,the short session of the one hundred twenty fifth Indiana General Assembly has concluded both chambers burned midnight oil to adjourn at approximately 1:00 in the morning on Wednesday of this week Major legislation passing this week included a constitutional carry or permit less carry bill allowing any legally eligible law abiding adult to carry a handgun without first having to obtain government permission.

Meanwhile, an agreement between House and Senate was reached to enact a One-Day billion dollar tax cut in the form of reductions in individual income tax rates and the elimination the utility taxes.

>> The session also paved the way for Governor Eric Holcomb to sign an executive order ending the covid-19 public health emergency after nearly two years.

>> What other storylines came from the statehouse during the last 10 weeks?

We'll discuss that question and others with our guests on this edition of PrimeTime and Good Evening Ambersons.

>> With us today are Nikki Kelly, statehouse reporter for the Journal Gazette.

Leo Morris, columnist for the Indiana Policy Review and Andy Downs from the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue Fort Wayne .

And we welcome you all and as you are joining us by TV and by phone and by other electronic devices, if you would like to be a part of our conversation, please just call the number that you see on the screen.

>> That's Andy and Atleo next to him and there in your lower corner is Nikki and Nikki.

Let me start with you.

You were there watching the midnight oil being burned.

What was the final night like for you as you were watching lawmakers do their legislative thing?

>> Well, the final day of any legislative session is always a lot of kind of hurry up and wait.

There's a lot of waiting.

Then all of a sudden in the final two hours they have all these bills to pass and so it gets really crunched for time there at the end wasn't technically the end of the session.

So midnight wasn't as much of a deadline as the legal deadline if we had got a few more days.

That's why we went past midnight because they had some extra time to do some talking.

>> Mm hmm.

And Andy Leo, same question for you guys.

>> It was it did it go out with a bang or a sound a little blown out with a surprise for me because I was I was surprised that they passed the gun permit law because it seemed like it was going the same way it did last year when the House passed the pure version and then the Senate amended it to death with the idea of killing it and they and almost work with this time they snuck it out and put the original House version in another bill and then passed it so I was that was a surprise to me and Liz Brown who was is from Fort Wayne .

Senator Brown was kind of the mastermind of trying to kill it and she said at the end she didn't think it was really about guns anymore.

It was about trying to prove you're conservative who's a conservative or not.

>> And what do you think about that quote?

Well, I think there are a lot of ways to prove your conservative some it's that issue, some anti-abortion, some it's fiscal policy.

One of the things we haven't talked about is that a super majority behaves in certain ways and one of them is they're free to discuss things and have differences of opinion.

The minority the Democrats especially since they're facing a supermajority are more unified.

They don't show division.

>> So I think that's one of the interesting things to watch in the legislature and there was a lot of math and division was one of them this time around 80 between the chambers.

>> Well, for me there's there's this old story that supposedly a young legislator got to the chamber I think it was the House and said to somebody we've got to worry about the other party and this long seasoned member of the legislature said no, it's not the other party, it's the other chamber.

That's who we have to worry about.

And when you look at the way laws get made, that really is kind of something that applies here because you have an idea of what you want to do in your chamber.

You have an idea in another chamber they have a different idea in the other chamber.

>> And even if you're on the same page about the topic, the subtle differences end up mattering and they become part of the overall negotiation that you see take place.

There's horse trading that goes on and that's part of the reason that you see sometimes people looking at the other chamber as the enemy quote unquote instead of the other party.

>> Speaking of horse trading, that's another thing I noticed this year we kind of have the idea that the legislature is a deliberative body but they're not really they're a reactive body and I think we've starting to notice that now because in the past the things they react to have sort of been under the radar.

The lobbyists and special interest groups now with social media explosion we're seeing every day what they react to and to be the example the bill they passed allowing requiring public comment board at school board meetings now deliberative body would have said OK, the Indiana doesn't open or a law doesn't require public comment just that the meeting be open a deliberative deliberative body would have said OK, is that good or bad?

Should we require all boards to have public comment?

They didn't do that.

They just reacted to outcry for for public comment at school board meetings.

>> Yeah, I do want to go back to a point that Nikki made a little bit ago about the nature of the end of the session.

Deadlines really motivate activity and let's be honest here and they sort of self-imposed that deadline which is why midnight wasn't quite as important as it would have been had they been right up at the end of the session.

But I mean I see the same thing in the classroom.

I tell students there's a paper due next week and there are a lot of students who won't start working on it until the weekend even though they know about it at the start of semester deadlines really end up motivating behavior and they're able to crank through quite a bit of work when push comes to shove.

>> And Nikki would like to get your thoughts on what Andy just mentioned but also to in the context of the House bill Tenno to House and roll dactyls to the tax bill that at one point didn't have any tax measures in it when it came back to the House from the Senate and that was one of those that was up against the deadline on Tuesday night.

