15 ten nine eight.

The legislative session is scheduled to wrap next week and many key bills are still being debated before a final vote.

We'll get into those and the issues still affecting Hoosiers right now on prime time .

Hello everyone.

Welcome to Prime Time.

I'm your host Ed Leon, the general Assembly is scheduled for just one more week of session and there are still bills on the table that affect the homeless library budgets, cryptocurrency, ATMs and much more.

Here to discuss those issues as well as the bills that have passed is Senator Travis Holdman from Indiana Senate District 19 and from House District 18, Representative David Abbott.

>> Gentlemen, welcome to Prime Time.

>> Thank you and good to have you here.

I would like to hear from your perspective how it's going.

It's a short session is been I know that there's been it's a little the timing's a little off for everybody and there's a lot of bills that are trying to get attention.

How do you think it's gone especially for the priority bills that each of your your caucuses we're pushing for ?

>> Well, it's going very well, I think in spite of the fact that we have a shorter short session than we've ever had before, a lot packed into that short time frame.

But we continue to work hard early mornings, late evenings and we'll we'll be finished on Friday by midnight.

>> We have to be finished by till midnight and you have till midnight I guess you won't be able to come here and be on the show then not on Friday.

>> You can come here though do I'll do a live remote from from the from the session.

>> David, from your perspective, how's it gone?

I would have to echo what Travis said.

It's been a short short session record amount girls and some high complexity bills and four hundred page one hundred and fifty page amendments here and there.

>> It's been very it's been tough.

It's been fast paced.

So in terms of housing affordability that's one of them was one of the priority bills.

Has that passed?

Is it ready where are the stumbling blocks on on that bill?

>> Well it passed the House it's in the Senate passed out of the Senate I think it was in Judiciary Committee.

It passed by one vote judiciary and that was sort of Greece.

It got it out of the Judiciary Committee.

I think it's got a tough way to go.

I've heard from local folks, county commissioners, mayors, plain commissioned folks that are not very happy with the bill.

I think there was a lot of work to try to get it in good shape to get it out of committee.

But there's still a lot of work to be done on it because it takes a lot of control away from the local municipalities to train.

>> Uh, do you think that that becomes a disappointment for voters and Hoosiers?

I mean, you know, people wanted they're in need of some relief in terms of housing and affordability.

Do you think that that we let them down as a as a as a people if we don't get these things passed?

>> I'm I could probably jump in here a little.

I think it's a challenge for the younger people.

Yeah.

You know, I'm an older guy so you I'm set about trying to get into the market, you know, average age about forty years old to get into a get into a home and a lot of the CEOs I talk to at companies are looking for good quality workers to get them in and they need housing and it's been difficult.

We're so far behind right now I think they put build one hundred and twenty five thousand and I think the last year or two but we're still far behind where we need to be and the price point is so high that something has to be done right.

>> By the way, I want to remind our viewers that you can join the conversation.

The phone numbers are right there on your screen.

You can call in or you can text us and the numbers are two six oh (969) 27 two zero and you can text that to six oh (969) 27 three zero.

>> Some of the bills that have passed include the the let me say I had a list of here are the ones that have passed the oh I scrolled past myself here the up what has passed that let kids be kids.

>> Bill I thought that was an interesting bill.

It was it was the the bill that kind of tried to differentiate between letting kids have independence versus over you know, over legislating how parents are supposed to care for them.

Your thoughts that?

>> Well, thoughts crossed my mind.

We were some of that and there was a speaker and I had to think back when I was a child you we used to go out by ourselves in the morning, come back at dusk.

Yeah.

And that's how I grew up.

I used to run to the railroad track, throw pennies on the track, watch train go by.

We're still here.

So I think, you know, we maybe hover over kids too much but I think it's good that we're not punishing parents for what kids like to do.

>> Also they're a bill that passed was a a consent bill for social media making sure the parents happy for their kids 17 and younger.

They need social they need parental approval to get onto social media.

>> That's right.

Social media is a dangerous tool that is used by some bad folks and we're trying to do all we can to protect our younger folks and make sure parents are aware of it.

Parents can sign off if they want to to allow their children to see those kinds of things online and to participate in social media.

But all the research shows it's not a very healthy medium for kids to be participating in any bills that you that have failed that you wish that had gone through might have all passed.

So in them are in the process of passing your batting you're batting a thousand well for example, the online lottery went down the the purchase legalize the online sales of lottery tickets.

>> Do you vote against that either of you?

It was it was a House bill House so I was not for that bill.

Yeah.

I thought that's just expanding it into an arena that is too open to create habitual gambling especially age restrictions.

A lot of moving parts that we don't need that we've got we're looking at casino.

Yeah, OK.

