Are you shocked that IPS Superintendent Eugene White is stepping down? You wouldn’t be if you read “The Cheat Sheet”.

As a community service, we’re offering a complimentary copy of the Jan 5 edition where we told you this was going to happen. There’s some other good stuff in there too.

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On Tuesday, Mike Pence will formerly take his budget plan to Indiana lawmakers, who can be described as skeptic at best about his proposed 10-percent reduction in income taxes.  Below is Pence’s white paper released during the campaign on how the state can afford to cut taxes while meeting its other priorities.

by Kathy Richardson

State Representative (R-Noblesville)

Many of the younger adults remember watching “Schoolhouse Rock!” when they were in school, a fun video outlining how a bill becomes a law. The process can seem very complicated, and for those of us, where a good amount of time may have passed since those government classes, I wanted to provide you a little refresher course prior to the start of session and talk about the avenue a bill takes through the legislative process.

One of the first steps a member takes after being sworn in, if they wish to file legislation, is the process of writing and submitting bills to the Legislative Service Agency who will draft the language for the bills. This process takes place in the month of December.

The General Assembly’s first session day for 2013 is January 7th but the deadline this year to file bills is Monday, January 14.  Once a bill is submitted, The Speaker of the House or the Pro-Tem of the Senate will assign the bill to a committee that handles the same or like subject matter. For instance, if I wrote a bill that changed the insurance laws in Indiana, it would probably be assigned to the Insurance Committee. After the bill is assigned to a committee in order for it to pass the house of origin it must go through three “readings”.

 First Reading:

• Is when the bill is handed down by the Speaker or Senate Pro-tem on a bill list which includes the committee the bill has been assigned. The chairperson of the committee will first decide if the bill should be given a hearing. Once the bill is heard in committee the author has the task of presenting enough information to the committee either by their presentation or by bringing people to testify on behalf of the bill.  The committee will be able to ask question and make suggestions for changes at the committee level. If the author is successful the bill with be voted on by a majority of the committee members and then passes out of the committee and is called an adopted committee report. From there it is sent to the full chamber and may be placed on the “second reading” calendar.

Second Reading:

• The adopted committee report is heard before the entire chamber. This is the point in the process when any legislator can offer amendments to the bill. The amendments are debated and all debates on the floor must be in regard to the amendments, not to the full bill itself. After the amendments have been heard if all members agree it can be taken by consent or a roll call vote can be requested on each amendment offered.  Once all amendments have been heard the bill becomes “engrossed” and it will then enter the “third reading” stage.

Third Reading:

• The chamber will hear the engrossed bill with any amendments that were included. This time the bill is debated in its entirety. Once the debate has come to an end the bill will be voted on. The bill passes from that chamber if it receives at least 51 votes in the House (26 in the Senate), and if it passes then it is sent to the opposite chamber. From there, the process begins all over again with first reading in the opposite chamber.

Numerous things can happen to a bill once it has passed from the chamber where it originated, but I would need to write a book rather than a column to cover all of them.

Recently there has been a lot of hubbub about a bill sponsored by state Sen. Dennis Kruse of Auburn. It would have allowed/required the “Lord’s Prayer” to be recited in charter schools.

When I saw the bill on the legislative bill list, the first thing I said to myself: This doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming law. And I was right. The bill is on its way to Statehouse purgatory, i.e. the Rules Committee where it will sit in limbo for the remainder of session.

Now, while I think the bill was a bad idea on a multitude of levels, I can assure you that there was someone in Sen. Kruse’s very rural district who thought it was a great idea.

In fact, I am willing to bet money there are a lot of people in Indiana who think the bill didn’t go far enough and would have like to have seen it go further. I’m not sure how you could do that without setting up some goose-stepping dystopian theocracy, but everybody has to have a goal.

The point I am getting at is that the good thing about representative government is also the bad thing about representative government: It represents everybody.

There are 150 lawmakers who represent the interests of more 6.2 million people. And if you assume the standard line that 10 percent of the population is a little off kilter, then you should expect that 10 percent of the legislation that gets offered will fit that description. I am willing to bet money that Sen. Kruse was probably approached by a number of constituents who thought saying the Lord’s Prayer was a good idea and talked him into introducing a bill. It doesn’t take much.

And it’s not just the Lord’s Prayer bill. I live in a city so whenever I see a farm bill or something related to agriculture, I glance over it and keep going. I am sure my friends in rural areas feel the same way about legislation regarding mass transit. As long as money isn’t coming directly out of their pockets, per se, they tend not to care and vice versa.

