More disciplinary charges against Todd Rokita.

The property tax debate in full gear, plus controversy over a civics bill and more.

From the television studios at WFYI, it's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending February 7th, 2025.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality of life.

This week, Indiana's attorney disciplinary commission has filed new discipline charges against Attorney General Todd Rokita, accusing him of dishonesty and making false statements to the Indiana Supreme Court.

In 2023, the state Supreme Court publicly reprimanded Rokita for his remarks about Doctor Caitlin Bernard after she provided abortion care to a ten year old Ohio rape victim.

As part of that, the attorney general signed an affidavit admitting to violating professional conduct rules and accepting responsibility.

But in a statement following the reprimand, Rokita said he admitted to the misconduct to save a lot of taxpayer money and distraction while maintaining he did nothing wrong.

The state disciplinary commission says that statement contradicts the signed affidavit and the Rokita statement, since demonstrate his lack of candor and dishonesty to the Supreme Court.

The commission is asking the court to discipline Rokita for professional misconduct.

The case could go before a hearing officer in a public hearing, and ultimately, the Indiana Supreme Court will decide whether Rokita will be disciplined.

In a statement, Rokita accused the disciplinary commission of trying to silence him.

He says he never contradicted the Supreme Court's reprimand and that the disciplinary process is being politically weaponized against him.

So should Todd Rokita be concerned?

It's the first question for our Indiana Weekend Review panel.

Democrat, Lindsay Haake.

Republican, Mike O'Brien.

Jon Schwantes, host of Indiana Lawmakers.

And Leslie Bonilla Muñiz, reporter for the Indiana Capitol Chronical.

I'm Indiana Public Broadcasting Statehouse bureau chief Brendan Smith.

Mike O'Brien should Rokita be concerned.

He's not acting like it?

Right.

Reaction.

He's actually kind of like crafting what might work, at least politically.

you know, he's kind of crafted like a miniature Donald Trump version of this.

When Trump was going through all these trials and people thought he was just getting, you know, politically, you know, there just weaponizing the New York courts and the Georgia courts for, for political reasons.

And he's kind of taking the same tact that they're that they're trying to silence.

It's not, it's not it's not that he said something.

It's it's the content of what he said.

They don't like it.

so their comment and so they're coming after him.

And it's also, you know, when you're dealing with political if you just think about it politically, if you're deal with the Supreme Court, you're in this like the Supreme Court is like invisible to people.

So you can like for Rokita he can kind of go bang on them.

They make it make it sound like he's he's, you know, he's being politically victimize here.

you know, so it's just in terms of politics that might work.

I don't know, I guess I don't know enough about the history of these types of charges to know what what what ultimately happens here.

So we'll have to see what's real as what the Supreme Court does and the power they have over his law license.

There's not a ton of precedent for this, at least certainly not the attorney general being brought up on something like these sorts of, disciplinary charges.

1 or 2 for two.

We've got a while, attorney general and.

These sort of these sort of disciplinary charges that the disciplinary charges against Curtis Hill were for something very, very different.

but to that point, Curtis Hill, for something I would argue that is much more serious, which is criminally battering four women, is what Supreme Court said he had done.

only got a 30 day suspension of his license.

So, I mean, I would expect certainly nothing more serious from that.

And that's even if Rokita is found to be guilty.

You know, Mike makes a great point.

He is predictable, if nothing else, regarding his response and behavior.

to these disciplinary charges.

Also tell you, I mean, to be accusing folks of silencing him is a special privilege from the attorney general, because if anything, he was he he was allowed to avoid this throughout the entire election.

And he's been given a privilege, frankly, to have finally be talking about this now versus before, where this could have been a a game changer in an election, which obviously we were hoping for on the Destiny Wells side of things.

But but yeah, he's enjoying it.

He needs to count his blessings.

politically speaking, for Rokita.

I mean, he he makes the point that, I mean, you just made the point.

He was there was a cloud of this over his head running for reelection the entire time.

