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>> The Indiana legislative session is moving closer to its final deadline of March 14 to in fact with the possibility of ending sooner with the third reading deadlines coming up next week, legislators are working to get their bills passed through their respective chamber floors and among them the news stories from this week.

While all that work is taking place, you have state House Bill eleven thirty four.

It's also known as the critical race theory Bill received bipartisan opposition before ultimately passing out of the Senate education and career Development Committee.

Meanwhile, the Senate gave final approval Tuesday to a House bill that would let cities contract with solid waste collectors through a request for proposal procedure and House bill 77, also known as Constitutional Carry that heard several over seven hours rather of testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee this Wednesday evening before being reassigned to rules of legislative procedure.

>> We'll talk with the bill's authors to learn more about this legislation and speak with the House majority floor leader and his colleagues as well on the state of the session's work on this week's prime time.

And good evening.

I'm Bruce Haines with us today is 50 2nd District Republican State Representative Ben Smaltz and seventy Ninth District Republican State Representative and House Majority Floor Leader Matt Laman.

And we invite you to join the conversation too.

You see the number on the screen.

Please feel free to give us a call with your questions or comments as we widen out and welcome our guests to the program.

Matt Laman, Ben Smaltz, Matt and Ben.

>> Good evening, Bruce .

It's good to be here.

So they call it a short session and there is a reference to the fact that no sooner does it feel like you just started that there could be the possibility that things might end sooner.

>> How probable is the possibility?

Well, I think it's the probability is pretty good.

Where we're at right now is constitutionally we have to be done by the 14th of March which is a Monday.

So logically we would say let's wrap up that week before on that Friday if we'd have to come in on a Friday.

But I think with the work we're doing now, I think we're at a point where I think we can wrap this up that week of the 7th.

I don't think it'll be the seventh or eighth possibility but it might be.

But I do think that week will wrap it up.

>> So hopefully a day or two early at least would get us back home.

And Ben, how is the session been for you, sir?

Well, an emergency session is what it is the short session it's very fast.

You try to show up with your bills ready to go your support.

You've done all your work leading up to January.

If you don't, you'll find that even a minor problem with a bill will end that bill's process pretty quickly because you don't have time for heavy fixes so you really try to get everything straight.

It's very quick process.

>> Yeah.

And into this process and want to lead with this and so grateful you're here because both of you gentlemen have been forces behind House Bill ten seventy seven at the constitutional carry bill.

And before we get to where we are now with this legislation, why don't we start first and help us understand the background?

>> TOCHERI So really it's lawful carrying what we're doing is we're talking to the lawful citizen and we're saying to that person who is going to get their permit anyway you just don't have to go through the process of asking governmental permission.

You don't have to have your fingerprints taken.

You don't have to wait months to get your permit sent to you.

>> You don't have to drive to faraway places and inconvenient times to submit to those fingerprints because we know the bad guy doesn't do any of that.

>> So all we're trying to do is level the playing field for the good guy.

So a good guy can defend themselves in a way that they feel best suits them whether that's not at all or they feel like they need to carry a sidearm that's their choice is some have been following legislation at the state House and they've noted that this is maybe about a fifth or sixth year perhaps that the bills have tried to to move through to establish this what's what what are the odds makers if you will, going into this session thinking Senate and House leadership said this year it could be different and I'm wondering why there is that expression that this may be the year for a bill of this kind?

>> Well, I can tell you that bills build momentum from session to session and if you go back four or five years ago you'll start to see that march to getting to lawful carry.

And if you look at bills that are passing today or in the last session, look back several years.

Bills build momentum and we have a lot of momentum for lawful carry this year.

>> A lot of support.

Well, I think not only does it Bill momentum but it also allows you to massage that and get that to a place that it's good legislation, get it right.

And so I think and what I the reason I've supported this has been I think there's two issues that have really stood out for me.

One has been a time frame of this and even though we've put in place in the past laws that say hey, if you have a domestic issue and you have an injunction against somebody or a protective order against someone, immediately go get that kind of bypass the process.

But but there are people who just simply have said hey, I want to get my permit and there are months to do that.

Now you're still going to get a permit reciprocity.

So it's not going to end the permitting process.

It's just going to say if you legally can possess you don't have a permit.

But the other person this has is the person who says look, I I own a handgun.

I don't want to get the permit.

I don't carry off my premises which is perfectly legal.

But now under certain circumstance or maybe a situation in the community, I feel more safe having just put it in my purse or put it in my handbag they become a criminal and that's the thing I think we have to really get around.

I think that's where we've gone with this bill is we've got this in a good place to where I hope the Senate can can get it out there are still requirements even permit notwithstanding.

