INDIANAPOLIS - A debate over illegal immigration that sparked a partisan meltdown in the Indiana House will likely produce more fireworks this week when state lawmakers return Monday.
The three-strikes immigration bill and competing versions of Gov. Mitch Daniels' property-tax relief plan are provoking a lot of attention at the Indiana General Assembly. The House faces a deadline this week to pass Senate bills and vice versa, meaning long late nights are ahead for lawmakers.
What sparked Thursday's walkout by House Republicans was parliamentary maneuvering over the three-strikes immigration bill. As amended by a House committee, Senate Bill 335 could have revoked an employer's license to do business in Indiana after three violations of employing undocumented aliens within five years. The state Department of Labor, not prosecutors and courts, would have decided such violation cases.
But the situation got complicated when a House Republican, state Rep. Eric Turner, R-Cicero, later filed a "minority report" amendment after the committee had adjourned. Using wording similar to a bill defeated in 2006, Turner's amendment would prohibit governments from providing public assistance to illegal immigrants, such as help in obtaining employment, housing, higher education or other types of financial assistance. There would be some exceptions, such as help getting emergency medical care.
To circumvent a debate and floor vote on that amendment, however, majority House Democrats deleted the entire immigration bill and pasted it into a different bill, Senate Bill 345 - thus blocking Turner's wording from being heard. Minority House Republicans objected strongly to that, claiming Democrats had violated House procedural rules. Republicans walked out of the chamber Thursday evening and didn't return. After a few hours, Democratic House Speaker Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, recessed the House, meaning debate on the immigration bill resumes Monday morning.
A House Democrat, state Rep. Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon, had chaired the earlier House committee hearings on the immigration bill and was frustrated that House Republicans hadn't presented their amendment then. Van Haaften accused them of "playing politics over policy"
A Senate Republican, Sen. Vaneta Becker, said she didn't like walkouts when she was previously a House member, but the tactic is one tool the minority party has to get its views across. Democrats now hold a slim 51-49 majority over Republicans in the House. "I think sometimes there's an awful lot of politics that gets played on both sides of the aisle in the House, because there's such a small majority. Both parties are so close together in numbers, and they run every two years, and everybody's up (for re-election) this year, so you have to take that into consideration," Becker said. "It's just the usual House politics so to speak; it's not unusual."
The partisan rancor that erupted Thursday over the immigration bill was a marked departure from the relative bipartisanship that had characterized the first half of the 2008 short session between majority House Democrats and majority Senate Republicans over Daniels' property-tax relief plan. More cracks and fissures developed last week, as House and Senate committees approved sharply different versions of that legislation.
The Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy committee modified the House version of the Daniels plan, House Bill 1001. It still includes an increase of the 6-percent sales tax to 7 percent, and would cap property taxes at 1 percent of assessed value for homes, 2 percent for rental properties and 3 percent for businesses. But because of concerns that schools would face shortfalls in revenue due to the caps or "circuit breakers" on property taxes, the Senate committee approved $50 million in extra funding each of the next two years to help schools bridge the gap. The Senate committee approved House Bill 1001 and sent it to the full Senate, which will amend it Monday.
Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee made a major change to a portion of the Daniels plan, SJR 1 - the part that would amend the state constitution to include the 1-, 2- and 3-percent property-tax caps or "circuit breakers." Ways and Means chairman William Crawford changed the wording of SJR 1 so that homeowners would pay residential property taxes based on 1 percent of household income, not assessed value.
House Republicans blasted Crawford's rewrite as unworkable, but voted to advance SJR 1 out of committee and onto the House floor where it can be amended further this week. A Democrat, state Rep. Dennis Avery of Evansville, also strongly criticized it, saying the state constitution - the basic operating document of Indiana government - should not be rewritten to fix a temporary problem. Avery was one of two "no" votes.
Becker, the Republican senator, said the House Democratic plan of tying property taxes to household income will not get far in the Republican-controlled Senate. "No, it won't fly at all," Becker said during an appearance on the weekend "Lawmakers" program on WNIN-PBS9. "For one thing, I don't think it gets you to the revenue for to make up the shortfall as far as property taxes are concerned. I don't think it adds up, numbers-wise."
Van Haaften, appearing on the same program, said the original 1-percent assessed-value circuit breaker would benefit wealthy homeowners but not low-income residents. "One of the things that kept getting raised with us is, how are you addressing concerns for senior citizens and those on fixed incomes? This (1-percent) income approach is a perfect solution for those senior citizens and others that are on a fixed income as those property spikes happen, because you're going to be protected against those spikes," he said.
Both Van Haaften and Becker emphasized that the property-tax legislation is a work in progress and will be changed further once the bills reach the "conference committee" stage the first week of March. That's where House and Senate members from each party try to hammer out compromise on conflicting versions of bills.
-In other business, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill Van Haaften authored that was inspired in part by the forthcoming sale of Casino Aztar in Evansville. The bill says that if an Indiana casino operator loses its license or abandons a riverboat property, then a trustee will be appointed to run the casino temporarily until a new owner is approved.
Aztar's owner, Columbia Sussex, recently lost its gaming license in New Jersey, and gaming regulators in that state appointed a conservator to run Columbia's Tropicana casino-resort in Atlantic City, N.J. Columbia then announced plans to sell Aztar.
Van Haaften noted that Indiana had no provision for the state running a casino temporarily, and House Bill 1224 was an attempt to fix that. It now goes to the full Senate.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.