I doubt a cloud will ever leave Todd Rokita But that just feeds and certainly even from his statement, it just feeds more into the narrative that he's pushed for a long time.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, the other thing I want to say is regardless of what ultimately happens, you know, you know, I do think that the disciplinary commission is very capable body that can make balanced decisions.

But regardless of what happens, let's not forget that, Todd Rokita was the most popular elected official in our most recent general election.

he got more votes than our governor, Mike Braun.

more votes than anybody except for President Donald Trump.

So I think regardless of what happens, this will not be the end of him.

And certainly if you're talking about on the not on the political side, but on the actual like, what might the Supreme Court do here?

if you even think it's, you know, they could go as far as they did against Curtis Hill, which was the the 30 day temporary suspension of his law license.

I don't think Curtis Hill was particularly well-liked by the governor at the time, Eric Holcomb.

Even the legislature was kind of mobilized against him at different times in different ways.

And he got to continue being attorney general until he was unseated at the convention by Todd Rokita.

So from that perspective, they're not going to Todd Rokita has much a much friendlier to him, governor in Mike Braun than the relationship between Eric Holcomb and Curtis Hill.

So from that perspective nothing's going to happen to Todd Rokita.

Right?

I, I think that's a fair assessment, in terms of his ability to overcome any kind of formal disciplinary proceedings.

however, I don't think that means that the Supreme Court should say doesn't matter.

So let's just sit this one out, because you do have some notion here that, you have the mechanism that is set up to police these sorts of issues.

It's worked well for us.

as is was suggested, this is a group of esteemed jurists, I mean, chaired by, if I'm not mistaken, by anything but a crazy, you know, you know, liberal crazed, former Republican, prominent Republican who has run for statewide office, in the past and has anything but a, you know, rhino reputation.

So, I think I'm not.

The one who chairs it.

Well, let's just out and Pete Rust open, I believe, is the is the current chair.

so let's hope that the proceedings unfold as they should.

you know, that's because you do have this unusual situation where the chief legal officer of the state is calling into question the very structure of the judiciary and the way that the judiciary handles complaints and polices itself in this state.

So that's kind of like, you know, the person who should be the biggest fan of that system, saying it's corrupt and it's broken, that's problematic.

And that's as much about it.

Seems to me what this is about is making sure the system and that's I'm not using that in any kind of pejorative way or negative way.

The system which has served us well needs to work here, even if in the end it doesn't have, significant political impact.

All right.

Governor Mike Braun sent a message this week to local leaders who say his property tax bill, could decimate their budgets, prove it.

Braun hosted citizens in his office to highlight the need for relief.

Franklin resident Mark Gross says his property taxes have increased about $200 a month over the last decade.

He says he's frustrated that local governments don't seem to need the same fiscal discipline he has to use.

County taxes I guess what we're really looking at is has a blank check, so to speak, to just keep saying we need more money.

We need more money.

Local leaders like Carmel Mayor Sue Finkam told lawmakers that communities have used growing property tax revenues to meet rising costs.

For example, since 2020, the cost to repave a mile of road has surged 43%.

And emergency medical response costs have jumped 33%.

Both of these figures exclude rising personnel costs.

Governor Braun says local governments need to run more efficiently.

Prove it, prove it.

That you didn't salt away a lot that you didn't overburden the taxpayer.

Braun's plan would cost local governments, not including schools, more than half $1 billion a year statewide.

Local leaders like Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun said there's no way to avoid cuts to public safety, police and fire salaries are 82% of our general fund.

Some Republican lawmakers say local governments need to ruthlessly cut Lindsey.

This is going to sound like I'm being sarcastic.

This is a genuine question.

Does this week and the debate playing out show how complicated it is?

It does create meaningful property tax relief.

Yeah, absolutely.

But it also depends on what the goal of property tax relief is, is if that's to save people money, then the answer is still up in the air.

I mean, you've got municipalities left and right all very, very worried about this.

And you look at the, the side by side of the, the fiscal on this $146 million hit under Senate Bill one for Indianapolis.

That's huge.

I mean, that is significant when compared to the numbers they have.

And then, of course, if you pile it on with the suggested OMB cuts from all the funding last Monday that was frozen but then not frozen.

