- OK, ladies and gentlemen, it's nine thirty, so it's time to kick off our second legislative update for
- this particular legislative session. And I welcome all of you. So glad to see you up and about in this
- cold weather that doesn't seem to want to go away.
- So it's nice that we're in our warm houses being able to still take advantage of getting to talk about
- our pending legislation and how things are going overall. Actually, Chris, are you supposed to be moderating
- this particular session? I am moderating this particular session.
- Well, I will introduce you then. I did not realize that, and I'm so glad to have somebody to listen
- to this time. So you can take over. Hey, good morning, everyone. This is Christopher MG from the Greater
- Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I'm the Senior Director of Government and Community Relations there.
- Please, everyone, as we move forward, let's mute our audio. We don't need background noises for that. When you
- If you have a question, you will send it to the one question moderator. Please make sure that is a question
- and one that is short in nature. Let's start doing some business here and thanking our fabulous sponsors,
- the League of Women Voters, Bloomington Monroe County, the League from Brown County, and the League
- from Johnson County. Of course, the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, my employer, the Limestone
- Post Magazine,
- the NAACP of Monroe County branch and the Unitarian Universalist Congressional of Columbus, Indiana.
- So as it welcome everybody, we'll have all 16 legislative representatives from Bartholomew Brown Johnson
- and Monroe counties were invited. That includes Senate districts 32, 36, 37, 40, 41 and 44. Representative
- districts 46, 47, 57,
- 58, 60, 61, and 62. We thank all of the legislators who did join us, Representative Matt Pearson, Senator
- Shelley Yoder. And so I just want to go over this one more time. Remember, this is an informative meeting,
- not a debate.
- begin with the legislators' assessments of bills that they have forwarded to the House this week. We'll
- be taking a poll right after that. So this is going to be an interactive session. We're trying a little
- something new on the legislative forum front. Those polls will get the priorities and see where our
- attendees feel on that. So to ask a question, again, it's the one question moderator stating you have
- a question. Include your name if it is different from the Zoom identification.
- Questions will be taken in order they're received, and you will be asked to unmute when it is your turn.
- Please limit yourself to one question or topic. The moderator, that would be me, will step in to keep
- the discussion moving, and I do keep a pretty tight ship on that. So additional questions will be reserved
- in case we have additional time, so hold those. Our good friends at Community Access Television, CATS,
- is recording this session.
- posing the question constitutes permission to be recorded by cats. So let's start by introducing our
- legislators here. Representative Matt Pierce, do you want to take it away this morning? Okay, good morning,
- everyone. So I just wanted to give you a quick update on these four bills that the Republicans are kind
- of calling their agenda bills or priority bills.
- starting, I don't know, more than a decade ago, probably the Republicans every year would unveil usually
- 10 bills that they believe are the most important bills to get passed. It's interesting in the last
- couple of years, their agenda items have shrunk down to maybe four or five particular things that they
- would want to do. So this year, I guess the good news is there at least
- admitting that there's an affordability problem and things that need to be addressed. And I think the
- election year has focused them up a little bit. The question is, will these bills actually amount to
- anything that puts a dent into the problem? And so their housing affordability bill is House Bill 1001.
- And the whole premise of the bill is that the way you, the number one impediment to
- housing being affordable is just local planning and zoning regulations and impact fees that local units
- might charge developers to help pay for infrastructure and other impacts. What this bill essentially
- does is it overrides local zoning as far as allowing outbuildings and granny flats. I mean, similar
- things that there's been quite a bit of robust debate here in town before the City Council before. Now,
- in many of those provisions, they do allow
- the local unit to opt out. So they kind of create a default position. And then the city council or the
- county commissioners or someone would have to pass an ordinance, I guess, to essentially opt out of
- that. And then it tries to limit impact fees. And, you know, I've got quite a bit of support, I think,
- because people just want to vote for something they can point to that they say is housing affordability.
- I voted against it because I don't think it's going to do anything for the problem. I mean, the
- Home builders have a very strong contingent of legislators right within the General Assembly. This is
- being carried by a home builder. And part of me wonders if they're not just kind of taking advantage
- of the moment to get a bunch of deregulation they otherwise wouldn't get, which I think could impact
- the quality of housing over time. So a lot of people when they're voting for the bill are kind of saying,
- well, we'll hope it gets better when it gets to the Senate. Maybe they'll make it stronger.
- My number one objection is there's nothing in the bill that requires the cost savings that might accrue
- to developers actually onto the homeowner, right? So this could end up just padding the profits of the
- developers themselves. But at any rate, that's the number one bill for the session on housing affordability.
- One bill I did support, House Bill 1002 deals with high utility bills. It's another example of where
- this is at least a good start
- but it's fairly modest. And we had a number of amendments to House Democrats did to try to increase
- the protections and provide more immediate relief on the bills. For example, I had a bill or an amendment
- that would have gotten rid of the sales tax on utility bills. It's odd to me that we say we shouldn't
- be taxing necessities like food and clothing with the sales tax, yet we tax energy costs.
- kind of like an odd situation. So I tried to remove that. Oftentimes I get people saying, oh, that's
- a big fiscal impact. And so my answer to that was to eliminate going forward any tax exemptions for
- data centers. You may not know it, but data centers are exempt from sales tax on their utility bills,
- but residential homeowners are not. So I was trying to square that up.
- So that bill is now over in the Senate, so we'll see what happens to it there. But there's a lot more
- that we could be doing, I think, on that front than the bill. But at least we have a bill that's addressing
- the issue, and it gets some marginal things done. 1003 deals with boards and commissions. This is a
- big, I think, governor thing, as well as some members of the House. The idea is that we have all these
- leftover boards and commissions that
- are no longer needed or could be consolidated and made more efficient. And so it would eliminate lots
- of boards and commissions. That sounds good on the surface, but it's a little bit more controversial
- perhaps. For example, it's getting rid of the Natural Resources Commission, which used to kind of deal
- with their rules and would be an opportunity for the public to comment. They say we don't need that
- now because you can just do a normal rulemaking process like every other agency.
- So, I think there's a possibility that there'll be less chance for public input in some aspects of government
- if the bill passes. And lastly, or two more to get through, 1004 is called various education matters.
- This is supposed to be deregulation bill to remove regulations from local schools.
- This is kind of ironic. We're in the cycle where the Republicans pile on all kinds of requirements on
- the schools. And in about every fourth or fifth year, they say, gosh, there are too many rules
- and regulations on our schools. And they have a big deregulation bill. But inevitably, what they do
- is they lace into that deregulation bill provisions to weaken an already weakened voice of teachers
- in our classroom, meaning teachers unions. And so one key provision that's in this dereg bill is that
- at the request of school boards were told, they will be able to increase the number of hours the teachers
- have to work without really consulting them and working through the process. So that didn't seem very
- good at all. Finally, just two other bills to mention that are a symptom of something that's going on
- in the General Assembly, and that's its primary season. People can have a primary opponent file against
- them until February 7th.
- And each time I see a crazy bill going by, I'll ask, what is going on here with this crazy right-wing
- bill? And I'll be told, oh, that person's got a primary. And so when Republicans have primaries, they
- tend to introduce extreme bills to make sure they can't get out right-winged by their primary opponents.
