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‘Speed and craziness’ mark short session for Sen. Crane
With two weeks of the Indiana General Assembly short session behind him, District 24 State Sen. John Crane (R-Avon) is trying to create order from the chaos of more than 800 new bills introduced this session.
With the short session slated to end in mid-March, Crane and his legislative counterparts are dealing “with lots of moving parts” amid the “speed and craziness of the short session.”
Crane was the lone legislator representing Putnam County able to attend the first Legislative Update session of 2022 Saturday morning to chat with moderator Steve Cash and about two dozen constituents at the Farm Bureau building in Greencastle.
He took time in his opening remarks to address the concept of a bill becoming a law, a process that can take 10 weeks to go from blank page to bill status.
“We start with hundreds and hundreds (of bills), usually passing about 25 percent during the session,” Crane explained, adding that typically 99 percent of those are then signed into law by the governor.
Calling it a “very difficult, often convoluted process” to see a bill become a law -- not unlike the old making sausage comparison -- Crane asked if constituents would rather see it streamlined.
“Do you want to grease the skids to make it easier for lawmakers to make new laws?” he asked.
The answer in the room was an emphatic “no.”
Turning to the issues at hand in the legislature, Sen. Crane addressed Senate Bill 1, which involves an automatic refund for Hoosier taxpayers.
The idea was generated by a budget surplus “nobody saw coming,” Crane said, noting the idea’s roots date to the Mitch Daniels Administration.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Crane continued. “It’s a reflection of where we are as a state.”
Crane briefly noted controversial Senate Bill 167, the so-called Education Matters bill authored by Sen. Scott Baldwin that would have required the school corporation or qualified school “to add functionality that allows parents of students in the school corporation to opt in to or opt out of certain educational activities and curricular materials under certain conditions,” according to the General Assembly website.
Crane said his committee dealt with two bills on a recent day. The first took eight minutes and featured three or four people testifying. The hearing on SB 167 lasted eight hours with about 75 people testifying, “the vast majority against the bill,” but was notable as “a very civil discussion,” the senator added.
Although this was the bill that got Sen. Baldwin called a “Nazi sympathizer” for using Hitler’s Germany as an example of using impartiality to allow all viewpoints to be addressed. His remarks made national news and ended up sparking a three-minute segment of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” monologue.
“He ended up on the Colbert show, and not in a good way,” Crane said.
However, Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray (R-Martinsville) announced Friday that SB 167 is no longer being considered this session. “So it’s effectively dead,” Crane said of the controversial bill.
Cloverdale School Superintendent Greg Linton expressed concern over House Bill 1134, another education matters bill with similar language which says, among other things, schools “may not promote certain concepts as part of a course of instruction or in a curriculum or direct or otherwise compel a school employee or student to adhere to certain tenets relating to the individual’s sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin or political affiliation.”
Saying he is all for transparency with the schools, Linton advised Crane that “a lot of things in HB 1134 don’t apply to rural schools. By and large teachers are doing a great job in Indiana,” he continued. “I don’t think there are these issues for our teachers.”
Audience members also asked about a bill that would attach political affiliation to candidates for elected school boards across Indiana, with one audience member calling it ”a horrible, horrible idea.”
“Why inject politics into education space?” Crane said. “We’ve already injected politics into the education space.
“The irony,” he added, “is irrespective of the school board election issue, we spend lots of time on how politics affect education.
“The intent,” the senator suggested of the political affiliation addition, “is to be able to provide another little cue or clue for the voter.”
Sen. Crane, Sen. Bray and District 44 State Rep. Beau Baird (R-Greencastle) are expected to attend at least one more Legislative Update session sponsored by the Indiana Farm Bureau. The next one is set for 9 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 19 with a March 19 session to be held only if the General Assembly is still in session.