Statehouse Report 4
January 26, 2010
LEGISLATIVE DEVELOPMENTS
Session progressing quickly
Despite a short week due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, it was a very busy week. In addition to ongoing legislative committee hearings and second and third readings of bills on the Senate and House floors, Gov. Daniels delivered his annual state-of-the-state address on Tuesday and Chief Justice Randall Shepherd delivered his state-of-the-judiciary address the following day.
Such good progress is being made that there are now some discussions about ending the session early, but veterans of the statehouse know it is premature to expect an early ending with only three weeks completed.
In previous reports, we summarized some of the introduced bills that we are monitoring. Here are some of the bills that are moving through the legislative process.
House Bills:
1063: Rep. Matt Pierce from Bloomington sponsored this bill which requires that public facilities be designed to meet energy efficient standards. The bill was amended on second reading and awaits a final vote in the House.
1135: Universities would be required to accept credit for advanced placement coursework completed by high school students when they achieve a score of three or higher on the advanced placement exam administered by the College Board. We are working with legislators on the bill to address academic concerns.
1075: The bill expands existing open meeting and public record access law. We were successful in working with the author on a second reading amendment that addressed some concerns with the public records access provisions in the bill. The bill passed the House unanimously.
1065: This bill would preclude establishing some restrictions on carrying firearms. The institutions were successful in working with the author to include exceptions for university campuses.
Senate Bills:
084: The bill provides access to legislators and legislative staff to certain university library and related research resources. We are working with the author to reach a workable solution.
114: Ethics reform is being addressed under this bill. It revises existing lobbying statues and for the first time would require university government relations staff to register as lobbyists. We are working with the author on revisions to the bill.
257: This bill was amended in committee to require the Indiana Commission for Higher Education to review proposed university facility projects within 90 days of submission of a request for review.
213: The bill addresses a number of issues related to illegal aliens but would require public agencies to stipulate that contractors use the federally maintained E-Verify system to ensure that contractor employees are not illegal aliens.
Looking ahead to next week, it is the last week for bills to be heard in committees. Thus, we expect that there will be numerous committee hearings and the volume of bills produced for floor action will increase.
