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.