When lawmakers are representing Indiana’s diverse interests, you are likely to find all kinds of bills. Now the tricky part is being able to tell your constituents that something is a bad idea and probably isn’t going to fly or when you are being asked to offer up something you don’t believe in. That is when we get into the discussion of whether you are acting as a representative and merely acting on behalf of your constituents or more like a trustee where you are acting in the best interests of your constituents. However, that is another column for another time.

My point here is the next time you go down the legislative bill list and see some crazy piece of legislation that makes absolutely no sense to you, I can assure you that somewhere in Indiana, that bill is like manna from heaven for somebody.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and City-County Council President Maggie Lewis this afternoon are announcing the framework for a long-term budget deal that if approved by the full City-County Council would restore nearly $32 million to county offices and reduce the city’s projected budget deficit in 2014 to $6 million.

The following are the terms of the agreement…

• The Mayor and Council agree to restore $32 million in County Option Income Tax (COIT) revenue to the County General Fund.

• The Mayor and Council are committed to reducing 2013 operational spending by 5%.  The Mayor and Council will meet with agency directors and elected officials for individual budget reviews with the goal of introducing fiscal ordinances reducing 2013 appropriations accordingly in February.

• The Capital Improvement Board (CIB) will pay the city $5 million for public safety in 2013. The money is currently budgeted for the cost of repairing the Capitol Commons Garage.  In exchange, the City, via the downtown TIF, will fund the cost of repairs.

• The Mayor and Council will approve increases of 2% and 4% respectively in the car rental and admission taxes, effective March 1, 2013.An amount equal to 100% of the revenue from the first year of the increase will be directed to public safety (approximately $6.7 million).After the first year and beyond, an amount equal to 25% of revenue from this action (up to $3 million per year) will be directed to the City for public safety.
• The Mayor and Council will form a bi-partisan commission to make a recommendation on the elimination of the Homestead Credit Subsidy as part of the 2014 budget. This action, if approved, would generate approximately $9 million in funding for the city.

• The Mayor and leadership of both Council caucuses will hold monthly financial meetings.The Mayor and Council will continue working toward the implementation of a Public Safety Foundation by the end of 2013.

The Mayor’s office says the actions taken together will produce a $12 million annual increase in general fund revenue beginning in 2014, leave the City with a manageable $6 million gap between estimated spending versus revenues for 2014, and leave $42 million in operating reserves at the end of 2013.

Overall, the agreement includes $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue raised.

The two sides had been deadlocked over the budget for months, with the Mayor using his amendatory veto power to reduce the county budgets by $32 million.

By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

MUNCIE, Ind. – There’s widespread speculation that as many as 10 of Indiana’s 66 charter schools may be shut down at the end of the school year due to poor academic performance.

And contrary to what school choice critics may say, those closures would highlight just how successful charter schools have been in the Hoosier State.

Most of them have performed very well, according to a university study. And the charter school system serves the public well, because those that aren’t great can be closed down.

Unfortunately we don’t have the same option with most of the failing traditional schools.

Last month, Stanford University released the results of a six-year study that found Indiana’s 15,297 charter school students are outpacing their  public school peers by a significant margin. Charter students “made the equivalent of 1.5 more months of learning gains in both reading and math” than their public school peers, reports Education Week.

While the study affirmed the value of alternative public schools (as charters are sometimes known), Stanford researchers offered one caveat: The results would have been even more impressive if it weren’t for 10 of the 38 charter schools authorized and operated by Indiana’s Ball State University.

Those 10 BSU-sponsored charter schools are among the bottom 15 percent of schools in the state, reports Courier-Journal.com.

“Indiana has seen a tremendous amount of effort to create a strong and vibrant charter sector,” Stanford’s Macke Raymond, one of the study’s authors, told the news site. “They’re not helping. The responsibility is pretty clearly on the authorizer.”

Bob Marra, head of BSU’s charter program, agreed and said the university will take tough corrective action when those schools seek to renew their charter, reports JournalGazette.net.

“We need to not renew them,” Marra said. “That’s what will happen to some of these schools. We will be taking that step very soon.”

The Day of Reckoning will come on March 1 for many of those disappointing schools. When those closures occur, school choice opponents will undoubtedly point to the failed schools as proof that charters are no better than their traditional, government-run counterparts.

That would be missing the point entirely. The reality is that every failed charter school is a silent testament to the superiority of alternative public schools.

Unlike lousy government schools which are allowed to betray children generation after generation, charter schools must be re-authorized every few years. If a charter is found to be failing in its stated mission, it is either overhauled or shut down.

If public schools faced that level of accountability, districts such as Indianapolis Public Schools and Detroit Public Schools would have gone out of business a long time ago.