- So that's what we're seeing in the General Assembly as well. And with that, I will, I guess, turn it
- over to Shelley. Thanks, Matt.
- Actually, you helped me. I was thinking all morning, how do I want to get started? And I like your approach.
- Just go through their priority bills. I see that there's a quiz. Do you want to take time? That will
- be on max bills that if you can choose your top two priorities on max on your personal ones, the ones
- that he brought up. And then we'll do the same for Senator Yoder after.
- She is finished with her. I'm going to stop talking then and give people a chance to read. So you can't
- read and listen at the same time. So read and participate in the poll. So this is, I think,
- I don't know, did we get this from our legislative preview breakfast a little bit? We had a little bit
- more. If you've been to the chamber's breakfast, it's a little bit interactive where we have these cards
- of yes and no where the legislators asked
- the audience, their opinion. And so people raise their yes, agree or no, disagree with it. It's kind
- of a fun little interactive thing that we've been doing for as long as I've been with the Chamber, so
- about eight years at least. This is a good time to remind everyone to please mute your audio unless
- you are asking a question.
- Don't need any background noises. All right, Senator, do you want to begin? I think we've had a chance
- to read those for priorities. Yes. Thank you, Christopher. As I was filling out that poll myself, it
- reminded me how difficult it is to fill out these things because you don't want your
- You don't know how people are going to interpret it. Are you going to say this is a priority because
- I'm against it or the priority because I'm for it? And so that gets very confusing. So that one was
- a tough one because there are definitely every single one of those are a priority, but for different
- reasons. Moving over to the Senate. Yes, we're at the halfway mark and wanted to go through the
- Priorities of Republicans would love it if they were on this and they could go over them themselves,
- but it definitely gives an opportunity to say this is what you should be looking out for. And if you
- want to connect with your legislator on the House side, because we can't do much about it in the Senate
- anymore, you can reach out to your legislator who represents you in the House and say, please amend
- this, please fix this, or this is how this bill could do less harm or be better.
- So the first SB1 is being, the story being told about SB1 is less about, you know, there is some of
- that we need to align ourselves with the federal HR one, the reconciliation budget bill, federal bill,
- but it's not being sold that way. It's actually being sold saying our spending in the areas of health,
- particularly in food nutrition supplements or SNAP and Medicaid. The state of Indiana is overspending
- and we need to bring those dollars and that spending down. And we're doing that in the area of giving
- Medicaid and SNAP to
- undocumented immigrants. That's sort of the message to get people worked up to say, well, we've got
- to do this because there's all this fraud that's out there. And because of this fraud, we need to crack
- down. But giving Medicaid and SNAP benefits to undocumented immigrants is already illegal. And it is
- not happening. And we kept pressing on the floor, show us the fraud. Show us the fraud.
- They know that that is not the case. So they have to create this narrative in order to pass SB1. And
- because they can't come at it any other way, they tell the story that this is a problem with undocumented
- immigrants. But what SB1 does is it creates more obstacles to actually accessing care.
- in the space of Medicaid. In the space of SNAP, it's just reducing access across the board. So one of
- the challenges, I think, it needs to be fixed. Someone needs to fix this because in SB1 currently, it's
- changing how being determined medically frail. It's taking away the self-attestation piece, which is
- not required by
- HR one, the federal law does not require, excuse me, prohibiting, still getting better. Sorry about that.
- Senator is getting her voice back. I just want to say we'll go through the poll results after you've
- filled out Senator Yoder's poll after she's done. So just to give you a little insert there. And when
- Senator Yoder is ready, she can begin again. My apologies. I have that thing that, you know, once you
- start coughing and you can't stop.
- So as I was saying with SB1, it is saying that in order to the bill would change how people would be
- able to access Medicaid because they are determined to be medically frail. The bill actually would require
- someone to be eligible for Medicaid first.
- and then they could be determined medically frail. But in SB1, to be determined eligible for Medicaid,
- you have to first show that you've worked 80 hours, because they're increasing the work requirement
- in SB1. If someone is medically frail, most likely they are not going to be able to show that they have
- worked those hours. And so it's sort of the process
- They're gumming up the process for being able to being determined Medicaid eligible. And is that by
- design? If you read the bill, it seems like it is by design in order to decrease spending in Medicaid,
- not because someone isn't eligible, but because of all the requirements now that we're putting in to
- administer,
- being determined eligible, there's gonna be more paperwork, more chances of people losing their Medicaid
- access. If you make a mistake, you're gonna be thrown out of the system for six months. So it just reads,
- I'm not saying this is the intent, but the bill reads as if we're gonna increase obstacles to access
- Medicaid in hopes that we throw so many people off, it will bring down our Medicaid spending.
- And that is similar to what's happening in SNAP. So that's SB 1. SB 2, I wanted to go through because
- this is kind of an important piece. You will be seeing, well, if it gets through the House, you'll be
- seeing there is a Senate joint resolution currently. It's a proposed amendment to change the Constitution.
- And the change in Constitution would expand when judges can
- deny bail beyond the current exceptions, which is murder and treason. This has been going on because
- of how our constitution is written when we can change the amendment. We are at the last steps of this.
- SB 3, actually, I would encourage you to read it because currently that is the language
- If and when it passes out of the house, that means it's going to be on the ballot in the fall. And SB3
- is the language that you will see. Currently, I want to just read it because I think it's super important
- to know what the latest version is. The latest version, the question will be,
- Shall the Constitution of the state of Indiana be amended to provide that a person charged with an offense
- other than murder or treason is not entitled to bail if, one, the proof is evident or the presumption
- strong, and two, the state proves by clear and convincing evidence that no release conditions will reasonably
- protect the safety of any person in the community or the community? OK.
- Our argument on the floor with that language is, as it stands, you could have someone with a misdemeanor
- be denied bail with that broad interpretation. And I think the way it reads, you think, yeah, we don't
- want people who are going to do damage and harm to individuals, we need to be very
- careful and give judges that discretion. But I think it's hard to understand and those ballot initiatives
- are tough. When it came right down to it, I support presenting ballot initiatives to constituents and
- so it was tough to vote against actually putting it in front of voters. But I was not supportive of
- the way that this language is written because I think it's
- It's convoluted and makes it very unclear. Going back to the the list of priority bills, but that is
- one of the priorities of the Senate is to get this through this year and it's over in the House now.
- The next one is Back to the list. Of course, you know, moving down to
- Carbon sequestration. What's interesting about carbon sequestration is that bill is actually saying
- if the local community where this project is going to go, if it has any impact on any connecting county,
- then those counties need to have public meetings to hear
- projects on carbon sequestration as well. It's a local control bill, and that is of interest.
- It's interesting, because outside of SB1 and SB2 and 3, I don't know. There wasn't anything here that
- was too egregious, quite truthfully. It was interesting. Affordability was not the priority
- was not the stated priority of the Senate Republicans. And I hate speaking on behalf of them. I'm just
- going off of what their press releases have been. But it was getting out early. It was passing this
- constitutional amendment change and the Medicaid SB1. Those were their priorities. And from the Senate
- Democratic caucus, we've really been pushing that
- We sort of lost sight of affordability issues, and we've been talking about it a lot. But some other
- surprises I think you should be aware of, Matt, they're coming your way, is we have what the LGBTQ community
- is saying is the most egregious bill that the state of Indiana has done since RFRA. And that is Senate
- Bill 82. I'm going to pull that up here.
