There must be something about a deadline that brings people together because there was a lot of bi-partisanship around the statehouse and city hall Monday.

Lawmakers unveiled a starting plan to shore up Indiana’s unemployment insurance shortfall.  The plan includes more contributions from employers, but it also gives them more ways to challenge benefits for employees who were dismissed.

Around the same time City-County Council President Bob Cockrum and Minority Leader Joanne Sanders put out a news release opposing any broad based tax increases to shore up the Capital Improvement Board operational shortfall.

And earlier that day Democratic State Representatives Ed Delaney, Mary Ann Sullivan and Republican Phil HInkle all came out with a plan to use the township trustee surpluses to pay for the CIB’s operations.

Now granted the trustee plan may not get anywhere and the unemployment trust find plan will need some work, it is nice to these guys and gals all playing together.  Now if I could just get them to do this January so we are not pushing up against the deadline in April.

We are now in the last full week of the Indiana General Assembly.    This is where life gets interesting.  This is where lawmakers (Senate Republicans and House Democrats) get together in a room and try to negotiate differences in legislation that has passed out of both chambers.  And hanging over their heads is the spectre of of Governor Mitch Daniels.  As far as I am concerned, there are only three real issues lawmakers will have to get resolved if they don’t want to stay late: the budget, unemployment insurance and the Capital Improvement Board.  

IB wrote about the CIB yesterday, so today we’ll just focus on the budget and unemployment insurance.

The Budget

• The chambers will have to compromise over a House plan that budgets for one year and a Senate plan that does two years.  Speaker Pat Bauer has said his priorities were jobs and education, while on the Senate Republican side they want to preserve the surplus as much as possible.  A new factor into the equation is the state revenue forecast released Friday which was not as bad as it could have been; showing the state down about $830 million, not as bad as the $1 billion as originally thought.  However, lawmakers are skeptic because they’ve been down that road before and the numbers have been wrong and the state was in a deeper whole than thought.
• I think on the budget, Senate Republicans get a slight upper hand, because of the economic stimulus dollars which is shoring up a lot of programs right now.  So education is fully funded.  Their hope is that the stimulus will provide a two-year stop gap in the shortfall and by 2011 the economy will have turned around.  It is somewhat wishful thinking, but it works for now.   The real question is will the Governor go along with the program?  Right now, I don’t think so.  I say that in part based on an interview I did this morning with State Budget Director Chris Ruhl who said the administration will not be afraid to keep lawmakers here past their April 29 adjournment date if they don’t pass an acceptable budget and unemployment insurance plan.

Unemployment Insurance

• With Indiana’s unemployment rate now averaging 10-percent, you’d think that would be motivation to get a working plan in place.  However the conference committee that was supposed to be working on this hasn’t really met in the past week or so.   Democrats don’t want benefits cut, Republicans don’t want the system to go belly up any further.  Since these sides aren’t meeting, and we’ve only got a few days left, I would not be surprised to see the federal government step in and take over Indiana’s unemployment fund, because lawmakers failed to act and get past their own differences.

Life is going to be fun for the next few days.

I’ve been waiting all weekend to use that one.   Once again, things are never as simple as they appear.  Although there are numerous plans at the Statehouse to solve the Capitol Improvement Board operational shortfall, and whatever comes out of session will likely be a hybrid of them all, the news out of the Indianapolis Business Journal this weekend puts a nice little monkey wrench into things.

Greg Schenkel, Pacers V.P. of  corporate relations said they weren’t the ones who asked for $15 million to operate Conseco and that it was the CIB who came up with that number.   Here’s the excerpt,

“Greg Schenkel, the team’s vice president of corporate relations, said discussions about additional funding for operation of the fieldhouse were initiated by CIB, not the team, and that the $15 million annual figure also did not originate with the Pacers.”

This is not good.   If the Pacers didn’t ask for $15 million, who did?  Already there is tension behind the scenes with Indiana lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who don’t think the Pacers and Colts  are contributing enough to cover the operational shortfall at the CIB, and they may look for ways to “encourage” their participation.

But I have to say, if the Pacers didn’t ask for the $15 million, then it’s obvious they don’t need it.  So the operational shortfall must now be down from $47 million to $32 million.  I wonder impact that revelation will have on talks at the Statehouse.

Ross Douthat of The Atlantic penned this really interesting article about this past week’s tea parties and how they resemble the Iraq War protests of a few years ago.  It’s amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Give it a read.