Of course, teacher union leaders and other defenders of the K-12 status quo would never let that happen because it would cost too many union members their job.

But charter school advocates are different: Their focus is on what’s best for students, not for adult school employees. And if a school is found lacking, they have no qualms about closing it down.

“One of the best strategies to serve communities well is to go ahead and close bad charter schools, continue to open new ones and it’s through managing a group of schools that the community gets access to the best education for its kids,” Alex Medler, vice president of research for National Association of Charter School Authorizers, told State Impact.

“If people think of the school as the focus and they want to keep schools open, then kids aren’t well served. If we think about kids, we can close a bad school while simultaneously encouraging the creation of new, good schools.”

Even if charter school authorizers shirk their duty, a 2011 state law allows the State Board of Education “to demand answers when schools perform badly and take action by closing schools, switching sponsors (or authorizers) or even cutting administrative fees sponsors receive,” reports Courier-Journal.com.

We hope Indiana’s charter school proponents don’t try to downplay the coming closures. Instead, they should trumpet the decisions as evidence that oversight and accountability hold the power to improving the nation’s public education system.

I recently did a top 10 post for the biggest political stories for the state, I figure I’d so the same thing for Indianapolis.  Happy New Year!

My criteria was  pretty simple: impact on the region, the newsmaker involved, etc. And yet, this is all subjective.  So with that said, here we go.

10. Greg Ballard sworn in for second term, showing Republicans can win in Marion County, despite what happened in 2012. Will they take a hint?

9. Maggie Lewis makes history as first female and African-American to head Indianapolis City-County Council. Brian Mahern has conniption fit!

8. Explosion rocks south side, kills two damages dozens of homes and all in the name of alleged insurance fraud. And they were idiots on top of it.

7. Council and Mayoral tensions crescendo in the form of a budget battle over CIB funding and $30 million impoundment of county funds. Not to mention, redistricting battle which could end up in court.

6. Eugene White job hunt falls short. Citizens suffer.

5. New Yorker Frank Straub resigns as Public Safety Director, replaced by Troy Riggs of Louisville. Hoosiers trade Big Apple bluegrass.

4. Thoughtful Council Democrats join forces with Mayor Greg Ballard to pass badly needed economic development projects in the form of TIF Districts. Poor people big winners.

3. TIm Durham sentenced to 50 years in prison for fraud. Apparently, love isn’t the only thing money can’t buy.

2. IPS Voters elect three reform minded candidates, Gayle Cosby, Catlin Hannon, Sam Odle. Total dynamic of board is changed, and for the better.

1. Indianapolis hosts Super Bowl 46, clearly demonstrating it can compete and do just as well, if not better, than a lot bigger places and opening the door to numerous other possibilities.

That’s my list.  Feel free to add.  By the way, my New Year’s resolution is to be more tolerant of the shortcomings of others.  Yeah, right.

You may find this hard to believe, but 2012 was actually not a bad a year for Libertarians in the Hoosier State.

Yes, I know they didn’t win the governor’s race or the U.S. Senate and they didn’t field anyone in the race for superintendent of public instruction. But here’s what they did do: They increased their vote totals and percentages over years past. And if you’re a third-party, that’s a lot better than heading in the other direction.

Take for example, the party’s candidate for president: Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.

He made several trips to Indiana and I actually interviewed him a few times. He got just under 49,000 votes. That was a 68 percent increase over Bob Barr who got about 25,000 votes in 2008 and a 172 percent increase over Michael Badnarik in 2004.

In the U.S. Senate race, Andrew Horning picked up about 145,000 votes, about 5.8 percent of the total. That was a 53 percent increase over what Rebecca Sink-Burris picked up when she ran in 2010. And if you really want to do an apples-to-apples comparison, Al Barger ran for the job in 2004 and received slightly more than 27,000 votes.

And interestingly enough, Horning was just 24,000 votes short of what Steve Osborn received when he ran against U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar in 2006. Osborn was Lugar’s only challenger as Democrats decided not to run someone against him that year.

Another interesting point about Horning is how many places where he out-performed his statewide average of 5.8 percent.

Horning got at least 6 percent of the vote in 16 counties, 7 percent of the vote in 13 counties, 8 percent of the vote in seven counties, and 9 percent of the vote in six counties. In Rush County, Horning performed his best, 10.7 percent. Even in Marion County Horning came in at 5.9 percent.

In the race for governor Rupert Boneham cleared 100,000 votes, which was good enough for four percent.

That was a 75 percent increase over Andy Horning in 2008 and a 217 percent increase over Kenn Gividen in 2004. Horning got 2.1 percent of the vote in 2008 and Gividen got 1.4 percent in 2004.

