By Eric Bradner, Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS - Efforts to revamp local government were defeated today in the Indiana House after a bizarre four-hour hearing this morning.
The House Government and Regulatory Committee amended several of the major Kernan-Shepard Commission reform proposals into one bill, and then voted that bill down, 7-5.
The vote effectively kills the drive to streamline the Indiana's city, county and township governments until the end of this year's legislative session on April 29.
The drive to reform local government began with the Kernan-Shepard Commission, a blue-ribbon panel chaired by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard. That panel recommended 27 ways to streamline local government.
After some slight changes, Gov. Mitch Daniels endorsed 20 of those suggestions. He urged lawmakers to make the changes -- including eliminating townships, consolidating small school districts, shifting from three-member county commissions to a single county executive and making county offices such as assessor and coroner appointed, rather than elected -- during this year's legislative session.
Initially it appeared the battle over local government reform would be fought between the governor and House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, a South Bend Democrat who said streamlining local government shouldn't be the focus in a year lawmakers face critical budget decisions.
However, before the Kernan-Shepard proposals could even reach the House, they were tangled up and watered down in the Republican-controlled Senate.
There, several local government bills were mostly gutted. The legislation that limped to the House included a bill to keep township trustees but eliminate their three-member advisory boards and an anti-nepotism provision for township governments.
Bauer chided the governor's inability to push Kernan-Shepard bills through a Senate his own party controls.
Supporters of the Kernan-Shepard reforms' last hope comes in the waning days of this year's legislative session, when the House and Senate meet in "conference committees" to hammer out differences in bills the two pass.