Welcome to Politically Speaking.

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

The Indiana General Assembly has concluded its 2024 legislative session.

Joining us today to summarize key developments are Indiana Public Broadcasting Statehouse bureau chief Brandon Smith, Indiana Capital Chronicle editor in Chief Niki Kelly, and Indianapolis Star Statehouse reporter Kayla Dwyer.

Nikki, I want to start with you.

One of the big pieces of legislation that got a lot of attention was an anti-Semitism bill that created a lot of controversy.

Can you talk a little bit about what was decided and what the controversy was about?

Yeah, I think that the idea was that lawmakers wanted to send a statement that, you know, these anti-Semitic scenes that we've been seeing all across the world, the country in Indiana, on college campuses are unacceptable.

And that's sort of the idea behind the bill.

The question, though, on how to define anti-Semitism became a little more problematic because, of course, you know what one person might consider anti-Semitic.

Another person might consider, you know, realistic criticism of the government of Israel.

And so there was a question of, you know, are you going too far in banning, you know, free speech in your attempt to preserve and make sure that Jewish Hoosiers are comfortable in the state and especially on our college campuses?

Brandon Both the governor and the really the Attorney general, Todd Rokita, expressed serious concerns about the legislation.

What kind of problems then did they have and what happens now?

Yeah, this bill is really seen quite a turnaround in about a week's time the as we ended the legislative session.

All four caucus leaders, Republicans and Democrats, the Jewish Community Relations Council, which is kind of led a lot of the lobbying on this bill.

The folks on the other side who were concerned about how we were defining anti-Semitism or whether it encroached on almost Islamophobia.

Everybody was like, this is great.

We've reached a compromise.

And the compromise they reached was the original bill had used a definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which 35 other states have referenced, either through executive orders or resolutions or things like that, or some laws, not very many.

But the original bill also included examples from the HRA, and some of those examples did seem to equate criticism of the state of Israel, the government of Israel, with anti-Semitism.

And that's what lawmakers in particularly in the Senate were trying to avoid.

And so the compromise that they came to that everybody seemed on board with was we're going to use the definition of anti-Semitism from the IRA, but we are not going to reference the examples.

Attorney general Attorney General Todd Rokita came out and said, you know, call this a toothless mess by leaving out the examples that a conservative Jewish organization who claims they authored the bill essentially for House Representative Chris Jaeger, but was not really active during the legislative session, at least in public view on it, said, this is you know, without the examples, this doesn't do anything.

And even now the governor is saying that he's listening to groups both from outside and within Indiana and saying, well, without the examples, is this just doing something just to do it?

So he certainly hinted that he might be vetoing this legislation.

We'll find out for sure no later than the 19th.

But it's really taken what was the biggest victory in many, in many people's eyes of the legislative session and completely turned it down and said, Kayla well, if it was largely symbolic or to make a statement, that wouldn't be the first time and that a General Assembly passes some kind of resolution or a bill that is largely symbolic in nature, is it?

What what do you think the controversy why is it different this time?

We're still talking about the anti-Semitism bill, right?

Well, it's different this time because the stakes are so much higher, obviously, with what's going on in Gaza.

And so I think our leaders want to make a statement to the people who elect them, as well as perhaps outside of the country on where Indiana sits in this situation.

The issue being so top of mind due to the war in Gaza puts a lot of pressure on elected officials to respond to huge constituent groups.

So that puts a little more weight behind these resolutions, so to speak.

Well, Brandon, I want to raise an issue that was also controversial, particularly among educators here in Indiana, and that is Senate Bill 202 higher education bill touted by Republican lawmakers as a way to increase intellectual diversity in public college campuses.

Can you talk a little bit about the stated purpose of the bill, its current status and the ongoing controversy?

Yeah, I mean, the stated purpose of the bill was that State Senator Spencer Deary, who represents West Lafayette, which is where Purdue University is located, its main campus is located, said very clearly, which is that there's this survey out there that says that a significant percentage of college of conservative students excuse me, conservative students don't feel like they are their views are welcome on college campuses.

And Indiana particularly did kind of poorly in some of those rankings, though ironically for the opposite reason in the case of Indiana University.

But and and so the stated purpose of this bill was, well, we need to make college more welcoming place for conservative students and that full stop as part of that, the bill really takes aim at tenure for four professors on college campuses and says, well, you know, now students can can file complaints about a professor and those have to be reviewed by the university boards.

