as the work of the Indiana General Assembly rapidly approaches its finish line this month.

The remaining days will consist of conference committees where members of each chamber work to resolve any disagreements on a particular bill.

The actual date for that session finish line may be subject to shifting as lawmakers are discussing the possibilities of wrapping up earlier than March 14th.

>> The major headline of the week came Thursday night when Governor Eric Holcomb signed an executive order ending the covid-19 public health emergency after nearly two years days before the emergency was poised to expire.

Other significant statehouse storylines this week include the passage of a bill banning transgender girls from playing girls' sports.

The defeat of a curriculum transparency bill and an effort to transplant language from an original constitutional carry bill into another piece of legislation so as to keep the measure alive.

Coming up, our guests will discuss the journey of House Bill Tenno one on the governor's desk by way of the Senate.

We'll learn more about the status of some education legislation and we'll talk to the author of the Senate's number one bill to make more Hoosiers eligible for the state's taxpayer refund.

>> Thank you for joining us for prime time.

I'm Bruce Haines and with us today is 19th District Republican state senator and Majority Caucus Chair Travis Holdman and fiftieth district Republican State Representative Dan Leonard.

>> And we invite you to be a part of the conversation with your questions and comments.

Just call the number that you see on the screen as we widen out and you get to see everybody.

And on my right Senator Travis Holdman, Representative Dan Leonard Travis.

>> Dan, thank you very much for being here, guys.

You're welcome.

Glad to be here.

My pleasure.

So it is sort of a play on words, but how much shorter can the short session be maybe Travis?

>> I think it'll be this week.

I think we'll get wrapped up.

We're hoping that's going to be this week.

>> We're on the path to get done this week.

I'll say that OK, And Dan, your comfort level.

>> Well, I think we were all trying to make Tuesday the final day.

I am somewhat skeptical about getting out on Tuesday the speaker said jokingly when we left planned for five days this week.

I'm hoping that it's not Thursday or Friday.

I'm hoping we're out of there on Wednesday at least.

But we'll have to see because there's a lot of work to do yet.

Does that tend to suggest I guess at a high level there's more concurrence than conference that's perhaps in process at this point with with where legislation is right now?

>> There are more concurrences than conference committees currently but some of the thorny issues are going to conference committee and that's where things get tough because you have to have two members of the majority party, two members of the minority party to sign off on this conference committee reports.

And if they refuse to sign, then those folks have to be really relieved of their duty as a conference committee member and then you start that process all over again.

You get new sheets for signature and then you have to chase around to find all the people and get all those signatures, take it back to your caucus and get approval to take it to the floor.

Well, it sounds like you'll be wearing sneakers or something in the tracks variety.

I think we've already won well we've all found ourselves running from one side of the building to the other literally running some days.

>> So I tend to wonder if the imagery with some of that might well be the case with the sort of beat the clock feel behind House Bill Tenno one week talked about its journey.

It was the number one bill in the House for focus for ending the public health emergency.

It had aspects to it of trying to retain some elements that the governor wanted regarding vaccinations and food stamps and such and some robust discussion.

>> Stan, you can pick it up from here on the status of vaccines in the workplace and employer employee relationships, whether they were kind of two sections of the bill.

One dealt with legislation that allowed us to continue to accept federal funding if we had just stopped the state of health emergency early would have affected thousands hundreds of literally hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers about two hundred and fifty thousand on hip 2.0, about four hundred thousand on Medicaid benefits and then an additional 44 million dollars a year in Medicaid supplements or I mean forty four million dollars a month excuse me and Medicaid supplement.

So those those things had to be addressed before we could pull back that executive order of State of Health Emergency and then the second portion of the bill dealt with vaccine mandates by employers and we wanted to make sure that employees were protected.

So if they had a medical issue they weren't dismissed from work or a religious issue or immunity from having the back from having the virus previously so they didn't get fired over those issues.

And so the two parts kind of worked together and we came to an agreement on it, signed it, actually passed it out on a concurrence in the House on Thursday and the governor signed it and took us out of the state of health emergency.

>> That's great for Hoosiers.

Yeah, some adjustments on the Senate side when the House bill came out there were a few adjustments but everything was worked out well.

Senator Messmer worked closely with Representative Laman from the area here and the two of them together did a great job.