- That is Senate Bill 82. It is, I'm sorry, 182. It's called Gender Issues. And this bill has that toilet
- policing language in it. So K up through universities and colleges, it has the language of who can use
- the restroom and when. And the interesting thing is it has this language in it that
- If you are not a student at a school, then a parent can accompany a minor less than nine years of age
- to an opposite sex, opposite gendered restroom. And our, you know, it was interesting because on the
- floor I argued
- that you are taking away a parent's rights. Like, what's magical about an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old?
- If you are at an IU football game and you've got your child with you, you can't have your child go with
- you into the restroom. And no, you cannot. It's a complete overreach. So let's look at it. So that's
- Senate Bill 182, gender issues. It also will require your state documents,
- state identification documents to reflect the gender of your birth, assigned gender at birth. There's
- also 236, which is abortion-inducing drugs and abortion reports. The abortion reports aspect, we got
- that amended out of the bill, so that was a win. But the bill still has Ketam language, which is a legal term that
- I learned about this session, which basically allows for 20 years a citizen to bring forth litigation
- against someone who has helped someone access medical abortion to the award of at least $100,000 for
- each case for 20 years.
- sort of vigilante justice here. So that's 236. And the other one that I think is, we've got Immigration
- Matters, Senate Bill 76, which even our Sheriff's Association is against, but it's requiring those ice
- holds. And then Senate Bill 285, which criminalizes homelessness, is still making its way through.
- Senate bill 25 with the housing matters and what is called criminalization of homelessness it's interesting
- because we tried to work with her.
- It's the arbitrariness of just 48 hours. You are only giving law enforcement 48 hours to connect someone
- with resources. And what we're hearing, it was, you know, we heard from local leaders saying,
- we can do this. We can actually help people. We need more time. You can't just put an arbitrary 48 hours
- notice before someone has to move because we'll lose that. We'll lose our ability to, number one, have
- that trust that's been established, and number two, know how to
- care for them, get them the resources that they need because we're basically saying you can't camp here.
- Once you're told you can't camp here, you have 48 hours to find someplace else and if they move, it
- just isn't a solution. It's a cut and paste job from the Cicero Institute out of Texas trying this sort
- of criminalization of homelessness. It doesn't help communities that truly have a need.
- to have services and help, it's not a helpful bill. So those are a few of the bills. Sorry for my little
- episode there, but I feel like better. So I feel a little better in being able to talk and not cough.
- So thank you for being patient. All right, do we want to get the pullout for Senator Yoder to get that
- interactive going? And then Amy Crane had a,
- question on that constitutional amendment going through. Senator, do you have an example of a misdemeanor?
- Could it be just anything that could be denied bail on? The language you spoke, and I don't know the
- bill specifically, seems pretty broad. I think that is the point. The point that we were making is it is broad.
- The pushback is, and I understand what they're saying is, they're basically saying judges should have
- the discretion. And we should let judges decide if bail should be denied. And so what is an example?
- I mean, the way that language is written, it could be a lot of things.
- Yeah, Christopher, if you want, I could jump in there. Please. I actually serve on this bail review
- commission, which is going to be going on for a couple of years. And so right now, the Constitution
- State Constitution says you are you have the right to bail unless you've been charged with murder or
- treason. Right. And theoretically, when the judge is deciding what should your bail be set, how high
- should it be there?
- asking themselves, is the person a flight risk? Are they likely to actually show up for their trial?
- And then the second thing they might consider is, do they think this person is a danger to the community?
- So in the current system, if you have someone you feel is not going to show up or is a danger to the
- community, if it's not treason or murder,
- what has been going on is the bail is just being set really high under the theory that the person won't
- be able to pay that amount and will stay in jail waiting trial. So what the constitutional amendment
- does is it essentially says that you can do what's called preventative detention on any crime if you
- think the person won't appear or the person is a danger to the community. And so that amendment has
- already gone through the General Assembly once under
- the rules under the Constitution to amend it, you have to have a proposed amendment approved by two
- separately elected General Assemblies. So a previous General Assembly already passed this change. And
- now if it passes in this session, then it will go on to the ballot. And so apparently it's passed the
- Senate now, so it's going to come over to the House. And then they've got some things running in parallel.
- So if you approve
- You get through that process of two different general assemblies approving the constitutional amendment.
- Now you have to pass a bill creating the language and authorizing a ballot question. So basically there's
- another bill, which Senator Yoder mentioned, that essentially says, here's the question we want put
- on the ballot across the state so people can decide whether to adopt this change in the constitutional
- amendment. And then there's a third bill moving, Senate Bill 2,
- which is assuming that the constitutional amendment will pass the house, will be put before the voters
- and will be approved by the voters. And that creates the system of hearings and things you will have
- to have now because you're going to be depriving people of their liberty until they wait for trial in
- more cases. And so you have to have more due process built into that. The good news is the last time
- I had checked, the prosecutors and the public defenders were pretty close
- on what those due process protections needed to be. I haven't paid attention to the Senate stuff because
- I've been so busy in the House, so that may have changed. But that's another issue as well. So we've
- got basically three different pieces of the legislation that all relate to just this basic idea that
- a judge should be able to keep someone in jail awaiting trial if they might flee or if they are a danger
- to the community. Basically do preventative detention.
- And right now, you can't do that under the Constitution unless the person's been accused of treason
- or murder. You just have to set the bail really high and hope that the person doesn't have the money
- to be able to get out. That's kind of how it works today. Thank you, Representative Pierce.
- I had a question, I think it was brought up in our breakfast, and that is township reform. There's kind
- of more draconian in the House, and there's one that I
- Probably is a little bit more palatable to the townships and the trustees in the Senate. Where are we
- at on that? I know there was a expose and the star that got me interested in how a lot of these townships
- kind of vary. We have some great ones here. I know in Monroe County, but not all of them are sort of
- equal as far as the functions they do.
- Well, I'm looking up here. I think that's on the calendar for Monday. The other thing that I should
- have mentioned is because we basically had a snow day in the house on Monday. Everything has been delayed
- a day. So we were planned to have been done with all the house bills by last Thursday. And now it's
- going to spill over to Monday. So we still have a third reading calendar. Yeah. The township reorganization
- is HB 1315. So that will get debated and a final vote in the house on Monday.
- And I think the basic premise of this bill and the Senate bill is the idea that you have smaller townships
- who don't do much. Maybe the argument is they're spending more money existing than they're actually
- providing to people for poor relief or duties. And so the House bill is kind of saying if you're below
- certain population parameters and you're not running a fire department, we're basically going to make you
- merge, I think with the county or towns. And to me, it's kind of a big mess and I'll be voting against
- it because they're always attempting to go after these townships like they're worthless or something.
- And I think that clearly we know that Perry and Bloomington townships and other townships are doing
- significant work in our county. But so I think the House bill is not good.
