First bill signed, higher ed politics: Takeaways from 6th week of Indiana's 2024 session

State lawmakers returned to Indianapolis for another week of the 2024 legislative session as House and Senate committees started reviewing bills from the opposite chambers.

Members of the public can only testify before lawmakers on bills under consideration this year in committees. And they did: There were some marathon committee hearings on bills this week, such as the Senate’s third-grade reading bill, a Senate bill dealing with tenure and politicization at universities and a House bill enacting stricter address and citizenship verification procedures for the voter rolls.

Here are takeaways from the sixth week of session.

Holcomb signs wetlands bill

Gov. Eric Holcomb on Monday signed the first bill of the 2024 legislative session: House Bill 1383.

The bill, authored by state Rep. Alan Morrison, R-Brazil, strips protections for Indiana’s remaining wetlands, prompting outcry from environmental groups and state water regulators. The Hoosier Environmental Council sent a letter and petition with more than 1,000 signatures to Holcomb’s office asking him to essentially kill the bill. He did not listen.In a statement to Indystar on Monday, Holcomb defended the bill.

“This collaborative effort strikes a necessary balance of protecting and preserving Indiana’s vital wetlands while supporting economic growth,” Holcomb said.

House Bill 1383’s passage follows 2021’s Senate Enrolled Act 389. In the two years after that law was passed, more than 250 acres of wetlands in Indiana were lost because the state no longer requires mitigation.

Tense debate on politics and higher ed

A discussion about Senate Bill 202, authored by Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, prompted heated exchanges and hours of testimony on Wednesday.

The bill would require schools to establish disciplinary procedures for disrupting speech and restricting tenure or promotions if a professor has not met policies on free expression and "intellectual diversity." The bill also adds legislative appointments to a school’s board of trustees.

The bill has been described as an effort to depoliticize universities, but the American Association of University Professors chapters at Indiana University in Bloomington and Purdue University in West Lafayette released a statement on Monday arguing it would limit the ability to recruit candidates for jobs and dent the state’s higher education reputation.

The House Education Committee Wednesday heard hours of testimony from faculty members of Hoosier universities who opposed the bill, saying it would impact tenure, teacher safety and limit speech in classrooms. Prior to testimony, Deery, who works for the Purdue Research Foundation, called those objections “myths.”

Some of the most tense back-and-forth happened between Deery and Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, over the purpose of the bill.

The bill establishes a process for students to complain about professors who do not follow the bill's requirements of free expression, something Deery said is needed because students "feel like they're being pushed out" of universities.

“Who’s being pushed out?” DeLaney asked. “Are there only liberals at Purdue? Have I missed something?”

The committee only heard testimony on Deery’s bill this week. They next meet Feb. 21.

Coalition organizes against key reading bill

A coalition of teacher and education-adjacent organizations are banding together to oppose the third-grade retention piece of Senate Bill 1, Republicans’ key reading bill.

A House committee heard the bill on Wednesday for three hours, during which many testifying expressed concern about cracking down on retention before last year’s law requiring the science of reading in all school curricula has a chance to settle. The bill passed the committee 9-4 along party lines.

The day before, leaders from 11 organizations gave a joint press conference in which they argued that a focus on retention negatively impacts students from disadvantaged backgrounds the most and places too much pressure on the standardized test.

“That is not a vision for success, and it is a formula for failure,” said Mark Russell of the Indianapolis Urban League, joined by representatives from some faith organizations, statewide teachers unions, the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, the Indiana Parent Teachers Association, the NAACP and others.

Medicaid attendant-care issue won’t go down without a fight

Advocacy groups and Democrats in the legislature, with an unlikely partner in Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, are continuing to beat the drum for families impacted by FSSA’s ending the paid family caregiver program as a cost-cutting measure in light of a $1 billion Medicaid budget shortfall.

House Democrats called on Gov. Eric Holcomb and their Republican colleagues, who hold all the cards, to keep the program intact and implement other transparency measures. They proposed requiring a study on how the cuts would impact Hoosier families; prohibiting moving money between the state budget’s general fund and Medicaid fund; auditing the FSSA, which Crouch also called for; and requiring quarterly financial reports from the Medicaid office.

Democrats will keep trying to force discussions and votes on this issue on their respective chamber floors and committee rooms through the amendment process. On Thursday, DeLaney proposed an amendment that would require FSSA’s annual internal audit to include an audit of the budget forecasting error that led to this program cut.

Bill sponsor Rep. Matt Lehman, R-Berne, argued such a move would be a “slippery slope of second-guessing a lot of information.”

“If my amendment here is a slippery slope, it's one I'd like to slide down from time to time,” DeLaney quipped. “I'm sick of the buck-passing going on as to who's responsible.”

The amendment failed by a mostly partisan vote.

A state v local spat over puppy mill bill

The local control fight among state lawmakers continued this week in the Senate over House Bill 1412, from Rep. Beau Baird, R-Greencastle.

Provisions of the bill would void local ordinances prohibiting the sale of dogs at pet stores, including those already in place in cities like Carmel, Indianapolis and Columbus.

Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, proposed amendments to the bill Thursday that would keep those existing ordinances intact. Qaddoura argued that allowing cities to keep the ordinances they voted on is not partisan; Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, who sponsored Baird’s bill, said local governments don’t have the power to control commerce.

“We feel commerce is the purview of the state of Indiana,” Doriot said.

Both amendments were defeated at 10-34 votes. The bill’s next stop is likely a final vote on the Senate floor.

IndyStar reporter Sarah Bowman contributed to this story.

Contact IndyStar's state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at brittany.carloni@indystar.com or 317-779-4468. Follow her on Twitter/X @CarloniBrittany.

Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter@kayla_dwyer17.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana General Assembly: 5 takeaways from sixth week of 2024 session