They work well together and I was real pleased with the outcome.

I wish it would had been something we could have accomplished sooner than we did being March.

I would rather it happened in January but it's just tough to get all the parties together and get an agreement and it certainly, as you say, rippled positively it seems across the state to to now see that in fact there is maybe a psychological sense too.

There are still precautions the virus is still with us but to to get a larger sense that there are protocols that remain in place while other aspects of life try to get back to normal.

>> I think folks are just ready for it to be over with and I think we're there just to give you an idea of how that subject matter became law.

There was a and actually a joint House and Senate Rules Committee meeting to hear the preliminary draft.

It was a bill draft and that meeting went on for seven and a half hours.

Bruce jointly presided over by myself and Senator Bray and then it was filed as a bill as House bill ten to one and was referred to the Labor Committee, which I'm a member of and I got sit through another seven and a half hours of testimony in that Labor Committee meeting before it was brought to the House floor and before it went to the Senate for discussion over there.

So I think it was pretty well vetted.

>> I think I think it's pretty solid, Bill and I hope Hoosiers are happy as as House Bill ten to one was the main legislation leading off the list on the health side SB one Senate bill one the author of which is with us, Travis and this was to be sure that the good news was shared for as many Hoosiers as possible when it comes time for the tax refund.

>> Right.

We passed legislation early on to move quickly from the Senate over to the House and it was passed and the governor signed early probably over a month ago which expanded the number of people who would be eligible for the refund, the automatic taxpayer refund and you take into account there was some consternation from members of our caucus that said well, people didn't have an income tax owed.

Well, that means that we would have cut out people who pay sales tax and sales tax runs a little better than a little better than 50 percent of all of our revenues in the last number of months.

And so those folks who have been cut out of out of out of a refund and you have elderly people on fixed income that have no tax liability but they did file a tax return and as long as you file a tax return in 2020 and you were a resident of Indiana and you were still living, you were entitled to the 125 dollar taxpayer refund which those should be issued either as a credit on your return if you're doing your taxes now or you'll receive a check sometime probably in the month of May, maybe June.

There's about one point two million people who we do not have bank information on so they will actually receive a hard check in the mail will be mailed to them.

>> Well, with being sure that the tax refund comes in that word tax is still finds its way through a number of stories through the short session, one of which carried the headline that the tax cut bill minus the tax cuts passes.

>> This was House bill ten 02 coming out of the Senate is it struck me as an interesting headline and I wonder if you could share with our viewers what your sense of all that is.

Well, when Bruce travels and I've talked about this a lot over the last couple of months when two was sent to the Senate, there were all kinds of tax reductions in it.

There was an income tax reduction.

There was the utilities receipts tax reduction, reduction of business personal property, 30 percent floor and business personal property totally.

And as I recall when it passed out of the House, I think it was a total of about one point four billion dollars in tax cuts.

And I think I think realistically we knew that all of that wasn't possible or should be done but a portion of it and so it went to the Senate and the Senate had totally different ideas from the House version and took out most of the one point four billion dollars and put in reduction of our unfunded liability in our teacher pension fund which I believe is around 10 billion dollars right now which just it just a little bit under that I believe if I'm right it's nine point eight and and it it would free up quicker nearly a billion dollars a year if we get that unfunded liability paid down.

We currently fund a another fund called the teacher pension Stabilization Fund that's funded out of the tobacco settlement fund and all of that money would it once we get that to an actuarial sound position, all of that money could be used in the current budget.

So there's there's just there's all kinds of ideas on how to how to get that money back to taxpayers, how to help taxpayers and free up money.

I think it's remarkable because I don't know of any other state in the country that is talking about sending money back to taxpayers.

Talking about reducing taxes.

It's great to be a part of this discussion.

>> And while we have temporary warm weather this weekend, the Indiana revenue forecast apparently remains sunny with a chance for some additional opportunities as you were mentioning funding those pensions perhaps later this year.

Well, I'm the culprit that stripped out the language in the tenno to it was sent to the tax committee.

It was not sent to me.

But if it's sent to your committee, you're the chair.

You typically have control over what happens with the bill in committee and Representative Leonard said we stripped out most all the language our focus has been and we're pretty firm on continuing this pay down the debt.

