Christmas is hands-down my favorite time of the year. And the end of session is hands-down my least favorite.
That’s because for months, the General Assembly has chugged along at a reasonable pace, hearing bills, listening to Hoosiers, making changes, passing measures — even compromising a time or two.
And then we hit the final few weeks, and all best practices go out the door.
I’m going to lay out three examples we have seen in recent days that don’t bode well for a transparent and accountable legislature. It’s also why trust in public service continues to erode.
First: The (now-massive) property tax measure
Senate Bill 1 was 46 pages when introduced as Gov. Mike Braun’s reset plan to help homeowners. It grew under Senate Republicans to 91 pages. And after House Republicans made another amendment, it is a stunning 355 pages.
The GOP folded in tangentially related and even unrelated bills, possibly to harvest votes. And it made the product so endlessly complicated that even someone who has covered Indiana’s property tax system since its court-ordered redesign is struggling to grasp it all.
It now includes a bill that was moving just fine on its own – Senate Bill 518 – and looked like an easy win for the GOP. It provides property tax sharing in some local school districts for public charter schools. It’s a perfectly good debate to have on its own but now the measure is in this bill, which means Democrats didn’t support it.
An amended version also had a long-sought business tax break via a phaseout of the business personal property tax. This came even though the purpose of the bill was long said to be giving homeowners relief from massive assessment and bill spikes. Cooler heads prevailed on second reading, though, and the elimination was removed.
Oh yeah, and the bill dissolves a school corporation in Randolph County that has almost all virtual students — which has nothing to do with the original intent.
Heck, the bill isn’t even titled property tax relief anymore. It’s now local government finance.
Second: Reviving unpopular ideas that already failed once
In the first half of session, House Bill 1662 had robust hearings, passed out of committee and then died on the calendar because it didn’t have the votes. The bill has been labeled by critics as criminalizing homelessness but proponents say it’s about squatters.
Now, at this late hour, it was suddenly put into Senate Bill 197 through an amendment. No one following the issue had notice of the amendment, so there was no public testimony. And it is likely headed back to the Senate to see if lawmakers there accept that change. Mind you, senators haven’t heard one iota of testimony on the concept.
Third: Brand-new language.
We’re in the fourth month, but are still introducing language that has never passed a committee. Several bills filed at the outset were bans on advertising marijuana. None of them had a committee vote in the first half.
Instead, a Republican lawmaker added it to a Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles bill he authored while it was in a Senate committee. The agency was none too pleased, and the language was removed the next week. But never fear, it was added again – this time to Senate Bill 73 on utility trailer sales. The language hasn’t passed a single chamber, and most lawmakers have heard no testimony on the pros and cons of such a move. But it could very well become law anyway.
Yes, the session isn’t over yet. And every day counts. But leaders can’t be happy with some of the shenanigans that are just considered to be ho-hum legislating.
For the majority of session, decorum prevails. But when the end nears, everyone suddenly forgets that how a law is passed matters just as much as what is passed. And that’s why the end of session will always be the worst time of year.