And they basically anyone who has tenure is up for review.

I think it's every five years.

And so really taking and now Dearie was touting the line like we're becoming one of the first states to actually enshrine tenure in state law and so in that way makes it more secure.

While of course, professors at basically every public university in the state, we're like, well, no, you're actually making it way less secure.

And now you're going to essentially weaponize any student who wants to complain about a professor and put tenure at risk for those professors or put jobs at risk for those those professors.

So I will say that Spencer Dearie did an interview with Dave Bangert, who has a substack covering West Lafayette and Lafayette and does a great job covering that area after he left the newspaper there.

And in that interview, Dearie kind of indicated, like some of my colleagues, some of his colleagues at the statehouse have real problems with higher education.

Some of them want to defund higher education entirely.

And dairy's argument was, listen, I we pass my bill or something way worse is going to come.

So we'll see what the fallout is.

But in addition to the tenure part of it, there's also a change in how we're defining minority students.

We're removing the word minority and saying under represented so as to include potentially conservative students.

But of course, communities of color and particularly the ACP, for instance, has said, whoa, you are sending a terrible message to black students who, by the way, in that same survey that Deary cited, were way less comfortable and felt way less welcome on college campuses than conservative students.

But we're not doing a thing for that.

Is that what you were referencing when you said for the opposite reason or different reasons that I am?

I remember that there was a particular reason that I you actually fell in the rankings in this survey, but it wasn't because of it was like like professors who were sanctioned.

It was it was about a statement in support of the in opposition to the abortion ban a few years ago in Indiana.

That debate.

And actually professors were like told, well, don't have statements of support, don't talk about that in the classrooms.

And so they were they were sort of censored at IU because of that.

And that's the reason that IU fell in the rankings, which I'm sure most of the General Assembly would be okay with.

Despite Senate Bill two Tuesday.

So, Nikki, do you anticipate a lot of follow up legislation or just a lot of scrambling by universities to figure out what this means?

I think it'll be scrambling by universities.

I mean, they have to create like these committees on each board.

They have to have a complaint process.

They have to review all these complaints.

Some complaints have to move on to the Commission for Higher Education.

They were talking about that yesterday.

They could get a thousand complaints or none.

No one really knows what to expect.

And in terms of what Brandon mentioned about how the bill could have been worse originally it was worse.

Originally, it would have taken some of the appointments to the actual boards of trustees away from the governor and given them to lawmakers instead.

And they would have been the alumni appointments.

So they did actually tone it down a bit, but not completely.

And now these every five year tenure reviews, you know, I think a lot of professors, I think the bulk of professors are probably going to be fine with it.

Like, think about it, if you're a chemistry professor, you're not really talking a lot about, you know, politics and conservative and liberal views.

You know, So for a lot of classes, that's not going to come up.

But for for political science and, you know, for government classes, for world history, that kind of stuff, I think those might go a little further and create you know, some buddy of the heads for between students and and professors.

The last thing I'll say on this is a lot of people I've talked to at universities say there already are complaint processes for for this type of thing.

If you think, you know, you're not being welcomed or your viewpoints being shunned or if your grade maybe you believe that your grades are wrong because they don't agree with your viewpoint.

There are already reviews for that amongst, you know, each university handles a little different.

So some people also think that, you know, some of this is already happening, but this was a way for lawmakers to have their hands on it.

Is there any way I know one thing that folks in history, political science and those types of disciplines that do discuss controversial issues are concerned about is what viewpoint diversity or ideological diversity as opposed to look like.

So, for example, if somebody believes a student believes in a conspiracy theory that doesn't have any evidence to support it, most professors would not want to teach.

That is just an alternative view, because it doesn't it isn't actually a fact based difference of opinion.

It's just absolutely without any merit.

But that if there were legislators who believe that they could then be punished for not having a argument that, for example, the election was stolen, even though the judges, Republican appointed judges, members of the Trump administration at that time, that former attorney general said it wasn't that you would have to just say, well, some people believe this, Some people believe that, or some people believe the Holocaust happened, some people believe it was denied.

Is there anything in the legislation that prevents that kind of review in saying whatever students want to see on the syllabus needs to be there instead of, okay, we have conservatives and liberals represented on this on the syllabus and in the courses?

No, I don't think so.

And to be fair, I mean, some of this is what's taught, but I think more of it is what is what's the I guess, the reaction or that students get when they bring up something else.