>> Yeah, and that was a great example of what we saw this whole session where House Republicans were pushing really far and fast and Senate Republicans were saying well, we need to slow down.

And so we saw that the tax cut bill we saw that on a bill that actually mandates we saw that on the divisive concept curriculum bill.

And to be fair, I mean I think the Senate Republicans really held their ground on most of those.

They only gave in on a few and ended up killing some pretty significant things that the House Republicans wanted and even what apparently Governor Holcomb wanted he wanted that reduction in the business personal property tax and that that never became a bullet point in the final measure.

>> Right.

And and the problem is is that the issue became hey, look at all this state money.

We have to give money back to citizens.

The problem is the business personal property tax is a local tax and it funds local services.

So the question was how do you lower that tax and not affect your school district or your city or your town?

And the state was basically going to have to swap it in and say well we'll cover it.

And that was just a little much I think for a non budget session and ending a bridge too far.

>> Well, I think it was and we have to remember that we do the budget in the odd numbered years.

This isn't even every year theoretically the short session is supposed to be for those items that pop up or carry over from the previous session.

We've really gotten away from that now and we're really looking now at a point where probably we should be thinking about expecting more and more fiscal issues to come up on an annual basis.

There are still some members who pushed back and what Nikki described in terms of the House and the Senate, that's what you that's what we teach in the introductory courses.

The House is supposed to be more reactionary.

The Senate supposed to kind of cool the passions a little bit.

So we we saw in many respects what we would expect to see but we also saw some foreshadowing that we're we're going to be looking at fiscal matters being discussed on a regular basis as opposed to every other year and culture wars if you will, or cultural issues that that seemed to really challenge where members of House and Senate stood on everything from abortion, guns, transgender rights rates, race book banning religion and vaccine mandates.

>> Leo?

Well, yes, OK, The the if what I may say about cultural issues as how the Republicans and the supermajority handle it was a hot mess.

It's overseen by blithering idiots.

>> They bit off more than they could chew.

Really the critical race theory Bill is one of them that were so much in that bill killed twice they the you know what you can teach and how you can teach it and parental notification and transparency.

Each one of those issues should have been in a separate bill and thoroughly discussed.

They were all put in the same bill not discussed at all.

It's clearly hadn't done any research.

They were just reacting to what was happening and particularly Virginia where that issue got turned an election.

>> Yeah, but to give them some credit, Republicans and conservatives are about two generations behind on cultural issues.

They sort of set the culture war out and things that would seem to be new and avant garde if they had to tackle them at the beginning would have been a different kind of battle.

But now they're behind and they're just trying to catch up and doing very well in the culture wars.

>> Let's go to that notion too about a permanent loss Kerry and Jeff is joining us for prime time.

>> Jeff, go ahead with your question please.

Yeah, I might have tuned in just a minute or two after the show started.

Maybe this had already been answered .

But if I'm not mistaken, the governor still has to sign that if it's going to go in the law and then if I'm also not mistaken are not all of the state police agencies against the permit list carry?

So you know, how does that play into all the police entities and then have the governor's signature?

>> How does that play into it?

Well, the governor has seven days to sign it or veto it and we don't have a pocket veto or so if he doesn't sign and it goes into effect without his signature.

And Randy and I were talking about this before the show if he does veto it, which may be may end up doing the legislature could override that veto with a simple majority in both houses and what they can't do until the first of the next regular session so that a veto would give everybody two or three months to discuss it and decide what they want to do.

>> And then it would be very easy to override the veto if they wanted to spare police some police for it but they don't speak out much.

I think most official police agencies including the Fraternal Order of Police and State Police are against it.

I believe the sheriffs association as the state has stayed neutral.

That's as far as I know and I wonder if I don't mind if they actually have a technical corrections session that's set for May 24th.

They can also act on any vetoes at that time.

>> Yeah.

Well, thank you.

And Andy, what I wanted to point out or reinforce something Leo said and that's what it's 50 percent plus one that's all it takes to override a veto in Indiana.

And so it's really not a very powerful tool.

A lot of folks don't remember that or don't know that to begin with.

The question is how do you use that limited power and Leo's right veto it and then a discussion can be had.

I want to point out though that that's a discussion about something they've been discussing for a while and so really how much more productive discussion would come during that window?

>> You have to ask that question.

I see that issue in some respects and you could say the same for the bill and some of the others.

These are national issues that we're showing up as legislation in Indiana if you go back before social media, et cetera ,it might have taken a little while for some of these issues to show up here.

But now that we're so readily informed about what's happening in other places, a bill that somebody would have had to wait years to think about getting here can show up in a session very, very quickly and that makes me wonder to some degree how much are we going to see nationalized issues showing up here.

