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May 10, 2007

Representatives discuss ups and downs of legislative session

By Crystal Garcia

TERRE HAUTE — Whether or not the recently ended Indiana legislative session was a productive one depends on who is asked and what party their from.

“All in all I thought it went really, really well,” said Rep. Clyde Kersey, D-Terre Haute. “When I walked away from the house on Sunday night at midnight, I didn’t think there was anything good in the budget because I was just tired of all the negotiating and the meetings and so on and I thought this is probably not a very good budget, but the next day after I talked to some people and we got looking at some of the great things that we did in this session, I think overall this may be one of the better sessions we’ve had in the last 10 years.”

Some of those things include $14.8 million to Indiana State University for the labs in its science department, $1.25 million for the Terre Haute International Airport to prepare for a flight-service terminal, some funding for full-day kindergarten and property tax relief.

Kersey is especially proud of the Holocaust education bill he authored that the governor signed into law. It mandates all high schools in the state to teach it in their U.S. history classes, and will become effective July 1.

“The idea came from Eva Kor, who operates the Holocaust museum, the CANDLES Museum, and she just did not want us to ever forget that the Holocaust occurred and she was the inspiration behind this bill,” he said.

Two of the six bills he sent to the Senate came back, he said, but he plans to try again with them in the next session.

One would require existing railroads to do risk assessments to determine where dangerous areas are, what kind of chemicals are stored there and what would happen in the event of a terrorist attack or an accident, he said. It would require local emergency responders in that area to have a plan.

“We have a real problem in this country, that we’re focusing so much of our attention on airports because of what happened in 9/11 and spending all the money for homeland security on airport security when we have other potential danger spots as well, and one of them is our railroads,” Kersey said. “They haul dangerous chemicals through our towns every day and we don’t think anything about it, but some of those cars could be detonated and exploded and would wipe out the city of Terre Haute if one of those were detonated.”

Rep. Vern Tincher, D-Riley, also was successful in getting bills through.

An electronic monitoring bill, the “Real ID” bill and a coroner training bill top the list.

By passing the Real ID bill, Tincher said, the state of Indiana will be making its driver’s licenses to comply with the federal Real ID Act, qualifying the license as a piece of federal identification.

“The states that don’t meet the Real ID Act after 2012, if you’re going to fly and your state does not have a license that’s met all the specifications, you have to show a passport just to fly within the United States,” he said.

Dale Grubb, D-Covington, plans to try again on a renewable energy standard bill that would have required utilities to buy “a scaled-up portion of their energy portfolio from renewable sources” such as wind or methane.

It was very close to passing, and Grubb said it’s important because it could’ve created 5,000 to 10,000 jobs and decreased the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

He was able to get two bills passed. One increases funding for all counties with covered bridges to help preserve them. The other promotes the use of the ethanol mixed blend fuel, E-85.

As a Democrat in a Republican-controlled Senate, Sen. Tim Skinner, D-Terre Haute, wasn’t as successful as his fellow Democrats, but he was able to accomplish some things.

“The number one thing I’m kind of happy about was that we worked hard, a couple of us on the Senate side, to try to take the $21 million funding package away from virtual charter schools,” Skinner said, “and we didn’t necessarily get that job done in the Senate, but we were able to work with some people in the House and that language was removed.”

Like that instance, other things Skinner tried to get done happened with the help from members of the House.

“I learned a lot this session about how important it is to work with both of the houses and I found myself going over there begging for help quite a bit, and that was something that we were able to do and it really means a lot,” he said. “We don’t get much in west-central Indiana and we do ask for things as legislators. It’s just having the clout and the votes to be able to put enough pressure on them to keep those sorts of things that help us in the budget.”

One bill Skinner was able to get sent to the governor was methamphetamine legislation he co-authored that will require the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to seek federal funding to create a meth database.

This will connect stores that sell drugs containing ephedrine or pseduoephedrine and record drug sale information into a monitoring system and collect the information in a central database, according to a news release from the Senate Democrat News. It will extend the current logging program to 2012. It had been set to expire next year.

Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, felt the same way as Skinner did in a Democrat-controlled House.

“I didn’t get any bills heard because I was in the minority,” he said.

He plans to take one bill back to the next session. He has filed it more than once. His bill is designed to allow cities and towns to deal with ordinance issues without having to wait for them to be dealt with in court.

“Similar to the old justice-of-the-peace system, basically these cases would be dealt with by the mayor and members of an ordinance board that they appoint, and it would allow them to deal with a lot of those issues without the exceptional costs of having to go to the county courts,” Borders said.

A big disappointment for Borders, though, was that the traditional marriage amendment — an amendment that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman — didn’t make it to the House for a vote.

“I was incredibly disappointed that Pat Bauer killed the traditional marriage amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 7, when he promised that the full house would get a chance to vote on it,” he said.

Instead, Bauer assigned the amendment to the Rules Committee, a committee Borders said is “where bills typically go to die.”

Unlike other local representatives, Borders doesn’t think the session went that well, he said.

“I’d give it kind of a C, sort of an average year,” he said. “It was a tough year in some senses but I just would have controlled spending more … It could have been worse and it could have been better.”

Grubb disagreed, saying it’s having a divided government that ultimately gets what the people want.

“I think split government acts as a throttle and necessitates that whatever passes ends up fairly moderate in appeal to the broad cross section of the people we all represent,” he said. “It forces compromise from both parties … That’s the way the people elect them and that’s what dynamics you deal with, so you make it work.”

Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812) 231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.

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