Indiana House collecting fines from Dem boycott

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana House has collected more than $100,000 in fines imposed on Democratic members for their five-week boycott during this year’s legislative session, House records show.

Most of the 39 Democrats who fled to Illinois to protest Republican-backed labor and education proposals — and left the 100-member House with too few members to take any legislative action until they returned — were fined roughly $3,000 each.

About $12,000 of the fines, most of which have come through deductions from the legislators’ expense checks, remain uncollected, The Journal Gazette reported Thursday.

A few lawmakers, such as Rep. Win Moses, D-Fort Wayne, chose to pay off their fines all at once with a personal check.

Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma of Indianapolis said the fine money will go into the House budget and if it is unspent at the end of the fiscal year, it will go to the state’s general fund.

“I made it very clear during the session that I was dead serious about the fines,” Bosma said. “It wasn’t a negotiating tool.”

Republicans imposed $250-a-day fines against the absent Democrats two weeks into the boycott and increased the daily fines to $350 for the final week. The amount varied based on how many days an individual member was gone.

Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, filed a lawsuit in June challenging the manner in which Bosma is collecting the fines. He contends state law prohibits employers from taking fines out of an employee’s check.

Bosma and Republican state Auditor Tim Berry, who is responsible for docking the checks, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which is scheduled to be heard Oct. 6 by a Marion County judge.

The court filing focuses on the separation of powers between the judiciary and the legislature, saying the judge has no right to intervene into House of Representatives’ discipline matters.

“The fines assessed against the absent legislators and their method of collection have been entirely proper, but even if not, the fined legislators have no recourse to state courts,” they argued in a memo supporting the motion to dismiss.