We have it down we think coming up in June because the current budget, the agreement that we're under currently says that everything over two point five billion dollars is sitting in reserve on June 30th.

All that excess will go to pay down that 396 debt, that teacher retirement debt that's going to be in excess of two billion dollar payment to pay down that debt that will get us to about seven or eight years of pay down.

And as Representative Leonard said, we're paying about a billion dollars a year out of the current budget every year and have been for a number of years to try to retire that debt.

>> So that means in seven or eight years and maybe even sooner that legislature at that point in history will have a windfall of over a billion dollars of excess revenue to spend.

So the question is do we expand government or do we give it back to the taxpayer which would be my preference and do what we can to make people whole that have paid in all that revenue.

>> Do you anticipate under the heading of the long view and some of the comments made earlier in the session about taking some of these tax ideas into a budget session, would you anticipate seeing the return of additional dialog around some of these things that is personal property and the like?

That's been some of the pushback on the Senate side and the appropriations chair saying this is not a budget year.

We need to wait until next year to do that.

But but I think one thing that we have to face is we have never been in this situation before.

>> We where we have so much cash available to it's projected that the end of the next fiscal year if we didn't pay down that debt we could be in the neighborhood of over five billion close to six billion dollars in reserve.

We don't need that much reserve.

>> We need to give that back to the taxpayer in some form.

>> I think it's important that everybody realizes that we're we're trying to be cautious about it.

That's right.

Particularly with the economy the way it is when you look and see a seven percent inflation ratio in a month.

Actually the expenses for the state continue to grow as well as consumers expense and so maybe that two 2.5 billion dollar surplus may not be quite adequate to cover in case of an emergency.

And so we may have to let that grow a little bit quite honestly.

But we're trying to be very cautious about it and trying to get taxpayers refunds back to them as well.

The recession of twenty two thousand and cost us over a billion dollars that's how much loss we had to revenue.

And so I think as Representative Leonard says, we do need to be cautious because we don't know what things are going to look like two and three years out from here, especially in all the turmoil that's going on globally currently where we have a finance related question from one of our viewers.

So let's welcome Michael to PrimeTime.

Michael, good evening, sir.

Go ahead with your question or comment.

Yeah, thanks for taking my question.

I'm wondering what the justification is for issuing a an additional refund for taxpayers as opposed to investing that money in services that could make the state a better place to live.

I'm thinking particularly about expanding pre-K or expanding child care access and what's been called child care access dessert's expanding trail network.

So again, with all those things that could benefit everyone, what is the justification for the tax refund increase?

>> Thanks, Michael.

Thank you, gentlemen.

In your story I can start I'll be glad to.

Michael, I hope I hope you understand that this is over and above the budget and the budget had in it nearly a two billion billion increase.

That's just the increment the increase in K through 12 spending.

So we are doing things in that respect.

We put over 500 million dollars into a ready program that's kind of a spin off of the regional cities program northeast Indiana here in in Fort Wayne area will receive over 50 million dollars that is to be distributed in 11 county area for exactly what you're talking about.

The money that we're talking about sending back to taxpayers is over and above all of those improvements that that I just mentioned.

>> Then there's there's more in the budget.

Travis ,your thoughts?

Well, I agree with what Representative Leonard said.

This has been phenomenal.

The amount of money that we've been able to send back to local and to support K-12 education.

But once again, this is not a budget year.

We do budgets every two years.

We have all of this reserve that is built up and there's just some angst on the part of legislators that we need to give some back to the taxpayer who's basically enriched the state and that seems to be the fair thing to do.

>> Michael, thank you very much for taking time to call.

Connie has checked in with a comment offline and gentlemen, she asks with law enforcement opposition why are senators determined to pass?

And in this case it began as House bill 10 70 seven and it may well move into yet another piece of legislation an unrelated drug scheduling bill .

>> Travis, let me have you start on on this one regarding where we are with this and perhaps what you believe the prospects are as this bill goes to the floor.

Well, I'm sympathetic with what the law enforcement says to me about this piece of legislation.

I know it passed I think pretty much along the lines in the House.

We have I have some grave concerns about the piece of legislation myself and to be honest with you, I have not decided how I'm going to vote on that.

That piece of legislation I'm hearing from both sides of the issue.

