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With the ceremony of Organization Day behind them, Indiana lawmakers are down to the hard work of preparing for a budget session in the midst of economic mayhem. On this page, find a rundown on the major players and the issues the General Assembly faces.
At the Statehouse, change is much more likely to come following a retirement reception than an election. While there are 23 new faces in the 116th session of the General Assembly, only four of the newcomers defeated incumbents.
Safe districts and the strength of incumbency left Republicans firmly in control of the Senate, Democrats in control of the House and their respective leaders at the podium.
Sen. David Long, R-Fort Wayne, begins his third session as president pro tem – a job that he appears to grow more comfortable in each year. That’s to the benefit of his northeast Indiana constituents, whose interests can easily be overlooked by lawmakers in the Indianapolis metro area or the “golden triangle,” as one lawmaker has described it, of Indianapolis, Bloomington and West Lafayette.
South Bend Democrat Patrick Bauer returns as House speaker, already staking out positions that will put his caucus at odds with Gov. Mitch Daniels and Senate Republicans.
The legislature’s most significant leadership shuffle comes from Sen. Robert Meeks’ decision not to seek re-election. And the LaGrange Republican’s departure means the northeast Indiana delegation loses a bit of its legislative luster.
Meeks was chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and a consistent voice for fiscal restraint. Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, will take over Meeks’ budget role.
Although he didn’t retire, Sen. Richard Young’s decision to step down from his minority leader post cleared the way for Sen. Vi Simpson of Bloomington to become the Senate’s Democratic leader. She becomes the first female caucus leader in Statehouse history, and she’ll be a much more forceful voice for a Democratic minority than her predecessor.
In the House, minority status affords GOP leader Brian Bosma the chance to once again grandstand on so-called “values” issues, without the distraction of trying to solve the state’s real problems. He started last week by taking credit for the return of the opening prayer to House sessions.
The leadership wild card might be the governor himself. Will he take the hard-charging approach he used in the first two years of his administration (when the GOP controlled both chambers), or did he learn that collaboration with lawmakers is more successful?
Set aside all other tasks, and Indiana lawmakers still face their biggest job in passing a budget for the two-year fiscal period beginning July 1. In a report released Tuesday for the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute, two local fiscal experts surveyed the budget landscape and declared it a challenge. John Stafford, director of the Community Research Institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, and David Bennett, executive director of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne, use storm analogies to frame the upcoming debate.
“Fortunately for Hoosiers, the state’s cash position is in the best shape it has been in for many years,” they note in the report. “Fiscally, the windows are boarded up, and there’s a decent supply of bottled water. Thanks to actions taken by the governor and the General Assembly, Indiana is in a good position to ride out some rough weather. But, like a Gulf Coast hurricane, a lot will depend on whether this economic storm is a weak tropical depression or a Category 5 hurricane.”
Much will depend on the state’s revenue forecast in December, when figures show where the state stands on collection of sales and income taxes. But the depth of the economic downturn certainly is not the only factor affecting lawmakers’ work next session. There’s the additional burden placed on statewide revenues by last session’s property tax reform bill, with welfare and school general fund obligations redistributed from the local property tax base to the state.
“It is going to be more difficult,” Stafford said. “There will be more complexity to the budget process. First, it takes away the ability to balance state revenues with property tax. Secondly, to the extent that you’ve moved those funds off property taxes, property tax revenues are not as volatile.”
What looked to be an adequate source of support – an increased sales tax rate and elimination of property tax replacement credits – doesn’t look as promising on the other side of a Wall Street meltdown. The budget-cutting pressure legislators placed on local government officials will likely be just as intense on legislators themselves.
When a property tax uproar erupted in Marion County a year ago, tax reform became Job One for the short session. If not for House Bill 1001, lawmakers would likely have bitten off more of the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform’s 27-recommendation report. But the interruption gave the Kernan-Shepard report time to build momentum, picking up a major boost this month when voters in 30 of 43 townships voted to eliminate township assessing duties. Legislation last spring eliminated that responsibility in 965 townships with fewer than 15,000 parcels of land.
Marilyn Schultz is executive director of Mysmartgov.org, an alliance of interests working to implement the report’s recommendations. She said last week she was encouraged by the voters’ response in townships where assessing duties were put to the question.
“We think we have some momentum from our great success on Election Day,” she said. “A year ago, there were 1,008 township assessors in Indiana, and today we have 13.”
As a former state budget director, Schultz knows the budget-writing task will be foremost on lawmakers’ minds, but she hopes to drive home the point that government must “squeeze the absolute most services from the dollars we have,” insisting on greater efficiency and accountability.
Bills are now being prepared to encompass each of the Kernan-Shepard recommendations, save for the assessing and welfare funding changes already implemented. No legislative sponsors have yet been identified, but Schultz said there are lawmakers willing to carry them all, even the school district consolidation measure that will undoubtedly draw the most fire.
Sen. David Long said this month that the report, prepared by a bipartisan panel, nicely prioritized the local government task ahead.
“We’ll go after the low-hanging fruit first,” he said.
Recommendation one is to replace the three-member board of county commissioners with a single, elected county chief executive, and the second is to combine fiscal and legislative functions of county government in a single, unified council.
Long said he believed there is bipartisan interest in allowing individual counties to determine whether they will adopt the changes.
Kernan-Shepard supporters might be encouraged by the progress so far, but the remaining recommendations are anything but a slam-dunk. Purdue agricultural economist Larry DeBoer, a close observer of state government, points to an interesting divide in the Nov. 4 referenda results. All of the township assessor posts retained by voters were in the northern half of the state, suggesting the consolidation message hasn’t been uniformly accepted.
While every legislator has an intense interest in seeing how the biennial budget treats his or her constituents, only a handful take an active role in preparing the budget. That leaves plenty of time in the 61-day session for other measures. Look for some fascinating debates to emerge on Sunday beer sales, immigration, a statewide smoking ban and on follow-up touches to last session’s property tax bill, which Purdue’s DeBoer astutely notes will need a new moniker now that the biennial budget automatically becomes House Bill 1001.
One of the tax reform leftovers is the second vote needed to write property tax caps into the state constitution. Republican leadership, including the governor, wants it done this session. Speaker Bauer and others say the vote can wait, if it happens at all. Place your bets on a House GOP walkout over this issue.
If that’s the case, count on the spectacle being just one of several dramatic moments in the 2009 session. Hold on tight – the hurricane Bennett and Stafford forecast in their budget report is guaranteed to rock the Statehouse.
