OPINION: 2012 will be the year of Right-to-Work for Indiana General Assembly

INDIANAPOLIS —The Indiana General Assembly's session in 2008 was all about property tax reform. In 2009, the budget battle dominated. In 2010, the focus was the state's bankrupt unemployment insurance fund.

Chances are, Hoosiers will come to think of 2012 as the "right-to-work" session.

Though it's tough to predict what will happen now, it's already clear that Republicans tend to push the issue, union members plan to protest, and minority Democrats want to cause as much mayhem as possible.

That much, you already know.

Still, there are other issues on the table this year. About 125 of the General Assembly's 150 members do not serve on committees that will handle "right-to-work." They'll want to have something to show for their time.

If the "right-to-work" debate doesn't send the session careening off the edge of a cliff – and that's a big if – here are some of the other questions lawmakers will face when they return to the Statehouse in January:

Though it has cleared the House several years straight, the Senate has always stood as the key obstacle in front of such a ban.

Last year, though, Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said his chamber could get on board with one, as long as it included exemptions for private clubs, taverns and – the big one in this discussion – casinos.

The American Cancer Society decided it'd take no ban at all over a ban without teeth. It lobbied legislators to kill the bill, and that's exactly what they did. In the process, Senate Republicans were miffed.

"The idea that you can get 95 percent of what you're seeking and it's still not enough doesn't work real well," Long said last week.

This time, he said, if proponents can get on board with the same bill they sought to have killed last year, some form of smoking ban could become law.

"I think if a bill were to be presented to the Legislature which had those exemptions in it, and the advocates accepted the fact that they need to exist, it might pass the finish line this year," he said.

The governor has been an outspoken advocate for the elimination of townships entirely, and a series of other steps, since the blue-ribbon commission chaired by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard called for it in 2007.

But the Legislature hasn't agreed.

"The debate is not partisan at all. It's much more of a rural-urban issue," said Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville.

"I think there are a lot of things in them that can pass and probably should pass. But when we first started talking about these local government reforms, I think the bite was way too big to accomplish."

Right now, it sounds like there are two modest reforms with strong chances of passing.

One would ban nepotism – that is, local officials' hiring of their family members to do the township's work, or the county's work.

Another would ban municipal workers from serving on legislative bodies that handle the budgets of the offices that employ them; the exact form that would take remains to be seen.

"Government reform lite," Long called it. "That sort of looks like what might be able to pass. There seems to be common ground on that."

It's scheduled for Feb. 5 – right in the middle of a session that starts Jan. 4 and ends some time in mid-March.

The week of the game, legislators will be booted out of their hotel rooms on Wednesday night. They'll lose the rest of the week, and they'll have to start late on Monday.

To compensate, House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said he plans Friday sessions in January. Those are unusual, as legislators typically go home Thursday afternoons. Long said his chamber might schedule some, too.

What they hope that will allow them to do is finish the first half of the session by Feb. 1. When they come back after the Super Bowl, the House will take up bills that the Senate has already passed, and vice versa.

It will be, Long said, "a dash from start to finish."