Boneham did not perform as well as Horning. His statewide average vote total was 5.8 percent, but he only out-performed that number in 8 counties. He did best in Rush County, where he received 6.8 percent of the vote.

Now granted we all know what happened in the U.S. Senate race and it is generally accepted that some of Horning’s vote was a result of Richard Mourdock’s comments during the second debate. However, the map does show that Hoosiers are willing to vote for a Libertarian, even if it is out of protest.

If I were running the Libertarian Party, I would definitely put my efforts in those counties where Andy Horning’s victory was bigger than the margin between Mourdock and Joe Donnelly. At the very least it would give the party a possible path to reach voters who might be willing to give its candidates a second look.

And even if they candidates don’t win, Libertarians can play kingmaker by pushing for candidates who are with them on their issues of more limited government and more personal freedom.

And who knows. In a decade or so, Indiana might be swearing in its first statewide Libertarian elected official. Hey, a party has got to start somewhere, right?

Photo: The StatehouseFile.com

As tradition dictates, it’s time for me to do my top 10 list of Indiana political stories for the year.  The criteria are the same as always, magnitude and impact. Yes, it’s pretty subjective, but I think you will agree with it overall.  So with that said, here we go, in reverse order.

10.   Indiana passes Right to Work.  Unions freak out. Business community cheers.  We’ll know in April whether union membership was actually impacted when Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out the data.

9.  State Rep. Bob Morris and the Girl Scouts.  Morris gained national attention accusing the Girl Scouts of promoting a “homosexual and lesbian” agenda.  And in the process, managed to sell more Girl Scout cookies than anyone else in the state of Indiana; living proof that sometimes your worst enemies are your best salespeople.

8. James Payne resigns as head of DCS. Critics cheer even though number of child deaths is cut in half under his tenure and agency gets national recognition as a model for the county.

7.  GOP gets Super Majority.  Good maps and quality candidates give Republicans walkout-proof majorities in both chambers.  Republican challenge will be not to overreach.  Democratic challenge will be to actually offer ideas.

6. Mike Pence elected governor.  Not a big shocker, but it would have been had the race gone on about three more weeks and John Gregg actually caught up.  It’s also worth an honorable mention that the Libertarians got more votes in 2012 than in previous years.

5. Major Moves money running out.  Everyone seems to forget this was never supposed to be a source of road funding in perpetuity, just a way to speed up road construction and in turn, speed up economic development.   Now lawmakers are looking at other ways to pay for roads, including an increase in license plate fees.

4.  Daniels ends term as governor.  Always with a bias for action, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels finishes his last term as governor and heads towards the presidency, of Purdue that is.

3.  Mourdock defeats Lugar.  In an upset (short-lived as it was) Richard Mourdock tapped into GOP true-believer discontent and defeated incumbent Richard Lugar.  However, as we find out in the number political story of the year, Mourdock’s victory was pyrrhic, at best.

2.  Ritz defeats Bennett.  Democratic Glenda Ritz beats Republican Tony Bennett in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Thank to disgruntled teachers, the tea party folks who were afraid of Common Core, Richard Mourdock (as we will point out shortly) and a ground game by Bennett that came up short.  Of course the irony of all this is Bennett gets the same job in Florida making at least $200,000 a year.  Ritz ends up with a GOP-dominated Statehouse and a desire to redecorate the office.

1.  Donnelly defeats Mourdock.   Although the polls showed a close race for most of the campaign, it was Mourdock’s now infamous quote, “And I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something God intended to happen.”  In that five-second clip, Joe Donnelly became Indiana’s next U.S. senator and Chris Chocola and the Super PACs that spent millions to defeat Donnelly, went on to star on the biggest loser.

One Indiana lawmaker wants to give Hoosiers more rights when it comes to videotaping law enforcement during an arrest.

Republican State Senator Jim Banks of Columbia City has introduced legislation that would give citizens the right to sue law enforcement if an officer stops them from taping or photographing him while making an arrest or carrying out some other official duty in a public place.

The citizen cannot be interfering with the officer or engaging in activity that puts the officer in danger.

Banks tells Indy Politics he got the idea from the Reason Foundation.  However there have been numerous stories of police confiscating cell phone cameras from citizens who have filmed them making an arrest.

Most recently the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled an Illinois law which made it a felony to tape police likely violated the U.S. Constitution.

Banks says he is not aware of any incidents in Indiana.  He says he has not heard from law enforcement about the bill, bu does not think any officer who is operating within the law should have a problem with citizens taping their actions.

Lawmakers convene on January 7.