So, I mean, this is this stands to impact folks in a very big way.

Everybody was talking about this at the state House this week.

This bled in the conversations even down in the utilities committee.

So this is a this is a real big conversation that if it stands as it is, I mean, Senator Hoban, it's got a huge, huge issue on his hands making people happy with us.

To that end.

Are are the folks at the state House in a no win situation and trying to craft property tax relief?

They put themselves in a box politically.

But I did like what, Governor Braun did this week, because the whole conversation at the statehouse with people like us is, oh my God, what is the government going to do?

And he said, wait, we're going to flip this narrative and bring these, these homeowners in and say, hey, you tell us what?

Let's let's hear from them.

Let's hear from the homeowners who are actually reeling under this, because the focus is entirely at the state House on, oh my God, what are we going to do with local government?

Well, what's the what's cork showing up?

You are.

So it was great that Brian brought real people in to go, hey, this is this is a problem.

At the same time.

And we also have Governor Brown, though, saying that you know, not and the many, many leaders at the state House, not just Governor Brown, just to be fair, saying that locals are not local leaders are not using those tools they have in their toolbox, but.

They also say so locals also asked for those tools.

Those tools exist because they asked for them symbolically.

So when we try to create this like juxtaposition between the legislature cutting taxes and telling locals to go raise taxes, we're going to provide relief.

It's like the locals showed up and did that.

Now, they may not like the politics of doing that locally, but those are tools they asked for.

And so they should.

And so from the legislature, they're saying, go max out your tools and then come back here.

We'll figure out how to make this work.

I think the most likely outcome at the end, because of the hit on Indianapolis or whoever, is making sure that they can get anything done is to make sure it doesn't happen again.

This tax that the property taxes don't go up 20% year over year.

They go up 2% or 3%.

It feels like that part of Brauns, I don't know if it'll be those exact numbers.

The two and 3% caps on on growth in the future.

I don't know if those will be, but that feels like something that's almost certainly going to be part of whatever the final property tax package is.

But John, this is a question I've been asking for a few days now, which is exactly the point that you two just made, which is the message from state lawmakers to local leaders is, well, maybe we're going to cut your property tax dollars, but you have all this untapped revenue potential in, whether it's local income taxes or to fund your roads, local wheel and excise taxes.

Exactly.

Max those out.

Ways and means on Tuesday was like half a dozen local taxes for the mayors of cities for showing up to give you the board to raise my taxes.

So, so, so much.

Same down in utilities.

We give you the option of siting control, but yet you're still yeah.

So max out those tools and that won't mean it's bad.

a hit to your budgets.

But if what you're ultimately promising to Hoosiers is relief, whether it's coming out of my left pocket for property taxes or my right pocket for wheel and income taxes, am I really going to see relief?

You'll see relief for the political careers of the lawmakers who wrote, who ran in many cases on and you might not promising reform because because that something, as Mike says, has to happen.

I mean there's just too many promises, but there is a bit of a trick box here that people have have gotten themselves into.

and, and it's going to be hard to dig out because there are real impacts on locals.

And if in fact, all the local taxing capacity is, tapped, well, then I think a lot of people who feel that their Hallelujah, I'm going to get a break on my property taxes are going to get walloped on these with the wheel tax and with a local income tax.

I would point out, you know, and in many ways this we have created this sort of boogeyman.

And I'm not discounting property taxes as the increases because as the governor pointed out, there was a couple that he, he, highlighted in the state of the state address that had seen in more than a 100% increase, from 1750, 715 up to more than 1500.

And but still, I just saw some new data.

Indiana, in terms of residential property, primary property, it's the 39th lowest tax burden, not rate, but tax burden across the board on Hoosiers.

So Hoosiers are not bearing a lot.

I know it's painful when it goes up 100%.

That's painful.

But you could argue it could go up 1,000%.

But if it starts off at $10 and you're going to, you know, 100.

And I'm not saying I.

Think that's cold comfort for people.

Exactly.

It's cold comfort.

It's.

