Welcome to Politically Speaking.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion, Chancellor's professor of political science and director of Community Engagement and the American Democracy Project at Indiana University, South Bend, Indiana.

Lawmakers have just finished their third week of their short 2024 legislative session.

Joining us this week to discuss Indiana legislature and their priorities are two members of the Indiana House of Representatives.

They are District Five Representative Dale Devon of Granger and District Seven, Representative Jake Teshka of North Liberty.

Thank you both for being here.

I want to start, Representative Devine, by asking you about top priorities for House Republicans and for the legislature this session.

Sure.

And this session, as you said, is a short session, right?

So and a long session.

It's a six week period.

The short sessions, typically 9 to 10 weeks.

We hope to do it nine this week, this year.

But we'll see how the cards play out.

One thing they did to help shorten it up, a lot of times we're limited to the number of bills that we can carry, so we're allowed five in the House.

Usually the Senate is ten in a short session, but they've been limited to five as well.

So I think there's just under 700 bills or close to 700 bills total that have been in that draft.

And this year, again in the House, we're going to hear probably maybe 200 bills if they get that many even heard, I don't know.

We'll see how the time plays out.

And then the second half, we get the Senate bills that come over to the House and we'll work on those.

So we only have actually usually there's a ten priority bills, anchors only for this year.

So again, again, trying to simplify.

And then actually we never used to have a short session, right?

It was just a long session every two years.

And then they would come in now and then for technical corrections and different things like that.

So they've gone to an actual short session and it's almost turned into a full session, you know, as far as bills being drafted and legislations being changed, one thing that we do in a short or don't do in the short session is deal with anything budgetary.

And especially this year, I think.

So if you have any bills that are have a fiscal to them, they're going to kind of go to the graveyard.

That's one way to sort through all those hundreds of bills, say, well, we'll consider you next session reintroduces.

Yeah but one bill that did come out that did have a little bit of fiscal even though the money was already appropriated was the 13th check for we have about 100,000 retirees of teachers and law enforcement and stuff in the state.

And I think that was already money that was appropriated from the years previous.

So I think that's one of our top priority bills to get that 13 check out the folks.

So is that one of those big four that you mentioned, that 13th check is there a lot of bipartisan support for that 13th check?

Do you think that's something that will pass this session?

It's been raised a lot of times before.

Representative.

Yeah, So we passed it out of the House.

And so there is absolutely bipartisan support in the House for that.

I think there has been some resistance in the Senate previously, but yeah, we'll see what they do with it this year.

I think that it's again, we're talking about retirees on fixed incomes and and particularly and, you know, we're still dealing with some of the the inflation rate.

Food prices haven't gone back down and things like that.

And so we'd really like to get this 13th truck to our to our state retirees and and help them out.

So when we talk about a 13th check it just in layman's terms for people watching who aren't quite sure what that means, how would you explain it?

Yeah, sure.

So so again, as a as a retiree, a state, public employee, retiree, those folks are, you know, on a retirement system, a pension, if you will, and they get, you know, a check every month and so this would essentially give them an additional amount to help defray some of those costs of inflation and such others in that top four.

Yeah.

So so House Bill 1001 is is kind of our CSA, which again is career scholarship account CSA clean up bill we passed those last year, CSAs which allow for students to use an account to go out and get some career education and some hands on experience.

There were a few things that needed tweaked in there to give some additional flexibility to families and to schools.

And so so that's one thing that we're focused on.

House Bill 1002 is our antisemitism bill.

And so we passed this bill in the last session.

Certainly it took on some additional urgency after the events of October 7th and in Israel.

And so this year we came back.

It became a priority, Bill.

And so we're defining anti-Semitism and and essentially saying that we're not going to tolerate this antisemitism coming from the institutions of our educational, educational institutions in the state.

And then House Bill 1003 is regarding administrative law judges and really kind of this continual quest of this current legislature and our caucus in particular to kind of arrest some authority back from from some of these agencies and, you know, help taxpayers and ensure that when they interact with the agencies that the balance is right and that the agencies don't have too much power.