Keep in mind that for Kerry as I think it was Nicki reported, there are very few if any legislators who had constituent surveys that said they were in favor of it.

Now keep in mind those are nonscientific polls and there are reasons to criticize them.

But very little broad public support for the concept.

Yet they're pushing it through as if this were something that masses were saying yeah, we love this idea.

>> Any additional thoughts on on a permit was carried like to add to the conversation I just wanted to know I mean it didn't happen in just one session.

It's been filed for the past five years and last year the House did pass it out in the Senate.

Louise Brown as we've spoken before didn't give it a hearing.

>> So it has been percolating for a bit something I don't know and maybe Nicky knows is 22 or 23 states already have this and I don't know if what I don't know is if have legislators considered the evidence from those states?

Have they talked to police there or is it really as dangerous as they thought it would be or isn't it so I would like to see that input if we're supposed to if the states and the public are supposed to be laboratories of democracy, I would think that would be valuable input.

>> And also we should point out that a lot during hearings the data very conflicting.

You know, one place it would show no difference, another place it would show a very tiny difference.

I do know police and virtually all those states opposed it just like they did here in Indiana.

Ohio just passed it along with us.

So we'll see if the Ohio governor signs it.

>> I think Arkansas just did as well.

Just a couple of other points we should point out that the permitting process will stay regardless of this bill for one thing, for people who want to quickly prove that they're carrying a billion for another thing, people do a lot of interstate travel.

You need that permit to show four states would have reciprocal agreements that you need to show that permit and also something Liz Brown pointed out that I hadn't thought about before was there are even if this goes through all the people who aren't allowed to have guns still want to be allowed to have guns and I think they've added a few categories.

She says the permit process allows you to know you're legal to carry because you can get the permit if you don't get the permit, you don't know what happens if you don't aren't allowed to carry one but you think you are.

Are going to make those people a new class of criminals now.

>> So.

Well, let me ask while we pivot from this topic just albeit briefly perhaps.

But Andy, other storylines from the session that are sticking with you for me and I know I said this earlier but I really want to come back to it.

Are we entering an era where fiscal issues are going to get discussed every year?

Granted, this was a strange year.

It was a bit of a return to normal.

Let's admit that the state house was the center of activity again which is a good number of bills introduced similar to what we've seen in the past.

But to deal with something that has billion dollar effect, that's a pretty substantial amount of money.

Have we reached an era where fiscal issues are going to come up on a regular basis?

A number of old timers would have said no, let's just hold off on that.

We can send that to a study committee or we can talk about it but we really shouldn't be strongly considering whether or not to pass a cut or an extra expenditure, et cetera, et cetera.

>> So for me that's a question that's something to watch in.

>> But you know, just a couple of things you mentioned in passing that the COGAT emergency's over it's it's amazing how quietly that went.

There was much time and energy was spent on it in past issues and past shows but it just kind of disappeared.

You know, it's over.

Let's not let's talk about move on with on something else and they did correct something.

>> You know, I've said before that we need a short session.

>> One reason is to correct mistakes they've made and when they did was in prison reform to reduce prison population.

But they did it by overcrowding creating a new class of felony level six felony and putting those in county jails which resulted in budget crunches and overcrowding.

They ended that.

Now judges can still they aren't compelled to put that level of film in prison.

They have a choice now putting them and I mean in jails they have a choice of putting them in jails with prison.

>> Nikki, let me ask you to beyond the topics covered so far in this program and there are a number of measures that have passed that you know are available by database search alone.

>> But what are some of the things that have stuck with you from the session just completed?

>> Wow.

So much with Andy was talking about the fiscal issues starting to happen all the time.

It's funny there were the people saying well we can't open the budget during an on budget year and then there would be people who wanted the tax saying well reducing revenue isn't appropriating money so we're not taking opening the budget.

It was a very you know, spending way to look at it.

So that was a fascinating discussion and I think just one note I'm talking about the culture wars or or even some of the tax cut.

I think this was all pushed on the House Republican side because of primaries there.

We are having the most primaries where incumbents in the House as we've ever had and I think they wanted to get out of the gate to please the conservative to try to knock some of those off before the filing deadline of February.

But they didn't get enough done to stop some of those from happening.

>> Well, it's interesting you bring that up because I recall talking to a few legislators as they would join us for this program and many were actually sort of reminiscing about the short sessions where it was corrective measures only sometimes not maybe not even a session worth speaking of at all and now it feels like how you get the eight great tomatoes in the itty bitty can.

There's a lot of pressure and these are all on significant pieces of legislation covered in what turned out to be an even shorter short session and a short session originally as we've said was for corrections and those sorts of things that that carried over, et cetera.

Then it sort of became well we can deal with some issues but not the fiscal ones.

Let's leave the fiscal ones alone.

We can sort of talk about them, not deal with them.

Now I'm a billion dollar tax cut.

