had to do with lobbying and ethics, and HB 1002 had to do with preferences for Indiana companies in public works projects.

In case you were curious, the two “no” votes against HB 1001 were Tim Brown (R-Crawfordsville) and Dave Wolkins (R-Winona Lake).

The House also passed HJR 1, which takes the property tax cap law that’s already in place and enshrines it in the Constitution for future generations to enjoy regardless of whether it ends up being good policy or not. The resolution passed by a vote of 75 – 23. If it passes the Senate, which it probably will, then it will be up to The People to vote. Perhaps I underestimate the attentiveness of my fellow Hoosiers, but when it comes time to vote on this, I’d be surprised if 1/2 the people casting votes do so with the understanding that these tax caps are already the law; it will save them exactly nothing in property taxes – at least in the near term; and all they will be doing is make things harder to fix if the Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head. But, I guess if you get to campaign on being Tough on Taxes, it’s all worth it.

Update Abdul has published an excerpt from a letter sent by the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns to legislators. It responds to legislators who claimed that local officials didn’t “make the case” forcefully enough against Constitutionalizing property tax caps. What that seems to mean is that the locals didn’t provide enough political cover for legislators to vote against this block of text making its way into our Constitution.

Bill Ruthhart, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on the relatively good natured razzing being directed to the Senate for canceling business on account of the looming Snowpocalypse, a/k/a, The White Death from Above. All 4 inches of it.

The razzing seemed to primarily take the form of northern types puffing out their chests and proclaiming “You call this snow? I’m from the North, and this ain’t nuthin!” (I paraphrase). The other form seems to be that of the rough and tumble House members making fun of the more genteel, and therefore weenie, culture of the Senate.

The decision to shut down the Senate boiled down to: 1) There was a lot of snow in the forecast; 2) There wasn’t a lot of business scheduled for Thursday; and 3) The Senate rules weren’t flexible enough to change the meeting time to an earlier time, allowing such business as there was to get done before the roads got too bad.

Having a Senate day scheduled without much business on the agenda makes the cynical mind start thinking of things like per diems, but I really have no idea.

HB 1010, introduced by Rep. Torr, would prohibit a government entity awarding a public works contract from making certain labor friendly provisions part of the bid or contract requirements.

Specifically, it couldn’t require a contractor to enter into or comply with an agreement with a labor organization on the same or a related public works project and it couldn’t require employees of the contractor to become part of a union or pay extra fees to the labor union.

Some of this makes a certain amount of sense to me, but it sounds like this would prohibit a government unit from penalizing a contractor even if the contractor was breaching its existing union contract.

But sensible or not, at the end of the day, I think it probably boils down to a general antipathy to unions.

Update There is almost always a backstory to these bills, and I just go along aware that I don’t usually know what they are. Reading this post over at Advance Indiana leads me to believe that this bill has to do with Marion County and Wishard Hospital construction.

HB 1007, introduced by Rep. Duncan, enhances the penalty for domestic battery from a Class A misdemeanor to a Class D felony (from Class D felony to Class C felony with a prior offense.)

Without offering an opinion on whether it’s appropriate for this crime, there does seem to be a sort of penalty creep where penalties move up the scale. It’s a way of expressing frustration frustration that a crime is still happening. I have my doubts as to whether a person contemplating a crime really reflects much on the extent of the penalty when deciding whether or not to commit the offense.