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INDIANAPOLIS – Lawmakers are getting to work sooner rather than later, as House and Senate leaders announced Tuesday the chambers will conduct hearings in December on key issues such as property tax caps and unemployment insurance tax increases.
The news came on Organization Day, the annual administrative and ceremonial day setting the stage for the 2010 session.
But Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, and House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, said their members will have public hearings next month on seven measures filed Tuesday so that they are ready for action when the full legislature reconvenes Jan. 5.
“We intend to have them out of here and into the House’s hands as soon as possible, so there’s no excuses about not having enough time,” Long said.
The deadline for legislators to finish work in a short session is March 14.
But Bauer said he wouldn’t mind getting out early since lawmakers worked late this year to pass a state budget.
House Minority Leader Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said he doesn’t anticipate the General Assembly adjourning early. But he did remember a 1992 short session that ended in mid-February and called it one of the least productive sessions ever.
Ending early would give lawmakers extra time to campaign in 2010 – a crucial year in which control of the House and Senate will decide which party gets to draw new district boundary lines for the next 10 years.
Long said the Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee will begin work on Senate Bill 23 and Senate Joint Resolution 1, though no dates have been set.
The joint resolution is an amendment placing property tax caps into Indiana’s Constitution.
Legislators have put property tax caps in the law that limit a person’s tax bill from exceeding 1 percent of the assessed value for homesteads; 2 percent for agriculture and rental properties and 3 percent for businesses. This means less money is available to local units of government for services.
But Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Republican leadership want to make the caps more permanent by placing them into the Indiana Constitution. The amendment has already passed the legislature once and must pass again this year for the question to be submitted to the public on the November 2010 ballot.
Bauer said the House Ways and Means Committee will also have hearings on the tax caps in December on an identical House Joint Resolution 1. But he did not commit to taking a final vote.
Instead, several members of his caucus introduced House Bill 1004 – a measure that would generally cap the rate at which the assessed value could grow annually at 1 percent for homesteads and 2 percent for agricultural property.
That bill also goes to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Bauer said rising assessments in some counties are providing a loophole to the caps and causing concern among his members that the legislature didn’t go far enough in providing property tax relief.
Annual adjustments to assessments are based on sales of similar properties in the area. In Allen County, the residential assessments on which this year’s bills were based went up 1.3 percent countywide.
Long said some data in Marion County regarding assessments is disturbing and several major counties haven’t reported yet.
“We’re very concerned about that issue. But they’re not linked together – tax caps and assessing,” he said. “They’re all part of property tax reform and they can stand separately. While you can be for tax caps you can also be for improving assessing or tightening scrutiny or whatever it’s going to require to make sure the long-term goal of objective clear assessing standards are in place across the board and are working.”
Another key bill from the Senate that will be tackled is Senate Bill 23 – a one-year delay in unemployment tax increases for businesses that were set to kick in next year.
Indiana’s unemployment insurance trust fund went bankrupt at the end of 2008 and the state has borrowed $1.3 billion from the federal government to keep paying claims.
Legislators this year passed tax increases to help make the fund solvent again, but Republicans now want to backtrack since the economy hasn’t improved.
Long said it is vital for legislators to work on the unemployment bill so businesses don’t have to pay the new rates in the first quarter of 2010. The Department of Workforce Development is set to send out notices of the new rates in December, but legislators are trying to persuade them to hold off.
Bauer said Monday during a legislative preview luncheon that if the tax increases are to be delayed he wants the legislature to take action to accept $140 million worth of federal stimulus dollars left on the table by Daniels.
The House Ways and Means Committee also will tackle a bill regarding state government privatization and a Hoosier worker preference bill.
The House Rules Committee will consider an ethics and lobbying overhaul bill authored by Bauer.