- And it's kind of arbitrary, and so I'll be opposing that. Now, I've heard from the trustees that they
- think that the Senate bill is something that makes more sense. But I haven't had a chance to study the
- Senate bill yet, so I don't really have an opinion on it. So I think the Senate and the House bill are
- addressing the same kind of issue, but they come at it in very different ways. And my impression is
- that the Senate bill is more practical.
- in the way it would have these mergers occur than the current House bill. Senator Yoder, any thoughts
- on the townships, the township bill in the Senate? I don't know if you've come across that yet or not.
- While we're waiting for the Senator, did everybody see the poll? Clearly, the main SB 1 Human Services Medicaid
- at 79% was the one that at least our audience really cared about. And I think medical care for everyone
- is a big issue. So that doesn't surprise me. And then the SB 236 was over 50% as well. And that was
- the abortion inducing drugs. Thank you, Christopher. To sort of sum it up, the Senate township bill
- is definitely more township friendly.
- It does require. It does require. Okay, I'm listening to the. Can you mute yourself there? We're we're
- hearing trash talk there. So we. Thank you. Senator, my apologies. You're good. Those townships. Well,
- the bill itself is setting up a point system that will be.
- run not by townships, but the point system, if you don't do certain things, you would get a point. And
- if you reach a certain point value, then you would have to begin having a conversation about. So sorry.
- You would begin having a conversation.
- was basically dissolving and joining with another township. And the bill itself creates the skeleton
- for that system. And in the end, the Indiana Townships Association worked really hard on the Senate
- bill to make it fair, to make the process for either dissolving townships or having
- townships join together, one that is going to keep our township government possible. I mean, our townships
- play a really important role in poverty relief, and there is value there. And the House bill shifts
- any type of township governance to
- municipalities. And so the House bill is definitely worse. The Senate bill is one that in talking with
- the township trustees in our community in Monroe County, they absolutely prefer. And I think we're,
- you know, people understand that some of our townships in Indiana may need to look at finding ways to
- consolidate. And the Senate bill
- It definitely does. I think the number is 270. I'll look, but I don't have it in front of me. I think
- the Senate bill for the township is 270. But that, I think that the one, if you like township governance
- and that model, the township model, then I think the Senate bill is definitely much more, I think, positive
- than the House bill.
- Thank you, Senator. Do we want to put up the poll before we get to some more attendee questions on?
- There we are. I think we have a question from Katrina. If you want to unmute yourself and ask a question
- this morning. Good morning. Good morning. I am a retired long ago caseworker for the welfare department
- and count.
- So I have some questions regarding the Medicaid bill. I don't understand the term medical frailty. And
- it makes no sense to me that if someone has a lot of medical issues and needs Medicaid disability, for
- example, that they would have worked 80 hours right before applying for assistance. None of this makes
- any sense to me. How can they be doing this?
- I implemented the program eons ago, and for disability, you had to have a doctor's statement that was
- then looked at by the medical folks in Indianapolis, and they decided whether or not you qualified that
- way. So this will change this? Yes, Katrina, that's what's so egregious about Senate Bill 1. It does
- change it. It's ridiculous.
- I'm right there with you. Let me tell you. There is a lot of attempt to put people in their places.
- And when you're debating this in the Senate, when we were debating this, I was going through point by
- point basically the point you're making. There are other egregious aspects. They're killing people is
- what they're doing.
- You know, it's interesting. Some of this is just process. And you bring up these egregious aspects and
- you bring them up on the floor or you talk to a senator about it. And there has been so much. Don't
- worry about it. Don't worry about a little sweet girl. You just sit down. We're going to fix this in
- the house. That kind of
- you know, behavior and, you know, it just gets, it was really abundant this, it's really abundant this
- session. I mean, we've already passed a lot of bills, but even my Republican colleagues are saying,
- we are going way too fast. I mean, we are pushing stuff through, we are pushing things through. We've
- not vetted, we've not had a conversation in caucus about this. We are pushing legislation over to the
- House that we know
- is not good policy. And we're saying, just trust us. We'll fix it in the House. So Matt, sorry, you're
- going to have a lot of fixing to do. But that was basically Senate Bill 1. We did not hear this bill
- in health. They did not actually, on the last day, they filed the bill. So you're already starting at
- a disadvantage.
- in terms of educating Hoosiers on what it says, being able to mobilize voters to the aspects that we're
- talking about right now, parts of the bill. And they did it, I mean, I don't know. Is it purposefully?
- I don't know. Did they just not know what they were gonna file? I would say they filed it on the very
- last day, which was a Thursday. The next week, they heard it in appropriations.
- They heard it in appropriations, not health, which Medicaid and SNAP bills go through. But they heard
- it in appropriations. And the next week, it was on for seconds and thirds. I mean, it was boom, boom,
- boom. Another one. Yeah, zero amendments, even though it was there. Because I know they see, once it
- starts getting gummed up with amendments, then it's kind of like, oh, there's something wrong with this
- piece of legislation. So it's coming under the House.
- Christine, but it has so many problems to it. And you are particularly- At the very least, it needs
- a study committee. And now I'll be quiet. Thank you, Katrina. Representative Pierce, do you have any
- comments? I wanted to put an outlook. I know the tax revenue outlook for the economy was improved. And
- I know the Medicaid
- spending gap I would think would be shrunk from that. Has that changed anything? Yeah, so let me just
- give you the big picture, right? So Medicaid has been growing because more and more people need health
- care and they don't have employers who provide it or it's just not affordable. And this has been exacerbated
- by the Republicans in Congress because we know that when they pass their big bill, they
- added on all these requirements in order to qualify for it. And then they've got this other shoe that's
- going to drop in twenty seven. So you got those bad things that are kind of flowing downward to the
- state. Then you had the appropriators who decided in the budget session last year that Medicaid is growing
- too much. They declare that it was unsustainable, was going to eat us all alive. We have to like stop
- it right now. And they really want to at a minimum
- freeze it in place so it does not grow anymore. And I wouldn't be surprised if you'd like to shrink
- it, but they never really admit that in public. So they just want to freeze it up, right? But they know
- that it's not very popular to go out and say, we just don't want to pay for the healthcare that people
- need and actually fund the program at the proper level. Because by the way, we're busy over here cutting
- all the taxes and reducing the revenue coming into the state. And so the political way they're trying to get
- get their goal done without getting punished at the polls is they're saying, you know, we got these
- problems where we've got able-bodied people who could be out working and paying for their own health
- care, but they're just kind of, you know, taking your tax money and living the high life on that Medicaid.
- And, you know, other people are, you know, committing fraud and you've got those illegal immigrants
- are all in there using up all your money. It's horrible. I mean, this is just the narrative that they're building.
- And you'll see the Republicans, it's really the most dishonest thing I've seen in a long time. And that's
- saying something, because when you get election time, honesty usually goes out the window. But they're
- basically saying, we are saving Medicaid by getting rid of all the waste, fraud, and abuse, and getting
- the people off the things that don't agree to be on it. The problem is that all that's going to happen,
- and this has already been done before. Pence had a lot of these requirements before, is
- You just drive up costs for the state to administer the program. People who qualify get thrown off the
- program just because the paperwork is not getting processed or they don't remember to meet a deadline.