There aren't there's still certain rites of passage as you purchase a handgun that you need to click.

>> Sure.

Yes.

So we don't we're not interacting with that at all.

>> If you buy a handgun from a gun store, you have to fill out a form 44 73.

You have to fill out and ask answer all the questions they run a NICS background check on you.

We're not we're not involved in that space at all.

>> We're only talking about after that happens the person who otherwise would have gotten their license to carry a handgun permit anyway.

They just don't have to go through that process unless they want one for reciprocity purposes.

>> In the testimony over the legislation there have been significant comments from law enforcement expressing concern for how this would be in acted and so forth has has the magnitude of that or the diversity of those systems has that surprised you at all?

>> Well, I can tell you that it isn't all one way or the other.

You saw the state superintendent of state police testify opposed absent from this meeting was the sheriffs association.

They're neutral.

The Indiana State Police Alliance didn't testify.

There were some folks from Fort Wayne that came to testify, some folks from Indianapolis.

We had Sheriff Dennis Quackenbush from Hamilton County who showed among other sheriffs who showed up to testify in favor of this legislation.

And in the past we've had the rank and file, the front line folks pretty evenly split.

We're not seeing it strong one way or the other.

And so as we move through to where we are now on this Friday night the legislation went through the Senate Judiciary Committee and an amendment was was called changes were made, votes were taken.

>> It's off to the rules committee.

>> It missed a deadline.

Pick up the story for me from there .

>> I'm pretty familiar with this story from the I was there for all of that.

Well, I'll tell you we'll start we'll start where we ended up all right.

Where we ended up with was amendment number seven offered by Senator Liz Brown who's chair of that committee caused me great concern because it creates a new database gun folks, we prefer not to be on databases that allows for this provisional license that you get automatically but you still have to go through all the process you have to today.

>> So so the only thing really changes is this new database idea.

>> But in order to continue the bill's life that had to be voted out of committee, it could have died right there and then then we have nothing to work with.

>> So what we saw were senators voting to continue taking a hard vote to continue that bill's life .

Senator Kirk and Gaskill and Freeman and Buck and Senator Young who really took a hard vote so we had language to work with on the floor.

But that bill as it was amended violates Senator Brown's amendment, violated a Senate rule called strip and insert and you can't do that.

>> And when you do that you do ultimately cause that bill to go to rules, which is what happened.

>> OK, with in fact the countdown clock going on and a deadline that has caused some hiccup in the in the process chain.

I am now understanding that the Senate president Pro Tem Roderick Bray is saying that he's looking for another place for bill language to be inserted.

>> One question that has come up is what that language is going to actually be.

So let me ask you first, Ben and then you've met what you think that language is going to sound like?

>> I would bet it looks a whole lot like ten seventy seven which is the original awful Kerry bill.

We we worked very hard.

We're very collaborative and trying to get to a really good place that bill with reciprocity and who's prohibited who's that prohibited person?

How's that line up against the federal definition of a prohibited person so that the state and federal are close enough that we don't have people falling cross with federal law but being OK at the state or vice versa making it confusing, we worked really hard to line that up.

So I would think that that will show up in a very similar form at least that would be my hope because I think ten seventy seven really hits the mark and in its right balance the right place and from a process standpoint it really is now the point of buyat by the by the joint rules is if something has passed a House that's eligible for a conference committee and so there are available these now to be able to put that language into another bill in the Senate.

And so the process is still not over.

I think the commitment from the president pro tem of Senate is I do think we'll still see some movement on this in the next couple of days.

One of the dynamics of this program and having a forum of this nature if there is anything that you feel requires some clarification or you know, boy, if I only had a chance to say this about this work it would be better understood.

Is there something about ten seventy seven on the way out from this topic that you would like to share that you think either needs to be stated again or said for the first time so 21 states do this of the 21 states that do this other than Vermont that's had it since the very beginning zero states have rolled it back.

>> As a matter of fact, I just recently received a copy of a letter from the Sheriffs Association of West Virginia who originally opposed it in 2006 very heavily because of all of the the terrible things they heard that were going to happen.

Well, they never materialized and they have since withdrawn their opposition and fully supported the data from the states that we have where this is happening with people that are states that just did it last year.

>> So the data sets not very good for them but we have states going all the way back to 2003 and we can see that I mean to be fair, gun crime doesn't go up doesn't go down.

Law officers, they're not in any more danger there than they were before the data it comes straight from the FBI.

It's not fly by night.

It is it's good information.

We worked very hard to make sure because we partner with law enforcement, we're friends of law enforcement.