How do you think of what do you think about the casino in northeast Indiana then if that if that's if that's how you feel about the Internet gambling.

>> How do I feel about that?

I've mixed feelings.

Ah I'm not a gambler.

I mean I've I think when I went to Vegas once and we went to the shows we took seventy five dollars one time and said that's it, it's entertainment dinner and a movie but unfortunately I don't think everybody feels that way but economically we're just moving the license from south to here.

We're not really we're just probably it's going to benefit the communities.

That's where I see the good in it.

As far as the gambling part I I'm not in favor of that part but it comes with it the aband pass on cryptocurrency ATMs can you explain what that that is exactly those cryptocurrency ATMs?

>> Well it was a device basically you put cash in the machine and you get cryptocurrency in its place and there's no controls no Patriot Act controls over those whatsoever and we just have real concern that's really the tool for money launderers and the fee was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 percent return on using machine to get the cryptocurrency exchange for the cash you put in and we just saw it as a dangerous tool that wasn't regulated in any fashion for viewers who may not have run across one of these things, where were they found?

Where are those convenience stores?

They're in convenience stores, yes.

And since cryptocurrency is a is a digital thing, how would they put money in and get cryptocurrency out?

>> How would they get it out on a flash drive or something?

I'm assuming that's how it works.

I am I'm ignorant as to exactly how it works.

I just know the cash is put in.

Yeah.

And there was reports I've seen folks use as many as ten thousand dollars worth of cash put in the machine.

If you do that as a bank or financial institution or credit union those would be reported to the federal government of suspect of money laundering or bad acts going on by the participants.

>> Wow.

The Chicago Bears stadium seems to be moving forward.

Indiana getting into the NFL game.

>> Thoughts on that?

>> It'd be great to get the stadium in Indiana.

Yeah, I'm not a Bears fan but so far I don't think that it's not it's not required.

I don't think you need to be a Bears fan but especially for the economic development.

We've certainly got the governor preschoolers attention on the subject and we think we have a good shot at it.

I still think to some degree it's still a bit of leveraging that's being used by the Chicago Bears to stay in Chicago and get a better deal.

>> Yeah.

Do you think we're being leveraged?

It could be yeah.

Chicago politics.

>> Uh huh, yeah.

All right.

Well we got it we got a call in from Greg who asks What are some issues that you would like to see expanded on for the next session?

Maybe cost of living and daycare expenses?

>> I think daycare would be important for us.

It's really a workforce issue and we talked about that the last time I was here a month or so ago.

We've got to crack that code for what we do as far as participation TRIPATHI Agreements for child care where the government pays part of the business pays part and the parents pay part.

I think there's a combination of things that we could do to to develop the is the federal money that we get for child care has a huge waiting list which costs us about three hundred and fifty million dollars to wipe out that waiting list and we just don't have the revenue right now to do that.

But we've been in other tough times and we'll get through this and I keep telling folks we've had tough times before and we always get through those tough times and I think we'll do it again.

Yeah, I thought you had some dad David Yeah.

It's a little different area.

I think the housing is really important.

I'm afraid no one's going to fall short.

You think so?

There's a lot of amendments to it and there's a lot of opt outs.

I don't think we are possibly it's my opinion that we may not be really hitting on the head of what the call the cause of this is.

I've heard builders tell me in retrospect that the they buy a lot for fifteen thousand twenty years ago now at sixty seventy five thousand they're building costs lumber and labor have gone up.

We need to look at that too.

Now that's a little tougher with tariffs how we can handle that because some of that cost is out of control and just just inflationary things too.

But the bottom line is we're falling short and I don't know this is an attempt to try to rectify that but I think it's just one piece of a bigger puzzle that we have to continue to look at.

>> Obviously just today the Supreme Court struck down the president's tariffs.

Do you would you and he he promises to find other ways to apply those tariffs.

>> Would you like to see tariffs come down?

>> I'm not an international trade expert.

Well, but you know how they affect Indiana.

I do.

I think it's been tough on families.

I've heard today anywhere from seventeen hundred twenty five dollars a year for families that the tariffs are costing and it's just it's just an economic issue domestically that we have to deal with and it's a sad situation for I'm afraid.

>> Yeah.

Some of the there has been some other controversial bills that have gone down.

One was the one defining what is gender male, male and female only is that I think that that has stalled right.

>> It didn't get a hearing in your committee that would pass the Senate and it went to the House.

Can't get a hearing in the House where Senator Brown is looking for a home for that language.

>> When you say can't get a hearing in committee or can't get a hearing in the House, explain explain to folks what that means in the the political machinations of the of the legislative session.