But my point is, is, is and I'm not articulating it well is the money's got to come from someplace and you're not starting from a that's not pumping a lot of money into the system.

Or let's say it's not pumping the equivalent amount that you would if rates and the structures that other states have adopted were in place.

Is the other problem for lawmakers trying to craft relief or promise relief to Hoosiers, the fact that no matter what they do on property taxes, if they're only affecting the property tax system, any relief isn't going to come for at least a year.

Yeah.

I mean, Senate President pro tem, Rodric Bray, he told those reporters just yesterday that, this year's bills, you know, forthcoming bills can't do anything about that.

but I also think that no matter what they do, it's, it's just moving it around.

Government costs, what government costs.

And as many times as Governor Braun and even our legislative leaders say that locals need to find efficiencies, state government needs to find efficiencies.

It still will cost something.

And that something is still more than people probably want to pay.

but I do think that, you know, by, you know, cutting property taxes and letting locals raise income taxes again, you're just moving it around.

But are you moving it around in a way that's advantageous?

Like, for example, the 70 year old who's on Social Security paying less in property taxes versus, you know, the people who are still working and are now getting taxed on greater on their state income, or people that, are wealthy enough to own multiple cars and now are seeing higher hits, you know, per car or using the wheel tax.

Or heck, how about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of renters in this state who aren't getting hit by property taxes necessarily, but are going to get hit by an income tax increase if that's what locals do.

All right, time now for viewer feedback.

Each week we post an unscientific online poll question.

And this week's question is will Indiana lawmakers pass significant property tax reform legislation in the 2025 session?

A yes or B no?

Last week, we asked you whether Indiana should move city and town elections to presidential election year.

32% of you say yes, 68% say no.

If you'd like to take part in the poll, go to wfyi.org/IWIR and look for the poll.

Well, a controversial civics bill to promote fostering a national identity in schools got little support in committee this week.

Indiana Public Broadcasting's Kirsten Adair reports.

Opponents say the measure would chill education on topics like slavery, segregation, women's rights and more.

Senator Spencer Deery is the bill's author.

He says he's read studies that young Americans don't have pride in their country.

If the next generation is not cherishing the founding principles that we view and derive our liberties from, that what's going to happen to our country, what's going to happen to our nation.

The bill requires civics courses to foster a national identity by teaching principles from the Bill of rights, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

It also prohibits creating a national identity around racial and gender discrimination, victimization, class struggle, privilege, or systemic exclusion.

Opponents say the bill would prevent teachers from discussing history like segregation or slavery.

Leslie, our lawmakers are just asking for trouble with this bill.

Well, something to point out, and which was pointed out in the committee meeting, was that this is big enough where a lot of it, a lot of what matters and what's key is how it's enforced and how it's actually implemented.

you know, I think, opponents were worried that they wouldn't be able to teach history, a full accounting of U.S. history.

You know, how do you talk about, the making of the US Constitution if you can't talk about the 3/5 compromise?

but something that the author, Senator Spencer Deery, said is that he doesn't necessarily want to stop those discussions.

So a lot of which are required to be taught, he he wants them to be reframed in a way that reflects beneficially upon the country.

or is something that we have overcome.

I don't know.

It depends on what actually comes of this, what these words on paper end up looking like in real life.

But I wouldn't entirely be surprised if we eventually see a lawsuit come out of this.

Jon, it feels like, you know, the last few years, whether it was the CRT discussion of a couple of years ago where, a senator put his foot in his mouth, talking about basically both sides ism, where you're having the Dei conversation now in the Senate.

and we'll see how that moves over the House.

or this where I get what he's trying to say.

But isn't it real hard to make a law to get at the goal that he's trying to achieve?

The only way, probably, to have a standardized teaching format is to have AI robots in front of every class.

I hope I didn't, I was just going to say that.

give it a minute.

I'm I'm I'm not.

I'm not advocating robots in class.

Shows like this.

They'll need a tax credit for that.

They may need that.

It's because no teachers are human.

Let me just say no robot could ever, replicate what John says on a regular basis.

Thank you.