- So it's all designed just to shed people off the program without admitting to the public that is the
- goal. And so that's all that's happening here. So there's no attempt to have a program that's rational.
- The attempt is to
- limit the program. And I've heard from people within FSA that they've been told just get as many people
- off the program as possible. If you can find any reason to deny somebody and get them out of there,
- do it. And so that's where we are with health care in the state of Indiana. Thank you, Representative
- Pierce. Let's have another attendee question. Pamela Davidson, do you want to unmute yourself and ask
- a question this morning? Good morning. Yes, I would.
- Hey, thank you, Shelly and Matt. We just appreciate you like crazy. You can tell I'm in my car. Farmer's
- Market was great.
- As I'm listening to this, and Matt, you just put your finger on it. They're reducing revenue coming
- into the state. You know, it seems like the Republicans are back into the culture wars. You know, 10
- commandments in the classroom, teaching the Bible, you know, harming transgender individuals, all those
- things. They're back in the culture warriors, which I assume is coming from a national agenda, because
- it seems many Republican states are doing that. But my question was,
- Will they ever revisit SB1? Saving a little bit on my property taxes to have the society and the things
- we value go to hell is a huge big problem. I mean, people are gonna feel the denial of services, the
- lack of amenities, all those things are gonna feel it sooner than later. And the PS to that,
- on the upswing, you know, in the guise of saving money, Matt. I've helped this homeless couple for well
- over a decade. And Julie went into the hospital for three days because she couldn't afford her $10 copay
- for her insulin. So we are burning down the forest to save a damn tree. And you must hear the story
- all the time. So will they ever revisit tax slashing and changing the Indiana income tax, reducing that?
- How crazy is that too? Thank you. Well, I don't see any indication that they're going to there doesn't
- seem to be any immediacy at all. That's be 1. I thought that the house was going to move something to
- at least dress this issue where you can't do any bonding or it's difficult to do bonding because the
- credit rating agencies basically say.
- We don't trust a system where every year you have to vote to renew the property taxes that would be
- paying off the bonds. And so that's making it very difficult for locals to be able to do any kind of
- capital projects. So I thought they were going to address that, but I haven't seen a sign of it yet.
- And I think that the bigger reconsideration of that bill, I think that is probably not going to happen
- until next year in the longer session with the budget.
- The proponents of that bill are pretty adamant. They say, oh, the locals, they're still going to get
- more money than they had before. And we're just making them be a little more fiscally prudent. And we're
- helping all these people. And the studies are showing that if that bill stays in place by the time it's
- all said and done, ironically, people with the most modest homes will get no relief and may actually pay more.
- And then you're gonna have the income tax raised by the local units to be able to maintain their basic
- services. And that, because it's, you know, flat tax, it's gonna impact the lower earning people more
- than the higher income earning people. So, you know, once again, it's usually the case over the last
- decade or so in the legislature is when it comes to tax policy, the impoverished people are the ones
- who end up paying the most. At least they bear the biggest burden, is I guess how I should say it.
- Senator? I would add to that. I had a conversation with the Ways and Means folks, which is in the House
- yesterday. And I said, you know, because I got a great letter from our city, our city council member,
- Isabel Piedmont-Smith, laying out exactly the requested changes of how SEA 1 is
- is really, you know, terrible. And so I sat down with him and I said, what is going to happen? And like
- what Matt said, you know, I too heard from our Republican colleagues that they were going to fix like
- the most egregious parts of SCA-1. And then I'm not hearing anything. So I asked the Ways and Means
- individual, I said, so what is the plan? All I heard was, well, we're going to push it out another year.
- We're going to push out another year and try to fix some of these issues that we have with that bill,
- which tells us nothing, number one. Number two, I actually think that the intent with lowering property
- taxes, the whole intent of SEA 1 was really to force some of our rural communities to have to say yes
- to some of these projects that they don't want to say yes to.
- the data centers. I actually think that that was kind of what's behind all of this is to squeeze our
- local communities so much that they have to say yes to some of these projects. But it doesn't make sense
- because we've actually given them tax breaks for the next 50 years. So when you do hear this push for
- the data centers, and then we've got communities who are
- you know, really feeling the squeeze from SCA-1 and being put in this really terrible predicament of
- how they're going to pay for services. So I am looking forward actually to seeing that bill come over
- to the Senate, because I think it started in the House, some of this sort of DLGF bill that's coming
- over, and working with our city, our city council members and
- county council members to see what we can do in that bill to amend it, to create some relief of the
- fear that's there. Because from our schools, to our libraries, to our local public safety, libraries,
- public safety services, the cut to services is devastating and real. And I'd like to see something happen
- this session just to give our local communities some relief, but just kicking it down
- the king down the road another year, isn't that? Let's see what we can do with that DLGF bill when it
- comes over from the House and the Senate. If you want to shoot me an email about that, please do so.
- Thank you, Senator. Next, Maria Douglas. Can I just add one quick thing? Please. Just really quickly,
- Shelley's totally onto it. The Speaker of the House has said over and over again,
- that the answer for local units that are struggling with revenues is to grow their assessed value. They
- just gotta go out and do better economic development and get more, you know, big stuff in there with
- assessed value. And of course, data centers do have tremendous assessed value. If you cite one of those
- in jurisdiction, you're gonna have, you know, after all the tax breaks fade away, you'll have
- some significant assessed value there from those things. So I think that that's definitely part of it
- is like, hey, if you want more,
- Revenue, just go out there and get something big put in your district. If you get a big oil refinery
- in your district, you get lots of assessed value. Thank you, Representative Pierce. All right, Maria,
- you are up. Good morning.
- Thank you so much. Good morning. Thank you both for your steadfast work as always. And I was happy to
- hear Senator Yoder talk about Senate Bill 76. This is immigration matters. And I think it's interesting.
- The title is even interesting. Does it matter or are there matters pertaining to anyway? So the reason
- why this is of note and,
- importance is because it's going to be heard by the house judiciary committee on monday we're told at 10 30 a.m
- on february 2nd so i wanted to just bring people's attention to this bill and then also ask a question
- pertaining to this bill for for both um senator yoder and
- Representative Pierce. So Senate Bill 76, this bill imposes mandatory enforcement procedures and funding
- penalties that undermine civil liberties and limit local government discretion, exposing communities
- and agencies to costly litigation. It currently conflicts with federal authority in that Senate Bill
- 76 pushes local agencies and public colleges to take an enforcement
- role that goes beyond what the federal law permits. It is also, as we heard about another bill today,
- the unnecessary duplication of federal law because hiring unauthorized workers is already illegal. And
- it makes this bill redundant as that is part of the matters of immigration. And mandatory ICE detainer
- compliance.
- Other states with similar laws saw people including United States citizens held too long and filed lawsuits
- as a result and Indiana could face the same outcomes, which is a Fourth Amendment violation. Again,
- the e-verify in terms of e-verify system is if you're an employer, this is a system that could be used to
- verify that an applicant or an employee is a, should be an employee. I don't think you should run this
- before they're an employee, but to validate that they are a United States citizen, but we know that
- they verify has known errors. Here's another one. We just had a protest about this in town yesterday.
- Privacy and data collection concerns.