They resemble nothing so much as the anti-war protests during Bush’s first term. The claim that they don’t have an organizing premise strikes me as obviously wrong: They’re anti-bailout, anti-stimulus, anti-deficit, and anti- the tax increases that will eventually be required to pay for the current spending spree, and complaining that they don’t also have a ten-point plan for reforming Medicare and Social Security reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of protest marches, I think. The claim that they’re hypocritical and partisan is a bit stronger – where were they when Bush was running up the deficit, etc. – but in fairness, many of the organizing figures were anti-TARP from the beginning, and there’s something slightly odd about saying that if you didn’t take to the streets to protests a $300 billion deficit you aren’t allowed to protest a $1 trillion deficit. The numbers matter, surely …

But they do have all of the weaknesses of the anti-war marches: Their message is intertwined with a sense of disenfranchisement and all kinds of inchoate cultural resentments, they’ve brought various wacky extremists out of the woodwork (you know, like Glenn Beck), and just as George W. Bush benefited from having opposition to his policies identified with peacenik marchers in Berkeley and Ann Arbor, so Barack Obama probably benefits from having the opposition (such as it is) associated with a bunch of Fox News fans marching through the streets on Tax Day, parroting talk radio tropes and shouting about socialism. Obama is a very popular President, at the moment, his unpopularity among Republicans notwithstanding, and it’s awfully hard to see the Tea Parties doing much to change that reality in the short run; if anything, they’re far more likely to reconfirm the majority in its opinion that American conservatism is increasingly wacky, echo-chamberish, and out-of-touch.

Still, here we are in the sixth year of the Iraq War, and all those anti-war protests, their excesses and stupidities notwithstanding, look a lot more prescient in hindsight than they did (to me, at least) when they were going on. So if you’re inclined to sneer and giggle at the Tea Parties, keep in mind that just because a group of protesters looks ragged, resentful, and naive, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong to be alarmed:

Now this is interesting.  The rumor mill in Marion County Democratic circles is that former Attorney General candidate Linda Pence is planning a run for Marion County Prosecutor next year.

The story, which has apparently been circulating for weeks, is that Pence won’t be getting appointed to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District.  The way the story goes, Pence has tied to Ed Tracey who reportedly backed Voorhies’ efforts to oust Dan Parker as State Chairman.  Voorhies backed out of the race when there was virtually no support for his candidacy.

And as you all know in politics, to the victor goes the spoils.  Senator Evan Bayh apparently didn’t like the Parker challenge so any opportunity for Pence to be U.S. Attorney went out the window.  Despite all that, the public story, reportedly, will be that Pence was tired of waiting for the Obama administration to make the appointment, so she decided to run for County Prosecutor next year.

In 2008, Pence beat Republican Greg Zoeller in Marion County in the race for AG by more than 63,000 votes, 56,000 of which were straight ticket Democratic votes.

Stay tuned.

NOTE: I just checked my e-mail and got a note from Pence’s law firm saying that she is not a candidate for Prosecutor.  I’ve asked for clarification to see if that also means she has no intention of running for Prosecutor as well.  I’ll let you know the answer when I get it.

House Speaker Pat Bauer says the Indianapolis Colts and Pacers need to contribute to reducing the operational shortfall at the Capital Improvement Board.  He didn’t say there would be consequences if they didn’t, but he also did not totally rule it out altogether.

Click below to hear the Speaker’s comments from today’s media availability.

Pat Bauer

Here is some audio from today’s rally.  It speaks for itself.

Rally Audio

There are always those moments in the Indiana General Assembly that make you wonder what the (fill in the blank)  was that?  Monday night was one of those moments.

An amendment was offered to SB 173`which would have consolidated the Marion County Township Fire Departments with IFD.  At first it passed 51-45, with 14 Democrats voting “yes” and 12 Republicans voting “no”.  That apparently caught Bill Crawford and the Marion County Democratic delegation off guard who were in a state of shock and awe.

So according to inside sources they strong-armed the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David Niezgodski to withdraw his bill and the Democrats immediately adjourned and bolted out of the chambers.

This tells me two things.

1. Fire consolidation can happen and there is support.
2. There is nothing in this chamber that shocks me anymore.

You can watch it here.  It starts at about 2 hours and 52 minutes into the video stream and goes until 3 hours and 24 minutes.

The Indiana Senate approved the amended CIB funding plan, 33-17.  The bill now goes to the conference committee to work out differences with the House version.

Marion City-Council County Democrats unveiled their CIB funding proposal today, it included expanding the professional sports district and a casino.  It did not include contributions from the Indianapolis Colts and Pacers.  Democrats say they didn’t include it in their plan because it was already included in other funding plans.

And by the way, people are gathering near the Statehouse for the “Tea Party” rally.

Citing new data that shows half of Indiana’s students are in failing schools, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said all options are on the table in order to fix the problem, including a state take over of some schools as prescribed by law.

According to released Adequate Yearly Progress reports (AYP), half of all schools missed AYP.  Bennett said there are more than 167,000 students in schools that have never made made AYP since the law was implemented in 2001.

The State has several options when it comes to dealing with failing schools including replacing staff and administrators, taking over school operations or reduce funds.

You can get a copy of the AYP report by clicking here.