Now, you mentioned the CSA clean up Bill.

As you talk about accounts, where is that money coming from?

How is that related to per pupil allocations from the state?

Yeah.

So so this CSA, I believe the amount currently is like $5,000 that could go into an account and there's a whole system of there's an intermediary that receives kind of the funding to provide these educational experiences for the kids.

And this is a part of the overall educational atmosphere.

And so, so many of these students are still going to be doing high school.

This is, you know, traditional courses and getting some sort of a diploma.

But they'll also have this CSA, which will help them end up getting an industry certified or and as our industry recognized, certification.

And and that will help for those students that don't think that four year colleges for them to go on and to do something that that they can provide for a family out better preparing them to go right into the work.

That's right.

Now about the anti Semitism Bill, that obviously was something that was broadly supported in the House of Representatives.

And can you talk a little bit about why you think that is important?

That was important to do.

You know, there's a lot of worlds getting a little unique and crazy at times.

Right.

And and I think everybody, you know, we all want to love each other and care for one another.

But there's a lot of people don't think the way we think in the United States.

Right.

And so I think we're very fortunate to live here in the United States where we are at this time of life.

And I think just to have any type of discrimination against any anybody is not a right thing to do.

And I think we were just truly, truly trying to make a statement to say, you know, we're not going to tolerate any type of discrimination, of any type of any discrimination.

And Indiana Representative Teshka you mentioned defining anti Semitism and the bill does define an anti Semitism prohibiting it and state curriculum, holding Jews responsible for Israel's actions, claiming Israel's existence as racist or comparing Israel's actions to that of Nazi Germany.

There are some folks who say this is interfering with freedom of speech, free expression that's needed in educational settings.

How do you respond to that criticism?

Sure.

So so you're right that so the definition comes from it's a shortened as the IHRA definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, and it's been adopted in one form or another by 34 states.

A lot of different international organizations as well as different countries.

And in fact, by both the Trump and the Biden administration, this definition was adopted.

That definition does include a reference to a list of 11 sort of examples of what might constitute antisemitism.

And and those are some of the things that you just listed, and I think they're there.

So I sit on the education committee where this bill was heard, and there were some certainly some legitimate concerns, I think, over not necessarily the top part of the definition, but in in the examples given.

And so it's my understanding I don't want to get too far out of hand, but my understanding is that there will be some discussion over those examples in the Senate as this bill moves forward.

Certainly we want to be sure that we're respecting the right to legitimate, protected speech.

And I think there's a difference.

Right.

So there's a difference between calling for, you know, the extermination of a people and something that's a threat or intimidating versus a legitimate criticism of a government policy or action.

And we want to make sure that we're not dissuading folks from being able to to take those stances against certain policies and yet make sure that our Jewish students feel comfortable on campus.

I didn't notice the bill does say criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.

It sounds like the discussion is over what that looks like, where the line is drawn.

Is there something that makes singling out and protecting Jewish students, particularly now important and different from, say, other groups, Palestinian students, students from any other background or group?

Sure.

And we've talked about that.

And so the bill does, you know, define religion as something that's so more broadly.

And so, of course, you know, you've got anti-discrimination laws currently on the books that do protect a number of different groups for one reason or another.

You know, our institutions have and not all of our institutions that I to paint with too too broad of a brush here.

But but many institutions have for one reason or another, seemed hesitant to apply that to to, you know, Jewish students.

And I think there's some questions is is the word Jewish even right?

Is that referred to as a religion?

Does it refer to a race or a lineage?

You know what?

What does that mean?

And so I think that's what we're really wrestling with and trying to to determine.

And I think, again, we're going to continue to do some work on this bill in the Senate.

We'll see how it comes back to the House on a concurrence or a conference committee report.

And Representative DeVon, based on what you said, it sounds like you think these are important and healthy conversations to have just to foster mutual respect.