>> Well, it's left up to the chair and if it's assigned to a particular committee then the chair has the decision whether or not it's going to have a hearing and I've had been the chair of tax and fiscal policy committee.

There are things that I know just can't fly in the committee and so I don't don't schedule those to be heard in committee and there are some things that are just far out crazy ideas that we just know aren't going to work and so we don't schedule those for a hearing and if there's a ideological difference that the author of the bill may have with the chairman of the committee that's a good combination.

>> Most likely the bill is not going to get a hearing in that case either.

Besides being on prime time, do you hear from your constituents in the middle of session?

>> Oh absolutely.

Oh yeah.

Especially on some of the bills was a House bill ten on one I've heard a lot about that one.

I've probably met with every commissioner in my district and most of the mayors and they're very concerned about it.

>> So yeah we hear all the time it's 24/7.

Yeah.

When you're home.

So you were David you were talking to me a little bit before the show about what happens at the tail end of session because we're coming down to the last week talk a little bit so people understand what's what goes on here as you try to wrap up the session and get get some bills through.

>> I guess I could kick it off a little bit real quickly.

Well, you know, the bills start in one house or the other.

They go through committee second and third reading you have a chance to add amendments and second reading third reading is final passage in the House and they switch start the whole thing over again.

Well that's all happened now.

Thursday was the last day for for committee report.

So we get Monday will be the last day for second reading and Tuesday be third reading.

So now we're going to see next week is starting with the conference committees where you try to resolve the differences between the versions at least one House or the other.

That's where the sausage is made so to speak.

Is that right?

>> It is very interesting.

Hard to follow.

We've never had a period for conference committees as short as this year.

This is only three days for conference committees because third reading is Representative Abbott said third reading is Tuesdays so that just this Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, midnight to get done and how many bills will you try to you know, kind of true up?

>> Well, there will be dozens of bills that will be in conference committee try to get done in conference committee and it's a complicated process.

The conferees are appointed to by the Protium to be the speaker and then there are advisors appointed as well and those are balance between Democrats and Republican because the Republicans have the majority the Republican will be one of the Republicans will be the chair of the conference committee and you have to get signatures from each of the four members of the conference committee and they can sign the conference committee report until they get approval from their caucus.

And so caucuses have to meet and decide if they're going to allow the conference to sign or not and if they won't let them sign, then you have to start the process all over again by getting that conferees replaced by the appointing authority and then you start the process all over again and until you get that and if there's no time for a bill is is the bill just out of luck?

Just dies.

It dies.

It dies hopefully perhaps to be brought back in the next session or hopefully not again or go well.

>> All right.

We have a question here from Tom Are there any proposals for nuclear power in Indiana that would add waste to the environment at waste?

>> And that's that's the way it would add waste to the environment.

I guess they're concerned about nuclear fission material.

>> Well, I think what we're working with is small modular reactors is going to be the future.

You know, coal is being phased out and wind and solar then when the wind doesn't blow, the sun doesn't shine.

You're not generating reliable energy but it's a fill in for right now and it can help out right now currently when the highs and the lows of the demand and supply don't match when you're wind and solar can fill in what's in battery storage to we're working on that too.

But the TRAVES might know a little bit more about this idea we get we get so much of our power from nuclear plant in Michigan A&M owns that plant and there's not been any damage to the environment from that plant for 30 or 40 years.

There's just been an operation and so we think was represented by what is said with these small modular units reactors that those will be much more efficient, operate much more efficiently and the risk of environmental damage would be just minimalize or none at all.

When you take a look at what we've had in the past for Three Mile Island here in our country and there's only been two other big incidents of trouble in Japan the chances of leakage or anything of that nature is very slim and we need a reliable source of energy and I think nuclear is the way to go I might add.

>> Yeah, these have been submarines, aircraft carrier.

That's true with fifty seventy five years there they don't melt down.

They're very safe.

Yeah and that's why we're looking at safe nuclear that's a it's a uh it's different than the big giant power plants we're used to seeing with with the three reactors.

>> Yeah yeah the reactors.

All right here's another question.

This is from Gary With taxes like the two we'll tax on vehicles.

How can we get those taxes to go towards road repairs?

That's uh that's always that's always one that that everybody can relate to is rollovers will taxes a local tax.

>> OK, so that's up to the locals local municipality, local municipality, county most typically the county commissioners ,the roads, the roads and streets departments for the county and those are shared I think with the cities as well.

>> But those are local dollars that are collected and used locally.

Are there any go ahead I might add too and another thing that helps drive those dollars to the county is when you do you're a community crossing's grant funding applications.

You get priority if you do have the wheel tax and then those dollars that you get from community crossings do go directly to the straight to the roads and bridges so you can get a million million and a half dollars in some state in some cases for a community that's a lot of money and that's a component that will tax is a component of getting you higher on the ranking to get awarded those grants for the roads.

