Having passed the state Senate in watered-down form, several of the Kernan-Shepard proposals for streamlining local government now face more of an uphill battle in the Indiana House.
The bills could be summarily killed or be bottled up in committee, rather than being voted on up-or-down.
"We are working on that, and we are optimistic that members of the House and the committee chairpeople will hear from their constituents and recognize it's important that these get a hearing," said Mary Dieter, spokeswoman for MySmartgov.org, a Chamber of Commerce-funded lobbying organization that is pushing for the Kernan-Shepard legislation.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has urged the Legislature to pass the government streamlining recommendations of a commission led by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard.
When the bills were introduced, it was thought the Republican-controlled Senate would be more receptive to the proposals than the Democratic-controlled House, but the Kernan-Shepard bills faced very stiff opposition in the Senate, where they were heavily amended or defeated outright.
A proposal Daniels supported to make some elected county officials appointees was defeated, and one to consolidate the central offices of small school districts died in committee.
Senators scaled back Daniels' bill to eliminate townships and township trustees, instead abolishing the township advisory boards only, and keeping trustees - albeit with more oversight of their budgets.
Senators also approved a modified Kernan-Shepard bill creating a multi-step referendum process where some counties might replace their three commissioners with a county executive or a board of supervisors.
Another Kernan-Shepard bill the Senate passed shifts the municipal election year, starting in 2014; and it prohibits police and firefighters from serving on the elected councils of towns that employ them.
Counties lacking a unified county library system would be encouraged to develop one, under a bill library organizations had sought, in response to the Kernan-Shepard Commission's suggestion to consolidate library systems. Counties "don't have to recommend another structure, but we encourage them to look at that possibility," said state Sen. Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, author of the library legislation, Senate Bill 348. "We are encouraging county planning committees to look at how they provide library service to unserved areas." That bill also is on its way to the House.
House Speaker Patrick Bauer often has said the Legislature has more important matters to deal with this session than the Kernan-Shepard proposals. It's Bauer who will assign Senate bills to House committees and who ultimately will decide whether the Kernan-Shepard bills go anywhere in the House.
They could be sent to the Rules Committee - the legislative graveyard for bills the House leadership doesn't want to hear - or assigned to committees whose chairmen decide not to hear them.
"We will look at them," Bauer, D-South Bend, said of the modified Kernan-Shepard bills the Senate passed. "I think there's a possibility they'll be assigned to other committees than the Rules Committee, yes."
But Bauer said the House would "not waste as much time on it" as the Senate.
Even if the proposals die without a hearing in the House, the fact that they passed in the Senate means under the Legislature's rules that they could potentially be amended to other bills and revived near the end of the session. "Let's hope we don't get to that," Dieter said, since supporters would much prefer the proposals get House hearings.
Meanwhile, Daniels and his predecessor, Kernan, the commission co-chairman, plan to hold another joint public meeting on the legislation on Tuesday in Fort Wayne, MySmartgov.org announced. Shepard, the chief justice, will appear at a public event March 9 in Jasper, Ind., and Kernan on March 10 in Evansville to speak about the proposals.