Thank you would have to be destroyed, I think, for the safety of mankind.

But clearly, there is subjective.

There is judgment that goes into teaching, because there people are not robots, teachers, robots would not be good teachers, especially for young kids.

And let's not even entertain that notion.

So, let's have people who are skilled in their, in their fields and can make some decisions about this.

I think schools are very concerned about what fund funding they're going to receive.

If this were enacted, I think you'd have to make sure there's additional funding to cover the the legal bills because, as suggested, this would result, I think, in a lot of litigation and courts and judges may well find themselves in a position to say, as they do sometimes with what constitutes obscenity.

And, you know, that was what's the community standard.

I can see them doing a lot of narrow arguments about what part of the curriculum on that second Tuesday of October, when the teacher talked about X, Y, or Z, was that appropriate or not?

And I think they probably would find that they have better things to do.

Is this is just is this just asking for trouble?

What's what's ironic about this is if you want to teach kids about inequality and sexism and racism, then read the Constitution.

It's a story from.

And I don't mean that as a slam on the Constitution.

It's a story of America striving for equality.

So you start with the 3/5 compromise on like the second page of the Constitution, and then you get to the 14th amendment, the 15th amendment, the abolitionists, abolishment of slavery and voting rights expansion and all of that.

That's so if you but those need to be contextualized throughout the Constitution, it's needed context that need you need an understanding of what the constitutional convention of the 1787, how it produced the 3/5 compromise.

And, you know, all of that, the whole history.

Right.

And the the pride part is that we're striving for it.

As you know, with the arc of history, we're always striving for it.

just one personal example of this.

In my son's education a couple of years ago, a couple years ago from a high school government class, and he I was just sitting with them and go through it.

And there was a slide called White Flight, and it was about Indianapolis.

And it was a story of unigov and what it what it explained was with all the of all the great things that unigov brought, leveraging the full population of Marion County, becoming a first class city.

what that meant for downtown development over time, all that all up, all upside.

Right.

Except that a lot of affluent people in the center township who could move moved to northern parts, the other parts of Marion County, northern north and northwest northeast, which left a largely African-American population center township.

And it had a real impact on the success and funding of IPS that we still struggle with today.

So but it was told in the context of, like, white flight.

And so I can understand why someone looks at that.

Like parent would look at that and go, you can't teach my kid about that.

You know?

But it's complicated.

And those stories need to be told.

Is that is feel like and this is, again, the problem of trying to write a bill to say something like this.

This is what it's.

More.

Complicated.

Exactly.

And this is what happens when you try to shove a talking point or a press release into legislation you end up with the committee hearing on.

This was really fraught, frankly.

I mean, after we had listened to hours yesterday at the Senate, debate on Dei, but, this was even for me, even tougher to listen to, because I started out my career at the house working on civic education initiatives, working on the We the People program.

And so it's important that we recognize there's already standards for this that we're adhering to that were just discussed by the Commission, just last year.

All right.

Finally, one of the House Republican priority bills this session is exploring annexing Illinois counties that have voted to secede from our neighbors to the West.

Like O'Brien, as a former resident of Illinois, what are the what are some things that have less of a chance of happening in the near future than absorbing parts of Illinois?

I don't know, Bears Super Bowl.

Yes, Bears Super Bowl win.

Let's go with that.

Yes.

That's all of.

What we get.

What's annexed.

The bears.

Know.

What they're trying.

To push.

Yeah.

There's an actual push to get them to move to Northwest Indiana.

Jon, do you see this happening in the near future?

No.

I mean, the only thing that there's probably less chance of would be fully funded pre-K for the state.

Unfortunately, it's not here yet.

What it says have gone well.

And on that delightfully happy note, that is Indiana Week in Review for this week.

Our panel is Democrat Lindsay Haake, Republican Mike O'Brien, Jon Schwantes of Indiana Lawmakers and Leslie Bonilla Muñiz of the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

You can find Indiana Week in Reviews podcast and episodes at WFYI.org/IWIR or on the PBS app.

I'm Brandon Smith of Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Join us next time because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality of life.