I would believe so.

I mean, I chair family and children.

And so when you look at the world and broken families and just there's a lot of evil in this world and a lot of these kids that grow up in these environments without family structure and without loving parents.

And I think it's important that we get back to the basics of the love of what a family can do.

And I think any any type of discrimination is not good.

We still do a lot of volunteering work here at our Juvenile Justice Center.

And you see these kids that come from these type of environments and your heart breaks for them.

And so tearing the family and children, You know, right now in the United States, we have over 4 million homeless youth, and they're not necessarily living on the streets, but they just don't have a home to call their own right.

And you look at their ability to create adoptions.

And a lot of our legislation this year is eliminating barriers for adoptions, Right.

Trying to open it up more and get subsidies so that there's no age restriction.

It's wide open.

Now, we have a bill that we're trying to get through and we have a child advocacy center here in South Bend, and there's only about 27 of them in the state.

We're fortunate to have a child advocacy center here in our community that deals with law enforcement, DCS and the prosecutor's office that are kids that when they see abuse or neglect and we're pulling kids out of households that were given hopefully given a better forensic investigation on a child to determine what's the best course for this child to succeed in life.

So notice over the years, both Republicans and Democrats in the legislature have been on set talking about the need for expanded opportunities and support for adoption.

But things don't always move.

Do you think there will be some movement and passage?

I think so.

I mean, there's some federal guidelines that we're kind of our hands are tied with sometimes.

And so I think working with our congressional candidates and Senate candidates at the national level and working with our state, we're just trying to break through some barriers that have been there for some time.

So wondering, you mentioned children who don't necessarily have a stable environment.

Sometimes they don't have a parent at home.

When they come home, one of the things that your committee has been working on is lowering that age for daycare workers from 21 to 18 with 16 and 17 year olds also able to watch children if they're supervised by somebody at least 18.

What's the reason for that change?

And do you expect to see that become law?

Yeah.

So House Bill 1102 is Representative Haney's bill that we've been working on and with our policy teams and trying to and it's actually been one of our speaker's priorities as well because the cost of daycare is getting just outrageous.

And for a lot of folks that I know, my one of my children had three children and they had they were paying 30,000 a year or actually 36,000 was a thousand a month per child, you know, And so a lot of people have incomes.

They can't afford that type of stuff.

So we have to look at ways to keep kids safe while they're in daycare, but at the same time make it affordable.

So if you have an aunt or uncle down the street that's want open their house up and to create a small daycare to help offset some of their income.

And so we eliminated some of that, but we put some restrictions around that to help protect children, but that the numbers aren't so astronomical.

Education is always a big issue.

Children are always a big issue that the legislature is thinking about in terms of education.

We've had some not so great news in terms of third grade reading levels, as well as folks who aren't attending school.

What's the legislature trying to do about that?

Yeah, so so first, I think I'll touch on the reading, right?

We've really kind of stagnated over the last 20 years.

If you look at our reading scores.

Certainly there was a big dip during COVID and we still have not recovered those learning losses.

There was a new report out from Ball State that that shows that we we still have not recovered those losses.

And so we've continued to work.

Last year I had a House bill 1558, which is a comprehensive science of reading bill to ensure that we've got high quality instructional coaches and folks that are trained up in the science of reading that goes hand in hand with the Lilly Endowment made a really huge grant.

Between that and state funding, we have over $100 million to help kind of get reading coaches into these schools.

This year.

We're doing some more work on on that.

So literacy coaches and things like that, it's going to be in my house.

Bill 1304 And then in the Senate, one of the Senate priority bills, the Senate bill want to believe Senator Rodgers, who again from from our area, is carrying a bill that's also looking at some of those things.

And of course, there's been a lot of conversation about retention.

You know, if a child is not meeting those standards by by third grade, should that child be retained?

We know there's a social cost to that as well.

And so I don't think that anybody's entering into these conversations lightly.