We have supported the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

We support body cameras.

We support our police when other areas around the country you saw with different police Indiana took a very strong position on funding and supporting and backing the blue and that's going to be something that's going to continue.

I would just agree.

I think the thing too is with the data sets not has shown no no real changes.

The other thing I would say is is that it's a very emotional issue but it's not as divisive as I think people want to make it an issue of your experience here in recent days as 2077 goes to the Senate, no one went to the Senate.

The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee amended the bill as it went over this dealing with vaccine mandates and in the state emergency your thoughts and comments on perhaps where the state of tension is right now?

Ten to one is not where I would particularly like it right now.

I think it's it's not I've worked with Senator Messemer.

I've worked with the Senate on us.

We'll see what actually does come back.

They've amended it.

I think that's what we'll pass out of the Senate will probably go to conference on a few nuances of this.

We want to get it to a place where we could concur because this has the language and that will along with ten or three which was the nurses compacter or the temporary nurses language this should give us the place where we get in the state of emergency because we're really not I mean technically we're in a state of emergency but it's not having an impact on their daily lives.

It was the issue with Medicaid and the issue with licensing of temporary workers coming from out of state retired physicians back in and we still need that.

We still have a health care crisis in Indiana from a shortage standpoint not necessarily from a health standpoint.

>> The vaccine requirement part seems like is then one of the places where resolution's going to be required somewhere along the line.

>> Yeah, we've looked at this from an employer standpoint and you know, obviously the Supreme Court upheld the CMS portion of of the of the mandate which is so problematic because a lot of the places we're seeing that are that we're getting the most complaints are coming out of the health care side and that's we're going to be on a little bit on what we can and cannot do with that.

But from a business standpoint, to be honest, I think you're here a lot more businesses say look, we're we're doing anything we can to be safe.

>> We're still doing the cleaning.

We're still on the distant scene.

We're still doing everything we can do.

But we're also working past this now and I tell people we just go out to eat.

You go the mall, you go anywhere it looks it looks pretty pandemic right?

I mean it really does.

And I think that the public has said look, either I've got this or I'm going to get this or it's really we were told, you know, if you get the vaccine you might not get covered .

That's not the case if you get the vaccine you can't transmit covid that's not the case.

It's really become now about personally do I want to protect myself and as a person who is the date I said yeah, I want to do that.

I want to make sure if I do get this I'm not going to be positioned to to have health crisis.

But if I'm twenty one that's a whole different decision and I think we're at that point now where most of the decision we made individually based on what they really feel is best for them.

One other example of changes it seems in legislation from beginning of session to current and this may well have been part of the original bill but I think the governor's comments this week regarding the expansion of the lottery was was one of of interest because of moving the gaming online.

Additional casinos are interested in pursuing items online and the governor seems to believe the Gaming Commission has that capacity and intend to right behind ten to one in a bill that speaks about tax changes and such is language that says by the way, General Assembly makes the call regarding the lottery.

>> Walk us through that.

Well, and we actually do the same thing in the Senate Bill 376 which is actually a bill of four for those in Fort Wayne that really addresses the issue of Skene in Fort Wayne who has a little ducky case.

We want to make sure we could get this to a point where we have felt and you know, as the chairman to my right here I've been on public policy for a decade.

We have really felt that we we want to keep gaming with credit cards so basically keep it offline and so what with what that did is it hindered places that said look, we we want to partner with you.

Skene is the entity we partnered with you and be able to use it maybe at a grocery store and things like that.

Well, we can't we don't have two transactions, one being my grocery stores but with my credit card and another bout with cash.

>> So we tweaked Senate up three seventy six to to kind of narrowly fit that in there because it still goes to where we want to go which is face to face transactions no online but then you have this lottery commission saying oh by the way we're going to go online and start selling lottery tickets using credit cards and we just felt as a General Assembly that's that's our role to play in making gaming decisions.

And so in three seventy six there was language was put in that would do the same thing as what was being done or to basically say that decision has been made by the general Assembly and as chair public policy so repressive Battelle's from took like wrote an amendment addresses a couple of things.

>> One was credit cards online we really weren't comfortable with that.

We were more comfortable with face to face.

We had some trouble with video lottery terminals which would look a lot like slot machines or video gaming terminals which are a lot like the cherry masters of old that would be able to pop up in retailers convenience stores across the state.

It just seemed to be an unreasonable expansion.

So it was written into Senate Bill 376 and the amendment process for that to be something that the General Assembly would make a decision on.

So it was moving Nintendo to it's moving in three seventy six.

