Key New Laws
Lawmakers signed off on the state’s $30.9 billion budget, House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1001, for the next two years. The budget increases funding for some K-12 schools and allows universities to issue bonds for specific capital projects. It increases community corrections and mental health and addiction treatment funding to help with an expected shift of the state’s prison population to local jail and mental health programs following the overhaul of the state’s criminal code. The budget also authorizes the State Budget Agency to transfer $200 million to fund Major Moves road construction projects and funds an expansion of the South Shore Rail Line in Northwest Indiana.
After pressure from Senate Democrats and the public, budget writers fully funded the Department of Child Services, enabling them to hire 100 new caseworkers tasked with investigating cases of child abuse and neglect.
The state’s budget increases school funding by $464 million – 2.2 percent and 2.5 percent in Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017, respectively. Controversially, budget writers slashed complexity index funding – money directed to schools serving high poverty and at-risk students – by $250 million and changed how poverty is measured in schools from free textbook eligibility to SNAP, TANF and foster care figures over three years. Democrats argued that to truly invest in education, we should not cut funding to schools serving high poverty students to finance the growth of other schools. The result, Democrats argued – were some schools that saw funding gains and some that did not. The budget also bumped up money allocated for students with disabilities and funds full-day kindergarten. $10 million in charter school and innovation network school grants will be available annually.
Budget writers removed the $4,800 cap on vouchers the state provides to students attending private school. That move coupled with explosive growth will see the price tag associated with the controversial program rise to nearly $175 million in 2017.
Cited as a shift in philosophy, crafters of the state’s two-year budget increased funding for community corrections to $151 million over the course of 2 years. While the governor called for additional funding in the budget to build more prisons to house low-level nonviolent offenders, Senate Democrats pointed to community corrections programs as an effective solution rehabilitating these individuals. Specifically, Senate Democrats advocated for additional funding to invest in offender mental health and addiction treatment. The state budget bill raises funding for those programs by $30 million over the course of the next two years. Studies from the National Institute of Mental Health have shown that as many as 64 percent of inmates in local prisons suffer from mental health and/or addiction issues. Senate Democrats see these programs as an investment by helping these individuals with providing treatment to ensure they are able to become contributors in society once rehabilitated.
One of the most controversial bills approved by Statehouse Republicans contained language that many believed would open the door to discrimination against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community. Senate Enrolled Act (SEA) 101, more commonly referred to as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), garnered world-wide attention causing the legislature to revisit the topic in an effort to clarify language. The final companion proposal, SEA 50, stated that an individual or business cannot refuse services, goods, employment or housing to a person “on the basis of race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or United States military service.”
Drafters of the new RFRA language claim it will ensure that the law cannot be used as a defense for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, Democrats called for a full repeal of RFRA while simultaneously adding lasting protections for the LGBT community into the state’s civil rights laws.
Democrats noted the RFRA debate exposed Indiana’s civil right protections as being embarrassingly deficient. Under current Indiana law, it is lawful to discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity unless those people are protected by local ordinances. Senate Democrats have committed to making statewide protection for all Hoosiers their number one priority when the legislature reconvenes next year.
Lawmakers approved controversial legislation that postpones the removal of Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz as the chair of the State Board of Education until 2017. She faces reelection in 2016. The new law, SEA 1, awards the governor eight board appointees. Six must have educational experience and no more than five may be of the same political party. The House Speaker and Senate President Pro Tempore each appoint one member to the board, for a total of eleven members. The four-year board appointments were made June 1, 2015 and a new chairperson will be elected annually. In a controversial last minute move, Republicans required the Department of Education to share confidential student data with the State Board of Education and its expanded staff.
Senate Democrats also fought to maintain the state’s common construction wage, a law that has effectively set wages on public construction projects for 80 years. To achieve the 20 percent savings proponents of repealing the common construction wage claimed, skilled local workers would have to work for virtually nothing. At a time when Hoosier incomes lag the rest of the nation, Senate Democrats repeatedly noted we should be working to raise wages, not lower them. Unfortunately, Statehouse Republicans repealed the common construction wage law under HEA 1019, effectively lowering wages for thousands of working Hoosier families.
A new Indiana law requires motorists to move over to allow overtaking vehicles to pass. Failure to move over and allow vehicles to pass could result in a Class C infraction and up to $500 fine at the officer’s discretion. Proponents believed the law would help preserve the left lane for passing while opponents contend it allows Hoosier motorists to be ticketed while potentially driving the speed limit.
Indiana Senate Democrats: The Briefing Room 