- and increase surveillance without clear benefit. So I also want to just lift up that Hoosier Asian American
- power, the ACLU of Indiana and exodus refugee immigration are highly concerned for these civil rights
- violations, legal costs, workforce harm and community distrust without
- adding meaningful protections. So Representative Pierce, what are your thoughts and predictions in terms
- of what may or may not happen on Monday? And then Senator Yoder, I'm curious about how this passed the
- Senate. Well, it's sad, but it's going to roll right through the House.
- Governor and the Republicans are full-throated supporters of President Trump's immigration policies,
- and they don't seem very disturbed by what's been going on with ICE. They want full-throated compliance
- and cooperation at all levels of Indiana government with the federal authorities. And they're frustrated
- that there are some communities that have chosen not to do that. And so this bill is just an attempt
- to try to tighten the screws down as much as possible to force every single unit of government from
- top to bottom to cooperate with ICE and all the other chaos and violence that Trump is, you know, spreading
- across the nation. And it's sad, but that's it. And I think they, you know, feel it's good politics.
- So I think that, you know, the bill may get slightly modified here or there along the way, but it is
- going to pass and the governor is going to sign it in some form.
- Thank you so much, Maria, for your question. I would say some of this is virtue signaling because it
- is just sort of telling, you know, sort of that MAGA mindset of, you know, this is what we do when most
- of it is, it already does not happen, but it's sort of this virtue signaling in
- Because I don't know what else it would be, because when you have like with Senate Bill 76, the Immigration
- Matters Bill, when you have law enforcement agencies coming out against it, when you have them saying,
- we cannot support this legislation, and yet they're pushing it through, something else is happening.
- So there's that bill. There is an e-verification bill that has been a priority of labor
- four years. And it has been a priority for labor. I mean, organized for unions, this e-verification
- system. And it couldn't even get a hearing. It couldn't get a hearing. And then they told the story
- in terms of, you know, they don't use the word undocumented immigrant, but they spin it like that.
- And then, you know,
- gets everybody riled up, and it passes. So some of it is just telling the people who need to hear these
- phrases or code words. But the impact is devastating. The impact is fear.
- And distrust of one another, sort of building this in our communities and forcing people into the shadows.
- That's, that's the impact. So, you know, I see 76 Senate bill 76 going through.
- I have only heard that it's the least egregious bill. There's some bills that are worse in the House.
- I haven't looked at the whole list of what's coming our way, if there's something worse that's coming
- our way. And then what does happen, if anything is moving from the House over to the Senate, sometimes
- what they do, so you have to watch this, they will take it and they'll sort of bring together at the
- end, when not on the floor, but in conference committee, they'll put these bills together. And it's
- hard to keep track of,
- some of the worst parts because they'll start picking and choosing and sticking them in these bills
- when you think something is dead is truly not dead. It will show up in something in these conference
- committees and that's sort of where we're heading. So yeah, I know these education matters, immigration
- matters, tax matters, it only matters to the person that the matters what that means is determined by
- who's in the majority.
- And in this case, it's not saying that immigration matters. It's saying the matters pertaining
- to immigration. And some of those pieces are incredibly damaging and problematic. So thank you for your
- question. Thank you, Senator. I think our next question is to remind you to keep your questions to under
- a minute. Kathleen Bleson, if I got your last name correct, if you want to unmute yourself and ask a
- question. Good morning. Good morning. It's Leeson.
- I think this is related to what Maria was just talking about, and I'm interested in House Bill 1343.
- This was a military and veterans' affair bill that I believe passed the House. Embedded in there, there's
- one little sentence that gives the adjutant general the ability to deploy a military police force to
- enforce local laws. I have a feeling this is another one of those sneaky attempts to give ICE
- ability to do immigration work and to put down protests and whatnot. So what do we expect to happen
- in the Senate? Well, I expect it to get a hearing and we'll debate it on the floor. Well, that's it.
- We'll go through the process and
- we'll have to see if we can amend and make a bad bill any less harmful. And that's what I suspect will
- happen. But I think our senators need to hear from their constituents. And that's the only way we can
- really move the needle on this. So we'll see. I haven't looked to see if that has been calendared. And
- so if Matt wants to jump in,
- I'll look to see if it's been calendared for next week. Yeah, that it's interesting because when that
- bill started, so it's what they call an agency bill. So agencies come in and they say, here are all
- these kind of fix ups and things we need, problems we discovered in the law that are impeding us from
- doing what we want to do. So please like pass this bill. And it's it's got a lot of veterans stuff in
- it. And then the National Guard has this piece where and it's actually more than a couple of lines, but
- The bill essentially gives the adjutant general who runs the National Guard the authority to create
- a military police unit. And then that military police unit would get its military policing training
- as MPs normally get. And I think they go off to a military base somewhere back East and they get that
- training. Then when they come back, the adjutant general would decide what kind of civilian law enforcement
- training they would need. Now, right there, that's a different thing because right now, if you're a
- want to be a police officer and enforce criminal laws, you have to graduate from the law enforcement
- academy and get a certificate that you're properly trained and qualified to do that. This would leave
- it up to the adjutant general to decide how much or how little training they would need to do that.
- The bill then goes on to say that the governor can deploy this military police unit
- whenever he thinks it's necessary. Now, this is part of we already have in the National Guard statute,
- a list of things when you can deploy the National Guard. You have things like war, insurrection, natural
- disaster, all these different things. And the final thing is whenever the governor thinks it's necessary.
- So what that means is whenever the governor thinks it's necessary, he can deploy this military police
- unit throughout the state or in any one community or part of state.
- And then the bill goes on to say that when the military police are deployed in this way, they have the
- ability to carry a firearm, to affect arrests, to conduct searches and seizures and essentially operate
- like law enforcement. And so this obviously, as I sat on the house floor and we had quite an extensive
- debate on this floor, because for whatever reason, the media and people really weren't focusing on it.
- very clearly, but my point just was, this is the most dangerous thing I've ever seen, because the governor
- mimics President Trump every chance he gets. If President Trump does an executive order, two days later,
- you get a state one that mimics whatever the federal thing is saying. And so I think that what the governor
- wants, and they're also a little bit shy about admitting who actually asked for this, but I'm pretty
- sure it's the governor,
- I think what he wants to be able to do is a couple things. One, on the immigration front, he could say,
- OK, Bloomington, you're not cooperative enough with our federal authorities. We're going to send the
- military police down there to get the job done because you local law enforcement people, you're not
- playing nice with the feds. And then you got this occupying force in your community. The other possibility
- in non-immigration context is
- They've often criticized the city of Indianapolis, which happens to be run by democratic, you know,
- elected officials. They, they complain there's too much crime in Indianapolis and you're not doing enough.
- You're not getting tough on crime Marion County. And I could see the governor essentially saying Marion
- County is lawless and out of control. And we have to take over basically the law enforcement aspect
- because they're not getting the job done. So then you get a bunch of military police.
- out arresting civilians all over Indianapolis. And it's just the worst idea in the world. And the thing
- that tells you where we are in our politics is there is a time when I've seen this in the past. There's
- been a time where a bill is kind of moving along. Maybe it's a little controversial, but then something
- external thing will happen like we saw in Minneapolis. And the people immediately pull back.