I think the General Assembly is very serious that we are going to make the decision on that expansion and that lines up with everything else we do when it comes to gaming that's all under the control of the General Assembly and I think it should be under the control of the elected officials to say we will make the decisions based on what we think is best for in the end when it comes to gaming because you know, Bruce , your your about my age you're probably younger but you know when when the lottery came in, it's like you know, we're just we're kind of a lottery.

That's it.

We just won a lottery and then it became went riverboats and then rooibos had been on land and then we had to have video terminals and when you become the the second maybe now I know we're in the top three gaming states in the US you have to take notice of that.

>> I think you have to maybe once more and touch those brakes and say let's see where we're going here and I don't think putting the lottery online is the right step to go.

I think about a companion language and this is a wonderful transition to House Bill one that twelve ninety eight related to permitting and expansion and doing so in a structured fashion.

Walk us through this because this could impact the way festivals and fairs and vendors and artisans can be doing more within India.

>> Sure.

So what started all that was wind tasting at farmer's markets which has happened for a very long time but it has been the nice way to say it is that's happened outside of the code that's never been allowed.

So we thought how are we going to address this?

What is most beneficial?

What is the right balance of alcohol in a community?

>> And we decided on a concept called we call it permit stacking.

So what you'd be able to do is pull a festival permit.

Somebody could pull a festival permit who has a who has an underlying permit and then stack on top of that permit location craft breweries and distilleries and wineries and they can come together in a controlled environment and they'd be able to allow people to sample their products sell by the glass and sell it in its original container out the door.

>> That's what we have heard is nobody wants to buy.

They don't know me.

They don't want to buy a twenty dollar bottle of wine.

They want to taste it to see if it it's their palate likes it and I get that and I understand that.

So we tried to create an environment where they could do that and then we balanced it on public safety.

Are we doing the right thing or are we putting the right rules in place?

And I think we really got to a good place and I think permit stacking is going to be a very good thing for our Indiana owned farm wineries and craft breweries and artisan distillers and probability of raising a toast to this I would say I would say pretty good.

Excuse me.

Very well we will look forward to that as well in the fleeting moments we have here though, what are some other measures that you are looking at or your aspirations for these final fourteen days?

>> Then we'll start with you.

I'd like to see tax cuts.

I'd like to see more money going back to hardworking Hoosiers.

We have been very blessed in Indiana with a strong economy with the future of Indiana is bright.

It only gets brighter and I think you you make that light get bright by letting people keep more of their money to get into the economy and create that velocity of money buying things, exchanging services.

That's what builds a strong economy that's I really would like to see tax cuts year we are at that point in the session now where you start to prioritize your list.

Right.

We've got these bills that are going to be very close to the end.

We've got to get them there.

I think Ben's right.

The tax cut bill I think is very important to Hoosiers.

I also think we didn't touch deep into eleven thirty four is still an issue out there a lot for parents, a lot for educators.

I think the Senate version has been extremely watered down from the House version.

Some of that's probably not a bad idea but but a lot of it still needs to be addressed.

So that's going to be I think at the top one of the top issues that we're going to be dealing with the last two weeks is going to be eleven thirty for the tax cuts is another one and then obviously ten on one getting that to a place where we can bring the state of emergency to an end and still protect employees while not taking away the rights of the employers.

>> Yeah, recognize we can do a whole half hour on education issues alone.

Eleven thirty four holding schools harmless due to covid being sure school funding is still valid transgender sports bills but there is a deep need to continue to follow activity within the legislature which is why we encourage you to join us seven Thursdays here on PBS Fort Wayne.

Going out on this though looking for toasting everyone's health with the occasional glass of wine for the heart but also met you've been looking forward to I believe grant programs to help us be sure that we are taking care of ourselves fighting off diabetes, obesity.

>> Talk about that.

Yeah, I just think it's you know, we're we're not the healthiest bunch of people in Indiana and I think we have to really raise the bar and we've looked whether self transparency stuff but also just make sure we get to a point where we're establishing ways that Hoosiers can reach out and find ways to help themselves through these some of these programs get help they need moving into really unfortunately more questions that are lining up by phone than we have time and a half hour to conquer.

But we will begin with a focus on education legislation next Friday night here on prime time.

So for friend on online for hang in there and we will be hoping that you'll return and we'll get an update from our guests at that particular point in time.

It's been a pleasure tonight to speak with seventy Ninth District Republican state representative and House majority floor leader Matt Lehman and also 50 Second District Republican State Representative Ben Small.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for being a part of that also always a pleasure and I'll thank you for allowing us to be a part of your evening as well for all of us with prime time, I'm Bruce Haines.

>> Take care.

We'll see you again back here next week.

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