Editorial Roundup: Indiana

Indianapolis Business Journal. March 4, 2022.

Editorial: Innovation districts need input from local and state officials

We are pleased to see that lawmakers have continued to work on an economic development incentives bill that will, among other things, provide for the development of innovation districts to help the state land mega-deals that could bring thousands of jobs to Indiana.

And we endorse changes to Senate Bill 361 made this week in the House that give local officials a greater voice in how the money is used.

The districts would operate like local tax-increment-financing districts. Tax revenue generated within a district could be used to acquire land, pay for improvements, and provide grants and incentives to companies locating within the district.

The districts are among several new tools the legislation would offer the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to help the state compete in a rapidly changing economic development landscape. Many states, including some that have lured large development projects recently, already have similar programs.

But local officials, while supporting the concept of the innovation districts, raised questions about who would control the tax revenue generated within them.

Originally, the bill put the IEDC in charge of managing a state fund that would collect the revenue from all the districts and spend it on grants, loans and investments for projects in the districts. As passed by the Senate, the bill would have required at least 10% of the captured revenue to be returned to local governments. But at the state level, the money from individual districts would have been combined into one fund and could be spent in any district.

Local officials said they wanted more control.

And so-as reported by Emily Ketterer in a story on page 5A-the House Ways and Means Committee amended the bill to require separate funds for each district and stipulate that the revenue can be used only in the district from which it was generated. The amendment also removed local income taxes from the revenue that would be captured.

Local boards appointed by the IEDC and local governments in each district would oversee the funds for individual districts. The change, lawmakers say, ensures a working relationship between state and local officials.

Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, and state officials had insisted that, even without the change in the legislation, they would have worked in concert with local leaders on economic development deals, as they do now. But we support changes that give local officials a bigger say in what is happening in their communities.

More important, we understand those officials' concern that money generated in one part of the state could-under the original bill-be used in another part of the state.

As of this writing, SB 361 was headed to a conference committee so members of the House and Senate could work on a compromise between the differing versions of the legislation.

We hope they reach common ground. We agree with state officials that the innovation districts and other provisions are necessary to modernize Indiana's incentives toolbox, but we also hope the final bill ensures that local voices are part of the strategy.

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Anderson Herald Bulletin. March 3, 2022.

Editorial: Death of '~divisive concepts' bill is good news

The so-called 'œdivisive concepts'ť bill might finally be dead.

Indiana Senate leaders faced a Monday deadline to bring House Bill 1134 to the floor for amendments, and they failed to do that, effectively killing the measure for the current legislative session.

We hope.

The Indiana House and Senate now have two weeks to hash out disagreements in various conference committees about bills that have passed the two chambers in differing forms. Because the 'œdivisive concepts'ť language passed the House 60-37, it could conceivably find new life in another education bill before the end of the session.

News of the bill's possible demise came after hours of meetings by Senate Republicans behind closed doors.

Even though the party has a supermajority in both houses of the General Assembly, Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said the measure didn't have enough support to pass.

Senate Republicans were largely divided into two camps. One camp thought the watered-down version of the bill approved by a Senate committee didn't go far enough. The other camp thought it went too far.

The bill limiting what teachers could say in the classroom about race, sex and religion had drawn loud criticism from teachers, administrators, civil rights groups, Black community organizations and leaders of the faith community.

The bill had emerged from a nationwide movement of mostly white, suburban parents angry about what they believed their children were being taught in school. In its initial form, the bill had been aimed at giving parents greater access to teachers' lesson plans and more power to oppose material they found troubling.

The measure passed the House last month mostly along party lines, but it had changed significantly in the Senate. The list of 'œdivisive concepts'ť banned from classrooms had shrunk from eight to three, and provisions to allow parents to sue schools over things teachers said in the classroom had been eliminated.

Critics called the bill a solution to a problem that didn't exist, and they warned it would make the state's teacher shortage worse by driving qualified individuals out of the profession.

This was actually the second time such a bill had been killed in the Senate this session.

A similar bill died after one of its sponsors, Sen. Scott Baldwin of Noblesville, drew national outrage by saying the measure would require teachers to be neutral in their teaching on all topics, including Nazism, Marxism and fascism. He later walked back the remarks, but the damage was done. The bill never made it out of committee.

Monday's news is worth celebrating, but it's too soon to relax. This was a bad bill that never should have come this close to passage. It won't be truly dead until the final bang of the gavel ending this session of the General Assembly.

Opponents must remain vigilant.

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KPC - Kendallville, Angola, Auburn. March 6, 2022.

Editorial: Handgun permit end-around is politics at its worst

That's not how this works.

That's not how any of this works.

Or, maybe it is how it works when Indiana's GOP supermajority feels the need to subvert the legislative process to cram through a particular measure, circumventing the entire process of discussion, discourse and democracy.

After Indiana Senators sidelined a proposal from Auburn Rep. Ben Smaltz to eliminate the state's handgun permit - a move that has been strongly opposed by law enforcement across the state and that this publication opined about on Jan. 9 in an editorial 'ťLawmakers should (but won't) listen to police'ť - Sen. Eric Koch of Bedford unilaterally decided to insert the original permit repeal language into an entirely unrelated bill in order to keep it alive.

The bill where the handgun permit language landed, Senate Bill 209, deals with drug schedules.

It has, in its original form, absolutely, entirely nothing to do with firearms.

During debate in the House, Republican leadership struck a proposed amendment from a Democrat to the handgun bill that would have required owners to safely store and secure firearms. It was struck because it was determined to not be 'œgermane'ť to the bill.

So we question how adding a firearm permit repeal to a bill about drug classifications is 'œgermane'ť to that piece of legislation.

Answer: It's not.

After completing his cut and paste, Koch then allowed no additional discussion of his transformed SB 209, stating, 'œI'm very confident that this issue has been thoroughly vetted.'ť

He's right. It was thoroughly vetted, with Koch's colleagues in the Senate deciding not to push it forward in its original form.

But perhaps Koch believes himself to be above the lawmaking procedure and above the trivialities of the legislative process.

During debate of the handgun bill in the Senate before Koch's end-around, a clearly frustrated Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter blasted the committee after offering the same kind of opposition testimony that was so readily ignored in the Indiana House.

'œThis is the problem with the supermajority. It stifles, prohibits and oftentimes limits public debate,'ť Carter said. 'œI sure hope you choose to show deference to law enforcement professionals who understand the magnitude and the frontline effects of this legislation, rather than the possibility of getting reelected or unelected the next primary.'ť

GOP leadership was miffed at the state police leader for that outburst.

Then Sen. Koch went and proved Carter 100% correct just days later.

This isn't how making laws is supposed to work.

This is the kind of back-room, dirty-dealing, swampy type of lawmaking stuff that Americans bemoan.

Lawmakers should (but probably won't) strike down Koch's procedural coup on SB 209.

When they don't, we encourage Gov. Eric Holcomb to veto it on principle, make lawmakers come back next year, follow the rules and do their jobs the right way.

END