- They'll say, okay, even if I think this bill makes sense, even if I think it's not a horrible thing,
- now is not the time.
- be trying to push this through because clearly people are going to draw parallels and instead it's just
- like full speed ahead. So that will be over in the Senate and we'll see what they do with it there.
- Thank you, Representative Pierce. Do we have any more ice? Senator, do you want to talk a little bit
- any more about that or responding to I think taking over, I think using
- sort of state functions to take over municipalities, I think, on crime or anything of that nature. And
- we haven't heard as much about that recently. I did see in the chat a question about ICE in Bloomington.
- I don't know the specifics about that, but I think there has been some rumors swirling about ICE coming
- to Indianapolis, in particular for the Haitian and Burmese communities. That was really giving some traction.
- Yesterday, we found out that there were these blocks of rooms that had been reserved around Indiana
- and the thought was it was they were being reserved for ice, but that has been debunked. But that doesn't
- mean that there isn't still that threat. So there had been like there an immediate alert, but
- Yesterday, late afternoon, we found out that that actually is not why those blocks of rooms had been
- reserved. So that doesn't help us in terms of what we know, in terms of sort of increasing their presence
- throughout Indiana. But the thought or the rumors that were swirling yesterday were clarified and shown
- to not be true. So I think it's still there.
- Yeah. Yes, thank you, Maria. You have a question this morning. Good morning. You want to unmute yourself?
- Good morning. Thank you. I have a question about the bill that did not pass on the firing squad. I'm
- grateful that didn't pass. Can you talk about what you think led to the defeat of that bill?
- Would we expect to be coming up again? I'm sorry, there was a little bit of an echo, so I didn't catch
- which bill you're referring to. Yeah, sorry, I just, I couldn't get that any better now. Is this better?
- Yeah, that's much better. Oh, thank you. So my question was regarding the bill that did not pass in
- the House for the firing squad. What do you think led to the defeat of that bill and might we see it
- again somewhere? Yeah, I don't. I don't think we'll see it again. Technically, it was not defeated,
- but it failed for lack of constitutional majority, so it had more votes for than against, but it didn't
- have the required 51 votes the Constitution says you need in the House.
- to be able to pass a bill. And I think that there's a combination of people just feeling a little bit
- over the top. And then also we have a lot of people the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church, I think,
- has spoken out against that bill. And so I think that lost just enough support on the Republican side.
- And the other thing is it was already, I think, defeated in the Senate, a similar version. So I couldn't
- understand why they were moving in a house. That's just one of those things where you kind of scratch
- your head. It's like, why are they wasting their time on this? And so I think you had basically the
- Catholics within the House Republican caucus were not thrilled about it. And of course, the Democrats
- were pushing hard. I spoke against it. And I think that they just couldn't quite
- and get enough votes to move it. Technically, they could do something called a motion to reconsider
- and try to revive it and get it passed on Monday. But my understanding is they're not going to try to
- do that. So the bigger mystery to me is like, why would you move a bill like that when you knew the
- Senate already killed it off? So I don't know if that's like primary messaging. I mean, the other thing
- that I should point out is on these culture war bills and these kind of weird things.
- Um, most of the time they're being done by people who have primary opponents, right? And the Republican
- primary, and they want to, uh, be as extreme right as possible for the primary. And so for example,
- um, Liz Brown over in the Senate is a unique, um, situation because in last session, she decided not
- to move one of these immigration bills and, um, attorney general Rokita and Senator Banks just went
- off on her.
- And attacked her and said, we're going to primary her because she didn't let this bill go through her
- committee. And she's got this opponent, fairly aggressive opponent and all these forces lined up against
- her. And so my opinion, this is just my opinion from watching from afar. I think that her strategy is
- I'm going to become so mega extreme for this session through the May primary that they won't be able
- to outflank me.
- And so that's where you end up, you know, this kind of gets you into this atmosphere of these, um,
- you know, anti-trans bills, putting the 10 commandments up on the wall that author that bill is involved
- in a primary. She wants to get over to the Senate. And, um, so all of these people have competitive
- primaries are all trying to be as extreme as possible to get, um, the support of this MAGA base within
- the Republican party.
- Senator, any comments on that? I have a election integrity question. I know that was a hot topic, and
- there were some seizures, some ballots in Georgia. Has there been anything on sort of election integrity
- that has gone through? I haven't read anything, but I didn't know if there is something under the radar.
- Can I ask a question?
- I haven't had a chance, I was just noticing up on the, some bills that have moved out of the house on
- straight ticket voting and things like that, that seem positive, but I haven't had a chance to read
- the bills yet, the language. So I'm curious on that front, but there is a, I guess there is a bill,
- but it is, we have not heard a lot of election kinds of,
- Bills that we've heard normally in the past, I think redistricting what happened there. And it has has
- impacted it some, but I'm curious to hear what the the bills that are coming over around straight ticket
- voting, what they say and if they're good. Yeah, fortunately, I ended up on the elections committee
- this session because I got put on there to deal with the redistricting stuff in December.
- Nothing very exciting coming out of there. I haven't seen anything that would be, you know, usually
- they have at least one voter suppression bill session and I haven't seen anything yet. The straight
- ticket voting bill is interesting because. It tries to deal with this problem of straight ticket voting
- when you have three at large spots or if you have three at large county council members, if you vote
- straight ticket,
- and then go down and because you wanna vote for one person in the other party and you fill that person
- in, if you don't also fill in what are the other two remaining, who do you want in the two remaining
- of the three spots, then you don't know who's the odd person out that you wanna throw overboard to make
- room for the person that you, they call it scratching, that you scratched for. And so the law was changed,
- I don't know how many years ago, not too long ago,
- They decided the way you would solve that problem is you would simply not have straight ticket voting
- apply to at-large seats. You would have to plaster signs all over the polling place and put on a ballot.
- Hey, if you're voting straight ticket, you're not voting for the at-large seats. You got to get down
- there and you got to fill in the bubbles for the three people you want.
- What was happening is people would vote straight ticket, think they voted for their party all the way
- down the ballot, but they hadn't voted in the at large seats. And then they would they would walk out
- of the booth and it would be an under vote. So what this bill would would essentially do is have have
- those three at large seats count again. So if you pull a straight ticket, it will automatically fill
- in the three at large people that are the member of the party that you're doing your street ticket for.
- And then the education is going to be it's like, OK, now if you're going to go down there and vote for
- someone in the other party, you have to also tell us who are the other two people you want to be in
- those seats. And so it's it's going to make more votes count, I think, which is probably a good thing.
- But you still have this education process you have to go through for people who want to vote straight
- ticket, but make a few deviations here or there.
- So that's what that's about. So to me, that's more of a kind of a technical issue of how do you make
- the ballot function than anything else. But people do bring up the bigger question. Should we have straight
- ticket voting? Is straight ticket good? Is straight ticket bad? And to be honest with you, people who
- live in counties that have a dominant majority party, they tend to like straight ticket voting. People
- who are on the minority side of that equation usually don't like straight ticket voting. And that's
- usually the dynamic that comes up.