But we also know that if a child can't read proficiently by those ages, that their odds of going on to not graduate high school, to not get a job and to end up in, you know, Department of Corrections, those sorts of things go go up astronomically.

And so it really is a kind of a crisis mode for us.

We really want to find out how do we deal with this, how do we handle this?

And so so that's that's significant.

And you did mention the chronic absenteeism as well.

We're looking at what can we do with chronic absenteeism.

You know, there have been some some things in the past that that worked in terms of holding parents more accountable for for truant children and those sorts of things.

And so a lot of ideas being tossed around, but it's certainly something that we know we need to get a lot more representative DeVon One of the things that you've done to try to address these issues is outside of the legislature volunteering at the Juvenile Justice Center at the crossing for kids who weren't succeeding in regular schools and were looking at dropping out permanently.

If viewers want to do something other than supporting bills and calling their legislators and their legislators and trying to offer support for bills they believe in, what would you recommend like for them to get started?

And so I would recommend we have a great advocacy advocacy group in this community called Five Star Five Star Curriculum.

And just Seth Moss, it's a has some great programs and curriculums that with afterschool learning and and mentoring with these kids, it's just amazing.

There's a lot of just people looking for a mentor in their life, a lot of these young people, right?

So Transformation ministries here, I think we have Corey Lance here in South Bend.

It's doing a great job.

We've got again, the crossing has actually got about 18 or 19 schools now across the state.

And so they're always looking for somebody to come in and just be a kind of a life coach for a lot of these kids would be awesome.

And I think, you know, there's so many Boys and Girls clubs right at Camp Raber, just the Heroes camp.

I mean, they're just a lot of places that you can engage.

And I just encourage everybody in our community, I mean, the CASA programs are critical and just we just need so many more volunteers.

So if you're thinking, my life's over, I just you know, we need more volunteers than you can imagine in our community to help this.

It's not always going to be government that's going to turn this community around.

And when you see these kids that come in and some of these kids commit crimes just to get locked up because jail is better than their home, you know, and these kids are crying out to us to help us do a better job until we can find a way to stop kids from actually having kids.

And everybody came from a loving household.

We just need more community leaders and more community volunteers to help tutors, mentors, court appointed special advocates for those kids working their way through the legal system.

Okay.

Now I want to turn to a different topic.

Representative Teskha you're concerned about gun owners privacy there.

This is not a decision being made by the local credit unions or local banks, but they have been asked to include codes that indicate that somebody has purchased a firearm.

You're concerned about that.

Can you tell us why and what you'd like to see change?

Sure.

Yeah.

So so I guess in brief, there's an international organization called the International Organization and Standards Asian and or the ISO, and they have at the behest of some larger, maybe more activist financial institutions, created these MCC codes, merchant category codes that would track firearm retailers.

And so essentially that is if you make a transaction with a credit card or a debit card at a firearm retailer, they would be able to assign a code to that and track that.

That code.

There's other codes, MVC codes, there's general merchandise and things like that.

And there is a big concern that these codes could be used to create a third party registry of firearm owners.

And and so that is has been a growing concern.

There have been a push there has been a push, rather, from congressional Democrats.

This most recent letter, the round of letters came led by Senator Elizabeth Warren at the national level, really asking banks to institute this code.

They had paused on that in that implementation because of some backlash.

And so there's really kind of there's dueling positions on this.

California, for instance, has mandated the use of this code.

My bill House Bill 1084, would ban the use of the code in Indiana.

And and so we're really kind of striking a balance, trying to strike a balance.

We're not trying to overburden our local institutions or local credit unions or community banks.

And in fact, we've been working hand in hand with some of the credit card companies, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, to make sure that the language is workable.

And and so I think that, you know, we're really trying to to get everybody, all the stakeholders in a room and find a solution that works.

That's very interesting because some of the locals say if we have to look at every code and we'll be punished if we don't find it rooted out, it's too much for us.

So it sounds like you're trying to deal with those logistics now.