That's a big chunk of money.

So that is in spite of the hairsplitting that Nicki told us about that is getting very serious discussion about fiscal she's going.

>> Let's go to the phones and welcome Fred to PrimeTime Fred.

Good evening.

>> Go ahead, please.

Great.

I'd like to ask the two media folks or actually for media folks if they had trouble accessing information on the the the legislative website.

I found a lot of trouble finding amendment a lot of trouble finding the final votes and it seems like they were overwhelmed and had trouble keeping up with let's start with Andy and we'll go around the room and Fred actually last semester or a year ago excuse me I told students who I had doing research on issues do your research in the off hours because the website was really slowed down as so many things went online.

I said do it, stay up late, get up early, don't try to do things during meetings, et cetera unless you're trying to watch a meeting and do that.

That's one of the things I told students and the website does still seem to be kind of a little slow quite frankly, although lots of good information a little slow when trying to pull information up for me the challenge is always late in the session and that's because things start happening so quickly.

I mean remember what Nicki said earlier about that last night of voting there were things getting fired out of there at a really high rate of speed and of course those things aren't going to show up online fast enough for someone who's not there to see some of those things additionally and Nicki talked about this previously theoretically amendments should be made much more readily available to people and occasionally that doesn't work out quite the way that the legislature says it should work out.

So you experienced what a lot of people I'm sure did, Fred.

And some of it is you're just since you're not down there, it's going to take a little longer to find some information but it'll get there eventually.

>> Leo, your experience saying the same not much and that I think we'll be finding out five years from now something that passed this time that we didn't even know about.

I mean it's not just the reporting problem although we're technologically catching up.

It's just that they do so much so fast and it goes back and forth and sometimes they don't even know what they've done.

>> And Nicki, how about you?

You've a lot of real time activity going on in the state House.

How are you and data driven issues there?

>> Yeah, I will say this one policy issue they could take care of real real quick is a lot of major amendments come out in committees and committees are choosing by the chairman's choice not to post those proposed amendments online until after they've been adopted which so no one can follow along so we're an example of what was happening during the gun hearing in the Senate was there were sixteen failed amendments.

We couldn't access them.

They weren't online.

But as I slowly voted on them they popped up and down.

Meantime, the gun rights people had seen all 16 of them and put up a an analysis of why each one would or wouldn't work.

>> So if you're a lobbyist you can get them if you're in the public you can't.

While we have a little bit of time, let me ask each of you what you feel the probability is of an additional session that may well come.

It seems the vast majority of Indiana's Republican legislators signing a letter asking the governor to call them back if a U.S. Supreme Court ruling frees the states to place new limits on abortion.

>> Nikkie, let's start with you.

Well, if the Supreme Court ruling in any way allows them to restrict it 100 percent, we will have a special session no doubt.

>> Yes, I agree that's a Mississippi law.

I think that's before the court and the way it stands now you can govern, you can regulate but not ban abortions up to viability which is twenty four weeks.

The Mississippi law would ban it after 15 weeks.

I think so if that if Roe v. Wade is overturned or even limited in some way I agree with niching one hundred percent we'll have a special session this one we talked about infighting.

That's one area where I think the majority of Republicans on the governor are on the same page and I would like to be contrary just so that we're not in unanimous opinion here.

But I can't I think we're looking at a special session depending on what SCOTUS does and we should also say what the probability is that Roe v. Wade will be overturned or and I think it's even money and we are down to under the two minute warning two pieces of legislation.

>> Of course the city of Fort Wayne has an opportunity to pick a better solid waste contractor.

Yes, they do and they're going to be happy about that.

You know, picking people to do large projects is a difficult thing and cities local governments in general need to have tools that allow them to discern who might the best carrier be not just cost there really has to be some ability to look at those issues beyond another option.

>> The former mayor of Indianapolis would be to privatize sort of let neighborhood associations pick their own risk area.

>> Everyone has fifteen seconds, Nicky, a bill that you found of interest that passed that that perhaps didn't make page one for whatever reason.

>> Well, I was fascinated by this thing that popped up at the end about the lottery starting to go online and they were going to do it without any legislator involvement and so they managed to put in some language that says nope, you cannot expand to online gaming until we give the so very handy for me homeowners association solar panels whether they can or cannot ban them to me just because it was done and nobody ever talked about it women in prisons who are in prison or jail who are pregnant will no longer be chained to the bunk when they give birth.

>> Why that will so I don't know to be continued as legislation always ends with and so it goes and we will continue to follow with you our guests this evening at the announcement of Mixdown Center for Indiana Politics a Purdue Fort Wayne Leonora's with Indiana Policy Review and Nikki Kelley with the Journal Gazette.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your Friday evening for everyone at prime time.

>> I'm Bruce Haines.

Take care.

We'll see you soon.

Goodbye