>> And so, uh, back to transportation.

Are there any transport?

I don't think I'm familiar with any big transportation bills that are flowing through this session.

I don't believe so.

Yeah, no.

You know, I mentioned at the beginning that there is a there's a bill that is trying to restrict funding for libraries.

Are you familiar with that bill so Billy I think so yeah.

>> Scintillate was going to require a binding review by city council or county council whichever was the authority whether it was the city library or county library and how it came to tax and fiscal policy committee and we had several librarians it spoke to me and said we've got a problem because our county council our city council doesn't like our library and we're afraid well our budget will be slashed if there's a binding review of our budget.

So what we did is I took the bill and changed the language of the bill to say that if the increase in levy increase in the amount of money that's being raised by the levy for the library exceeds the average MLG.

Q The magic the growth quotient on an annual basis that it does if it does not exceed fifty percent of that increase then it does not have to go to binding reviews.

So what that means is if they keep their budget this year at two percent or less of an increase and it doesn't have to go to binding review next year, that binding review would be based on a three percent increase because the MLG Q is going to increase to by the way, what what was the spirit of that of that law as it is it is it have anything to do with their cities not not being in alignment with the content in libraries or is it has more to do with the fact that there's a pushback from a lot of folks that libraries have taxing authority and they're not elected officials on the town the library board and so those folks are making decisions without having been elected to those positions.

There's still a bill under consideration, the one that bans camping on public land which is in some ways reaction to to homeless people is that that um you think that's going to pass as hard for me to answer because this was tried last year and then of course the question came up what we're criminalizing people that may be homeless right.

Causes beyond their control drug addiction, military PTSD syndromes, things like that.

I think it's going to face similar challenges.

>> I I haven't seen the depth of the bill completely but I think we're on a similar path but I think are still going to it's going to be tough.

>> The Sheriffs Association did not support the bill.

I voted against it in the Senate because it just seems somewhat silly to me that an individual had 48 hours to move from that location.

Let's say they were under the bridge under the overpass and they just had to move 300 feet within 48 hours and the whole process started all over again and the alternative if they were arrested they were charged with a low class misdemeanor but just means we load up our jails with folks who mainly are having mental health issues and not criminal issues and criminalizing homelessness is Representative Hubbard said the immigration enforcement bill is still out there and the uh the bill where the governor is allowed to militarize a police force are those bills still in HB 113 43 which empowers the governor to deploy the state National Guard as a military police force?

Is that that still have a chance and in the Senate it's I guess it cleared the House, right?

>> Did it clear the House?

Does it just has to do with military police that are law enforcement?

Uh, and I think it's not a bad idea.

They can do a lot of those things now but it just means that they're ready to go into action if they'd be needed to do that.

The immigration bill is just waiting on a vote for concurrence was Senator Brown's bill and I think that basically just reinforces our position that we're not a sanctuary state and we do not tolerate sanctuary campuses with our state universities and are just strengthens that relationship that we have with our communities to say we're not a sanctuary state, we don't allow for sanctuary cities.

>> OK, explain that a little bit more talk a little bit.

Why that one?

Well, it's the current issue that's coming up with ice.

Uh, we basically tell our municipal folks and county folks that you have to cooperate with federal authorities because of preemption and so it's just behooves us to make sure that we're cooperating with federal authorities to take care of putting bad people away and making sure if they need to be deported they're deported because they cross to cross the border without without permission without the paperwork that they needed to do that.

>> Sure.

And we just think it's as good policy has as ice been a much of a presence in Indiana thus far?

>> None that I'm aware of , yeah.

Yeah.

So um, you know that we hope that uh you know we hope it didn't come to too much of that because in the wake of what happened in Minnesota maybe uh maybe I think that's what we're doing with the immigration bill to trying to prevent that by having the uh when they have the retainers to hold the ice agents can have that retainer and they'll cooperate.

Right.

I think there's a lot of uh for the most part I think Indiana wants to cooperate.

>> Yeah.

And our law enforcement absolutely.

We only have seconds left any any final hopes or hopes for the the last week of session goes quickly that goes and uh I hope we actually get the bears.

>> I really do.

Uh, I think that'd be a great boost for Indiana.

Yeah.

And really help northwest Indiana that needs needs a lot of economic development and a lot of economic help would be to be a great thing for us.

>> All right.

Well we're all fingers crossed.

I want to thank my guests Travis Holleman from District nineteen and Representative David Abbott from House District Eleven.

I'm Ed Leon.

Thank you for joining us.

We'll see you next time on Prime Time.

Good job, gentlemen.