- There's a lot of divergent opinions on street ticket voting. You talked about, I think the last session
- about sort of doing some evaluation on some legislation gets passed previously and that we're never
- quite looking back on some of the impact. Has there been any movement or any look studies on some of
- that? Education seems to be one that we just keep changing year to year without looking at what the
- last reforms did.
- Yeah, it's just the legislature is very bad at looking back at what it did and whether it's actually
- working or not. Usually that only happens if there's just a big train wreck. And sometimes a train wreck
- is a slow rolling thing that happens over a number of years. And so usually if there's not something
- to say, oh, we messed up, we better fix it. We're not very good about going back and assessing things.
- There was a time when the legislature had a process where every year they would go and look at
- one title, one volume of the Indiana code. So they might say, look, let's go look at the health provisions.
- Let's go look at the transportation provisions. Let's go look at the utilities provision. And you would
- kind of go through there and see if things needed to be updated. But I think they decided that that
- wasn't fruitful enough to justify the time. So so the short answer is no, not much looking back. Senator,
- do you have any
- response on that. I don't think there's much looking back at all. I think we need to be aware of some
- bills that are continuing to. Wow. No, I'm sorry. I just saw an announcement come through. I did not
- realize that
- Representative Ed Clair from New Albany has left the Republican Party, and he is not seeking re-election.
- I did not know that. I just got an alert on my phone. So that is interesting, and hopefully kind of
- a sign for things to come, speaking of looking forward. But there is a bill. We brought this up the
- last League of Women Voters legislative update, and it's the cell phone ban bill.
- That is moving over to the house and something just to be aware of with that bill. Indiana, if you go
- to these advocacy groups, their websites who push for these bell to bell bands. So from the time that
- students come in, get to school, they have zero access to their phone until the time that they leave,
- bell to bell.
- If you look, Indiana already is considered a bell-to-bell state. You can't get much deeper in the color.
- We are a bell-to-bell state, and here's why. The legislature already passed legislation thinking of
- things we've already done in the past. We passed legislation that said students cannot have their access
- to cell phones during instructional time.
- a school board can decide to make it more extreme. If a school board wants to have bell to bell, have
- that conversation with your community and pass that legislation. The state legislature is saying it's
- up to the locals to decide. And some local school corporations in Indiana have decided. They have the
- funds to have the means to do that. And in the case of our two
- school corporations in Monroe County, RBV and MCC, they have decided we're not gonna have access during
- instructional times and students will have access outside of that. So essentially, Indiana already has
- a belt to belt policy because we've left it up to the locals to decide what that policy is going to
- look like. So if this is something that's important to you, let's have a discussion at the school board level
- on increasing it outside of instructional time. But in our conversations, in my conversations
- with superintendents, they're saying it's working for them. What they have, they appreciate and feel
- like they are managing it at the local level. And yet what's moving through is a required bell-to-bell
- policy. So that's in the House, and I'm sure it's
- probably going to get a hearing and just give me a heads up, Matt. But what I'm hearing from our locals
- is if we would want that in our community, we could have bell to bell. But right now we just have you
- can't access your phones during instructional times, but you can still have that cell phone on your
- person in the school building. And it seems to be working and it's what
- Currently, both of our Monroe County school corporations are saying is in place. Thank you, Senator.
- We're winding down here this morning. Amy Craig, did you have one more SB one question? Which is always
- a lot to unpack that. I don't think we could ever get to the bottom of you want to unmute and ask that.
- We haven't sort of a topic is a child protective services agency. I know there's always sort of legislation
- that goes through a reorganization of that agency. We haven't anything pop up on the legislative side
- for that. Well, I'm trying to remember which they're there. It seems that every session there's always
- a DCS bill and
- because they're just constantly kind of messing with things. I'm trying to recall. I don't think it's
- anything very dramatic. We did have one bill in the house, which I thought was interesting, that actually
- supported, but it would essentially say just because you allow your child to play alone outside doesn't
- mean that's grounds to have your kid taken away and put in foster care or something. And during that
- debate, I related
- In my childhood, I grew up in a, I lived in a small town when I was like age four to seven. And I lived
- in a family of nine kids and it was all my mother could do to keep track of us. But in the summertime,
- we would just go out and play. And I was explaining to people that my average play day was first I'd
- start out playing on the railroad tracks. I never got run over by a train. Then I'd go down to the city
- dump, dig around, see what kind of treasures I could find in the city dump.
- Then I go talk to the people who lived under the bridge that in those days, we called them hobos. I
- think they might've just been passing through town on the rails or whatever. Today, if you said that
- people would be horrified and there'd be like investigations, you know, and I probably would be in foster
- care, but you know what? I had a perfectly, you know, happy, safe childhood. So the point I was just
- making is it is a different era than the 1960s when I was doing that stuff, but I think that
- You know, the danger is we kind of overprotect our kids and they don't have enough space to kind of
- just grow and do stuff and learn to be resilient and independent and all that kind of good stuff.
- So anyway, that bill is going to be over in the Senate. Just make the case that just because you let
- your kids go out and play on their own doesn't mean that you're a bad parent. That's why I have a dad.
- there hasn't been anything too egregious pertaining to DCS this session on the Senate side.
- So Amy's question, and this will be the last of the morning of what happens once they, that applicants
- are kicked off the program Medicaid. Like is there a, I think you can write a appeal if I know that
- correctly, but do we have any sense of when we're kicking
- people off the Medicaid rules, what happens to them? Well, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Well, I mean,
- there is an appeal process, but I think the point which has already been made this morning is that they
- just they won't have Medicaid benefits, so they're probably going to delay any care that they need.
- Then their condition is going to get worse and they're going to show up in the ER and then we're going
- to spend a whole lot more money going to be absorbed in the system because they don't, you know, they
- don't have the money to pay.
- And so you might have some short-term savings, but you're going to have way more long-term losses, not
- to mention just the cruelty of someone not having healthcare and struggling with that. And so, you know,
- at the end of the day, this whole thing points out that we have an insane, indefensible healthcare system
- in this country. And, you know, the Affordable Care Act made it better.
- kind of held some stuff off, but you can kind of see the same issues rising again. And so I think until
- as a nation, we come up with the political will to actually, you know, join the other zillion industrial
- nations that have some kind of universal healthcare system and not have it tied to happen to have a
- job for an employer big enough that can provide some kind of affordable healthcare. I think that's ultimately
- what's going to have to get done to really solve this problem.
- final comments. Well, I I think that wraps up our legislative update. I want to thank Representative
- Pierce, Senator Yoder for joining us. And of course, all of our attendees waking up early. We want you
- to stay active, contact your legislators on issues you care about. We had those polls earlier. You can
- find bills at the Indiana General Assembly website.
- Please join us March 10th, starting at 9 a.m. a little earlier for the wrap-up session to look at and
- look at plans for 2027. That is a budget year. Thank you all for joining us. Of course, CATS for their
- great service. Our team members, our sponsors, the League of Women Voters from Bloomington Monroe County,
- Brown County, Johnson County. Of course, my employer, the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, Your
- Limestone Host Magazine,
- the NAACP Monroe County branch, the Unitarian Universalist Congressional of Columbus, Indiana. Thank
- you all and have a great rest of your day.