But having been a former prosecutor, I feel like we need to let the law enforcement know that we have their back and I think this says to them that we're putting them a little more risk than what is necessary.

Folks say you have a constitutional right to carry.

I agree with that.

I have a I have a lifetime license concealed carry myself.

My wife does as well.

We own firearms but doing a background check on somebody before they can carry a handgun does not seem to be unreasonable necessarily to me.

Folks say well you have a constitutional right where you have a constitutional right to vote as well but you have to register to vote.

You just can't walk in and vote.

You have a constitutional right perhaps some folks say to drive a car.

>> Well, that's a privilege legally but in any case you still have to pass a test.

You still have to register.

You have still have to do a number of things to have those freedoms that we have in this country and in the state of Indiana.

But I understand folks concern for having a permit to carry it really should be called it's not constitutional carry its permit list carry and that's sort of the crux of the subject.

I if I was a betting man I would say it's going to pass the Senate because I'm not sure that there's enough votes that raise those concerns and I may end up voting for it because I haven't seen the final draft of the bill but it goes to the Rules Committee on Monday morning.

So we'll we'll here I will be voting for the bill to move it out of Rules Committee because the Rules Committee is not a decision to be made about the substantive nature of the bill.

It's about the procedure to make sure the procedure has been followed and for that reason we have followed the proper procedure legally to get it to the floor and so I will be voting most likely for it to move to the floor in any comments on this issue.

>> Well, I'm a big Second Amendment rights guy and so the House has passed similar language two years in a row.

This is the second year I believe we've passed it.

It's stalled last year and in the Senate and this year it nearly stalled.

And so I'm I'm very hopeful that it passes quite frankly I and I'm just very pro Second Amendment rights and I think it is an infringement on the right to carry if if we didn't have this there was some discussion at the state House about reporters and freedom of speech and if we put an infringement on the Second Amendment, why don't we put an infringement on the First Amendment, for example, and restrict people and have them do background checks and before they can become a reporter and report the news I I just firmly believe that it's a right that every citizen has as long as they haven't committed a crime.

You know what's been interesting in this debate is the state police has reported to us that in the last two years over 10000 applications for a carry permit have been denied, which is somewhat frightening because there's over 10000 people who thought they were legally qualified to carry a firearm and they weren't because they were a felon because they were dishonorably discharged because they had a protective order against them for a various number of reasons.

And so that just raises the concern that I have and I don't think it's going to diminish the number of people who get a five year permit because if you want to carry in another state that has reciprocity with Indiana, you still have to have a five or permit even a lifetime permit won't pass.

And if Indiana passes a permit less carry, you still will have to have a background check and a five year permit to carry in another state that has reciprocity with the state of Indiana.

>> And so we will certainly see this narrative playing out in a very short space of time and in the short space of time that is left in this program.

Let me give each of you 45 seconds.

What other legislation are you watching for its own resolution say between now and the middle of next week?

>> And Dan, let me start with you.

Well, Bruce , I think I'd rather talk about one that just passed that I think it was a great bill.

Police Tenno three was a nursing bill.

Most of you may know that there's a nursing shortage all over the country.

We have a nursing shortage right here in northeast Indiana.

I was able to get some language put into Tenno three to help expand nursing programs across northeast Indiana and it affects it affects Manchester University has a nursing program.

St. Francis has a nursing program.

Fort Wayne Purdue has a nursing program.

Ivy Tech has a nursing program and this will help all of them in actually putting out more nurses into the system and help hopefully address the nursing shortage across Indiana.

I just I think it's a great bill.

>> I'm I'm thrilled to death to be part of it.

Thank you, sir.

And Travis thirty seconds.

Last word.

Well, it doesn't have anything to do with any bill.

It has to do with civility this week we have a group of retired legislators who come back and they award a member of the Republican Party in the Democratic Party that are in the Senate in the House as well for civility.

And that's just a recent thing that's been going on in the legislature and I think it speaks well to the need for us to be civil with one another and we can disagree fervently but we still treat each other with respect as we should a good note to go out on and a good note to keep whistling as we go through the days to come.

We have State Senator Travis Holdman, majority caucus leader, State Representative Dan Leonard.

I'm Bruce Haines for all of us with prime time.

Thank you for watching.

We'll see you back here next week seven.

Good night