Recent editorials published in Indiana newspapers

The Munster Times. February 28, 2019

Charge parents, not just youth, in some gun crimes

We've seen plenty of Northwest Indiana police reports and headlines in the past year regarding teens arrested for physically carrying - or in some case threatening to bring - firearms onto school property.

Those instances represent a safety hazard to our most important asset - our youth - and felony charges have been appropriately filed.

But is it enough?

Region law enforcement and prosecutors should consider filing charges against the people who made it possible for their schoolchildren to obtain the firearms to begin with.

It's time to hold parents or legal guardians accountable as well.

In a Wednesday front page article, Times reporter Allie Kirkman detailed cases in which at least three students allegedly brought guns onto Region school properties and another three students were accused of threatening to use guns for violence at schools.

In the most recent case, a Crown Point High School student, Kayla Apking, 18, of Cedar Lake, faces a felony charge for allegedly taking a gun belonging to her stepfather to school.

She claimed to have removed it from her stepfather's nightstand for protection, police have said.

We all should be asking where the parents are in these matters.

When a teenager is able to take a firearm with apparent ease, and that gun then becomes a threat to others, the teenagers aren't the only ones who should be facing criminal charges.

The Second Amendment allows American citizens to own firearms.

But laws demanding responsible gun ownership should be enforced - not just on the culprits who illegally carry the weapons but also the owners who don't keep them secured.

In Kirkman's Wednesday article, Region law enforcement leaders were quoted as imploring parents with firearms to keep them secured from potentially irresponsible hands, including their children.

Those warnings should be taken one step further with criminal charges for irresponsible gun owners.

It may be the chilling effect our society needs for mitigating the problem.

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The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette. February 25, 2019

Dark money

Hoosiers getting by paycheck to paycheck who are hit with an unexpected expense often leap at the chance to take out a two-week "payday" loan for what seems to be a small fee. But often, they end up chasing that loan with others, and those small fees actually compute to an annual rate of 391 percent. Many discover a bitter truth - that the easy-to-obtain series of loans has only made it harder to climb out of debt.

For years, consumer advocates, veterans groups and social-service organizations have been trying unsuccessfully to get the Indiana legislature to do something about payday lending. A surprise amendment that popped up during an Indiana Senate committee hearing last week proposes to do just that - but not in a way that would help protect struggling families from predatory lenders.

Incredibly, Senate Bill 613, authored by Sen. Andy Zay, R-Huntington, and Sen. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, would vastly expand the high-interest loan system while doing almost nothing about existing payday loan rules. The measure passed out of committee on a hurried party-line vote, and it could come before the full Senate for a vote today, an attempt to give a dubious bill momentum before advocates for the poor have time to effectively react to last week's massive amendment.

Erin Macey of the Indiana Institute for Working Families said she and other members of the coalition fighting the payday loan concept received the 69-page amendment late in the afternoon before Thursday's hearing, and the organization has not had time to thoroughly analyze the measure.

But, the institute wrote in a preliminary analysis, "the bill makes sweeping changes to our consumer lending laws covering home equity loans, car loans, personal installment loans and other consumer credit products that will significantly drive up costs for already-struggling borrowers." Under SB 613, Macey said, the annual percentage rate for a car loan to a low-credit applicant could be hiked as much as 11 percent.

Besides preserving the current payday-loan system, the institute said, SB 613 would create a six- to 12-month, high-interest, payday-style installment loan similar to one the lending industry failed to get enacted last session as well as a new "small dollar loan" that would carry at least a 99 percent annual rate.

Zay told lawmakers he wrote his bill as an alternative to the usual piecemeal approach to revising lending laws. SB 613's backers say payday loans and the new array of high-interest loans the bill would create offer quick cash to those who need it without driving desperate Hoosiers to pawnshops, back-alley creditors or internet lenders with even higher rates. "This is a way to build credit," said attorney Brian Burdick, who represents the Consumer Financial Services Association.

But those who work with financially strapped Hoosiers often see a different outcome.

"Folks come to us seeking bankruptcy relief - a death in the family, a sudden job loss, a severe medical issue," Matthew Gaudin, a staff attorney at the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, told lawmakers during Thursday's hearing. "Many have taken out payday loans before they come to us seeking bankruptcy," he said. "It often exacerbates the problem. A lot of times it pushes it over the edge and requires a bankruptcy."

Another witness who hastily rallied to oppose the new measure was Jim Bauerle, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general representing a coalition of veterans groups. Bauerle noted the Department of Defense recommends a 36 percent cap on annual percentage rates "for all types of consumer lending - including all fees." Senate Bill 104, which would impose that cap on all loans in Indiana, also was reported out of committee last week but is believed to have little chance of passage.

Zay's idea of a comprehensive review and revision of Indiana's lending laws is something opponents of the payday-lending concept could support. But it would require far more thought and discussion than one two-hour committee hearing.

"The appropriate thing for this committee to do would be to reject this bill but establish a summer study committee where you can thoroughly evaluate the things so that the public could hear," Bauerle said.

If you believe ramrodding this bill expanding payday-loan options is the wrong answer, it's urgent you contact your legislators today.

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Kokomo Tribune. February 26, 2019

Transparency is needed to build trust

When the news first came out that more than 1,100 ballots from November's general election were discovered in late January inside a courthouse storage cabinet, it certainly raised a lot of concerns.

What if they changed the outcome of an election?

Did my vote count?

How does this kind of thing happen?

Are there more missing ballots?

And, most importantly, why wasn't the public informed until almost four weeks after the ballots had been found?

But Clerk Debbie Stewart is assuring voters that all votes have now been tallied, meaning the debacle, although highly embarrassing to the county, will not generate the electoral fiasco that would have resulted from any major result changes.

The winners will stay the winners, and the clerk's office will move into this year's municipal election hoping to shed the shadow of its former leader and a mistake that threatens the trust put into the running of local elections.

Stewart, a Republican, revealed Friday that she and a Democratic election worker, Jill Quackenbush, found 1,148 unopened ballots on Jan. 21 in the Election Room. She said the unopened envelopes included ballots from early voting at the downtown Government Center and mail-in ballots.

The ballots were discovered in a storage cabinet that requires keys from both parties and the clerk's own cabinet key to unlock. Stewart later filed a request with Howard Circuit Court Judge Lynn Murray for a court order to open the ballots, a request that was granted Thursday afternoon.

The only race Stewart and Quackenbush found with a margin close enough to potentially be impacted by the discovery was the race for Center Township's three-member board.

The Howard County clerk in 2018 was Kim Wilson, who had a history of issues with local elections.

Howard County Democratic Party Chair Kathy Skiles said in a statement last week that the incident "reinforces our belief that the clerk's office has been fraught with incompetence and a lackadaisical attitude for years, especially from the former clerk."

Meanwhile, Stewart has said she is "in the process of putting together a procedures manual that will outline responsibilities for early voting workers, confined voting workers and Election Room workers, to make certain that all workers are performing their duties, with checks and backup measures, to ensure every eligible vote is counted and counted on time."

It's laudable that Stewart is making changes. However, one change that she should make is to be as transparent as possible. The fact that there were unopened ballots should have been announced before a secretive recount process was in place.

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