We are, yeah.

So yesterday the bill got voted out of the Financial Institutions Committee, a vice chair on that committee, I offered an amendment that helped clarify some of the workability.

The logistics of it helped, I think, take some of the onus off of the local credit unions and banks and put it back on the card networks and card issuers like Visa, MasterCard and more clearly define what we mean.

And so so I do think that we're getting to a good, good point in the bill, and we'll continue to work it as it moves to the Senate.

I want to ask you about one other issue.

Is your viewpoint in the South Bend Tribune, where you were arguing that free market really builds the economy, not government.

And we were particularly looking at ways the state can help out new businesses.

Could you briefly talk about that?

Yeah.

So I've got a passion for for new businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators.

Of course, we come from a really rich part of the state in terms of that.

We've got Elkhart with, you know, all of these different, you know, startup moxie and the Idea center at Notre Dame.

And so a lot of really great innovators coming out of the north central part of our state.

We've seen these multibillion dollar deals be landed.

Governor Holcomb touted in his state of the state near $30 billion worth of investment announced in the last year.

And and we've been ranked, I think, by Forbes this last year, the number one state to start a business or we're consistently at the top anyway.

But there's a disconnect because we're actually 44th in new business starts.

And so what we know is that most new jobs in this country come from from young firms, established firms like a GM, they kind of add in shed jobs at a similar rate.

And so most net job creation comes from young firms.

And so there's no reason why Indiana can't be the next, you know, the birthplace of the next big thing, whatever that might be.

And so we're looking at ways to to kind of bridge that gap between being the best place to start a business and actually being the best place for new business starts.

So actually providing some help to those businesses that are young, that's starting out now.

In the last couple of minutes, we have Representative Devine, are there other bills that you think viewers should be paying attention to something that's important to you personally or that you think they should be watching?

Sure.

You know, so I again, we were allowed five bills, right.

And I have a father's rights bill that when a child is born out of out of wedlock.

Right.

And they're still a biological mom and a dad, moms always tend to get the most critical mom, tend to be the most nurturing and critical person to a child's life.

But sometimes fathers are and sometimes fathers don't get always the benefits that they should be getting and the ability to have custody and the income.

And so it's a bill that this was a Florida's law that we're just trying to move forward here in Indiana.

But I don't think it's going to get a hearing this year.

I know our chairman of Judiciary had about 50 or 60 bills or something like that, and he only had three committee days and he had a new chairman.

So I don't see that one getting heard this year.

But we're going to keep fighting for that.

Something else that I'm working on, as I've been working with, not that everybody would be concerned, but when you did, you need to call 811 if you dig a hole.

So it's a utility issue matter.

We've been working for about three years with some local excavators and we finally got it to a point where the 811 board and all the utilities and the excavators could come together in the same room.

After three years of trying.

And we got a bill and a good place to where we can get some legislation passed on that this year.

One of those things people don't think about that much but will actually make a big difference for a lot of people in terms of efficiency.

Right.

Okay.

And last word from you.

In terms of anything we didn't talk about that people should be thinking of.

Yeah.

So so I would say there's just there's just a lot there's too much to talk about here.

And so I would really encourage people I love it when folks are engaged and they have got an idea that I encourage.

I think it's a really fantastic resource.

And you can see a list of the bills, the topics, all of those sorts of things you can track as they move and and really stay engaged.

Just as you just said on this one.

There's, you know, the ones that kind of get the hot, you know, hot topics that get all the media coverage.

But then there's a lot of things that are kind of basic that it really does.

You know, they do affect people's daily lives.

And typically those fly under the radar.

So and things can change in an instant at the statehouse.

So, really, you know, you got to keep track of these things, go to the website and use the search box to look at your favorite issues as well.

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have this week for politically speaking.

But I wanted to thank our guests, Indiana State Representative Dale DeVon and Jake Teshka.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion, reminding you that it takes all of us to make democracy work.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.