And I do do you know, if if you're having a discussion and you say to your class, let's discuss this topic and as soon as one conservative person speaks up and you say, no, we're not going to listen to that.

And I think that is unfair.

And, you know, but, you know, some so some of it's more the atmosphere they've created for students versus what they're literally teaching via the syllabus.

But I will say under the bill, like, you know, again, does it do anything new?

Maybe not, but it formalizes a process, maybe a little bit more or requires a little more bureaucracy even than than universities previously experienced.

But in many ways, you're going to have a lot more eyes on these university boards of trustees, because if you do have the student who decides to try and bring up Holocaust denialism in a class and the professor rightly shuts them down, that student now is free to file a complaint that the university has to treat arguably more seriously than they did before, bring it all the way up to the university board of Trustees and put someone's tenure at risk.

Now, what a university board fired a professor for not engaging in Holocaust denialism?

I hope not, but that's the process This bill follows possibility of a chilling effect.

Kayla Another issue, perhaps a bit less controversial, but certainly no less central to people's thought processes is and the general concern in the state board levels of truancy and low reading scores in our K-through-12 education system.

There are a lot of proposals for how to deal with this this legislative session.

In the end, what does the legislature do to actually tackle these problems?

In the end, a much greater focus on the reading problem than the truancy.

Both seem to be pretty high priorities at the outset, but we definitely focus a lot more on the reading this year.

So what we ended up with to solve the third grade reading crisis, which by the way is a fifth of our third graders last year did not pass the I read and those who didn't pass, even if they didn't qualify for one of the exemptions, they still hardly any students are retained from year to year in the previous couple of years.

So lawmakers wanted to tackle both pieces, both making sure retention actually happens when it should, and adding supports in earlier years before we reached that point, this was, I think a point of contention was how much to focus on the retention piece.

Certainly the bill's authors did not love that people would refer to it as a retention bill because it does include added measures that come before retention, such as adding testing earlier on not punitive testing, but just tracking how students are doing in K through two and are requiring schools to offer summer school or extra tutoring to those students who don't seem to be on track on the state's dime.

And then the retention piece is mostly just requiring the enforcement of what the policy basically already is.

So we should see more students held back next year when this takes effect.

And it'll you know, that was a big debate over whether retention works and whether it disproportionately impacts certain disadvantaged populations for whom test scores don't capture the breadth of their educational problems or struggles.

So time will tell how this works out.

But that is essentially what was passed.

And Senate Bill one on truancy.

There was a bill that dealt with chronic absenteeism, but it really is just a bill that requires school resource, school truancy officers to develop a truancy prevention plan and as part of that plan, they would have to start reporting chronically absent students to the county prosecutor.

And so the parents sort of get involved in the legal system.

That way, though of course it's up to the prosecutor what to do with that.

Right.

But so that but, you know, most of the conversation this session was really focused on on the reading portion.

The truancy didn't get quite as much attention.

Brandon and Niki, it strikes me that criminalizing absenteeism from school either on the parents side or the children's side, may be controversial and something that people are worried about.

What would this actually look like?

Well, I mean, I want to be clear.

There already required by law to contact the prosecutor, but in making them crack these specific truancy or absenteeism plans, it's also going to be in the plan.

But the law already says that prosecutors have to be notified for habitually truant students.

There is an earlier before you get to that point, part of the bill talks about if a student has missed five days and ten weeks, they have to immediately have like a meeting with the parents within three days, like they're trying to get the parent involvement earlier before you get to the prosecutor point.

So the prosecutor point is not necessarily new.

It's just that they want it baked in fully into the each school's plan.

Now, earlier iterations of the bill also talked about there was at one point a requirement to that none of the kids who were truant would be allowed to participate in any extracurricular activities.

They did remove that.

And also a one thing to note is this only dealt with K through six.

For some reason they did not want to talk about truancy in the higher grades.

Maybe next year they'll look at that.

But they were focusing mainly on just education in that in their K through six area.

Seems like that's the area where this state places the most blame on the parents rather than the kids themselves because of their younger age.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, the kid isn't driving to school and then leaving at lunch for about to go skip out.

But they're hoping that those earlier meetings with parents, they'll figure out stuff like I mean, there were lots of heart wrenching stories on, you know, Senate or House floors about, you know, little Johnny.

His mom has to go to work at 4 a.m. And so it's his job to get his little sister to school.

