INDIANAPOLIS - Bills that were weakened significantly during committee hearings - dealing with illegal immigration and downsizing township government - gained renewed strength Monday night on the floor of the Senate.
State lawmakers plowed methodically through dozens of proposals, trying to meet Wednesday night's deadline for the House and Senate to pass their own bills and send them to the Legislature's other chamber.
A revised illegal immigration bill would revoke a company's license to do business in Indiana after multiple violations of employing undocumented workers. Although Senate Bill 580 was watered down from "three strikes" to "four strikes" in committee last week, bill author Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, got his original three strikes wording reinstated Monday by the full Senate during debate on amendments.
Delph's new wording also makes it a legal defense from prosecution if an employer participates in a federal program protecting immigrant farm laborers, he said. The bill is eligible for a final Senate vote this week.
Meanwhile, township trustees would keep their jobs under a watered-down Kernan-Shepard bill still alive in the Senate, but township advisory boards would cease to exist.
Originally, Senate Bill 512 would have eliminated trustees and shifted their poor-relief and fire-protection duties to county government, but a Senate committee deleted that wording last week.
Late Monday, however, the full Senate returned some of the wording to the gutted bill. Township advisory boards - whose sole duty is to approve the trustee's budget - would be eliminated, and county councils would review the township's budget instead, said Sen. Connie Lawson, R-Danville.
As revised Monday, Lawson's bill also forbids trustees from employing their relatives in township offices starting in 2011. The bill now is eligible for an up-or-down Senate vote today or Wednesday.
Meanwhile, judges could order an ignition interlock device placed on the vehicles of motorists caught driving while intoxicated under a bill the House unanimously passed Monday.
The device measures blood alcohol levels after drivers blow into a tube. If the alcohol reading is above 0.03 percent - or less than half the 0.08 percent legal limit for driving - the vehicle's ignition won't start.
House Bill 1020 would allow judges to order the interlock devices for twice-convicted drunken drivers and for some first offenders. The national Mothers Against Drunk Driving group last week urged lawmakers to pass the bill.
And Indiana would study moving its May primary election to earlier in the year to have more of an influence in the presidential nomination process under a resolution the Senate passed Monday night and sent to the House.
Because of the late timing of the primary, presidential nominees largely were decided by the time Hoosiers voted during the nine noncompetitive primaries between 1968 and the Hillary Rodham Clinton-Barack Obama primary in 2008. A committee would examine holding an earlier primary.
The House on Monday advanced on second reading a long list of bills House members now could decide up-or-down by Wednesday's third-reading deadline. Among them:
House Bill 1733 would eliminate the Indiana High School Athletic Association and create an Interscholastic Athletics Division within the Indiana Department of Education. The new state athletics division would regulate sporting events for public and private schools across the state and would be governed by a nine-member board. Bill author Rep. David Niezgodski, D-South Bend, argues the IHSAA should be replaced, contending it acts without regard for athletes and their families.
House Bill 1722 would maintain funding for the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors Children's Home in Knightstown, Ind., which houses both the children of veterans and troubled youths. The State Department of Health proposes to close the home on cost grounds. Rep. Scott Reske, D-Pendleton, said the home has experienced extraordinary success helping children in need. But Rep. Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, called the home "a facility whose day quite frankly is done."
House Bill 1602 adds an ombudsman bureau to the Department of Child Services. That bureau would be tasked with reviewing child fatalities and could be asked by juvenile courts to review cases of children in need of services. Already, 28 states have positions similar to the one the bill would create.
The Senate and House likely are to work late again today as they rush to meet their midsession deadline.