And that makes him late to get to school, you know, And so you do have to eventually really talk to the parents about the specific issues they are having that's causing the absenteeism and try to to deal with it that way.

And, Brandon, when we talk about those kind of issues, it sounds like there are a lot of wraparound services that may be required for families.

All of that takes money.

There was some talk about changing the sales tax rules with some folks, including some gubernatorial candidates, going so far as to say it should be eliminated entirely.

Did we see any changes to the tax code and do you expect to see any changes in 2025?

No.

And yes, Are the short answers to those questions?

No.

We didn't really see many changes to the tax code.

One, it's not significant, but they did give a property tax credit to corporations who have who offer child care services on their premises as a way to try and encourage more companies to offer their own child care to help solve the state's child care access crisis.

I think we could fairly call it.

But beyond that, there was for a little while a Republican and House, Republican and Democrat led effort in the House to finally eliminate the sales tax on menstrual products.

Democrats have been pushing for that for years and years and years because it doesn't make any sense that we don't tax other medical things that people need.

But we do tax menstrual products.

But Republicans are finally on board, certainly in the House, on that.

The Senate very much not at this point, But in terms of next year, yeah, I think it is fair to expect some major changes to Indiana's tax code, and that's because of a we're in the middle of a two year state and local tax review task force that was formed primarily at the behest of Senate Republicans last year in the budget who who did float the idea that has now been picked up by at least one Republican gubernatorial candidate and lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch, of completely eliminating the state's individual income tax.

Now, how you would replace eight plus billion dollars in the state budget every year, No one has said and even Senate Republicans, I think, have backed off of that idea a little bit, though Suzanne Crouch has not.

But I think what we're starting to hear from is so they've been going through this task force.

It will continue to go through this summer.

We will have a recommendation from that task force for the next session of the General Assembly when they'll write a new state budget.

I think they're looking at kind of everything.

They're looking at property taxes, they're looking at sales taxes and individual income taxes and business taxes and like literally everything under the sun, It's let's take a look at the entire code top to bottom and see what we can do.

Now, they're hamstrung a little bit and there's only so much they can do on property taxes because they put those 1 to 3% caps in the constitution, which former Representative Dan Leonard has long said was a mistake.

And he's probably right when you're trying to reform the entire system.

But yeah, I think we expect something significant out of that.

But we already have fairly low taxes.

And though the sales tax in Indiana is considered high at 7%, what a lot of people don't realize is it's it's higher on its own.

But many, many states who have lower state sales tax rates also have local sales tax rates that can get added on top of it.

That's, for instance, why Illinois's sales taxes are so high.

You add a state sales tax on top of local income, local sales taxes.

In the end, it doesn't have those.

And so Indiana's entire tax burden is relatively low comparatively across the country.

So I don't know how much more they're going to be able to reduce it without really threatening a lot of the major programs that they've been championing over the last several years.

But was the Senate main objection to getting rid of that sales tax on menstrual products?

We're talking about wholesale changes in the tax code.

This seems like something very small and could be a nod to women voters and constituents.

What was the big objection?

I think the big objection was simple.

Just we don't want to get involved in cutting taxes in this non year.

We've got this other big plan to address it.

So let's do them all in the same time in a comprehensive manner instead of piecemeal ing kind of things.

Is is all that I've heard here.

What would be your major takeaway points from this legislative session?

And as you look forward to the next session, what should people be looking at or thinking about?

Well, we started a huge conversation this session and it's been previewed for next session about road funding and what to do with our roads in Indianapolis and across the state.

Of course.

But the reason that that conversation started with Indianapolis this session is because of a bill that has been tried for several years and got very far this year to ban dedicated bus lanes in Indianapolis.

And part of the pitch for talking about that was, well, we should we should think about we should pause that project while we think about what to do with Washington Street, which is where the next bus rapid transit line is going to run.

Of course, in that says that's not actually a concern, but they can still take over the street with a transit system on there.

But regardless, that that conversation has started and I think 2025 is going to be a big road funding year, which I'm personally excited about because that's my jam.

But right.

Well, taxes, transit and more.

But this will have to be to be continued because this is all the time we have.

For this week's Politically Speaking.

I want to thank our guests, Brandon Smith of Indiana Public Broadcasting, Niki Kelly of the Indiana Capital Chronicle, and Kayla Dwyer of the Indianapolis Star for sharing their insights and their knowledge with us today.

I'm Elizabeth Penny and 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.