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>> Indiana lawmakers are mindful of the clock and the calendar as House and Senate members attempt to hear every bill that made it through committee before the session's half time deadline.

>> That's when bills switch chambers legislation heading from the House to the Senate this week includes a measure that would prohibit Hoosier transgender girls from playing on girls' sports teams a bill that's limiting contact with wild animals and another bill limiting the time frame for emergency rules by state agencies to 180 days of the Senate bills on their way to the House this week is a measure that would allow the governor's public health emergency to expire and legislation allowing the Indiana Department of Education to consider a student's attendance over the entire first semester when determining that individual in person status for school state funding purposes.

Well, our guests from the Senate and the House join us to speak on these measures and other issues as well as to take your calls on this week's prime time.

>> And good evening.

Ever since we talked this week with 15th District Republican state senator and Assistant Majority Floor Leader Liz Brown and with us as well fiftieth district Republican State Representative Dan Leonard and we invite you to call in and join the conversation.

Just use the number that you see on the screen as we widen out and say good evening to everybody.

>> To my right, Senator Brown, Representative Leonard otherwise known as Liz and Dan, thank you both for being here.

>> Thanks for having my pleasure.

I read about the pace of the session and hear about the pace of the session and now in fact you reach the midpoint of it all and both of you being committee chairs.

>> What is that like from that perspective of trying to understand busy and getting it all done before maybe catch a break.

>> Let's go ahead.

It's been fast.

I mean we've had just four weeks for committee opportunity to have four committee hearings.

So yes, it's been it's supposed to be a short session but it seems like a long session smooshed into one.

>> So yeah, Bruce , we've had one hundred and thirty eight bills come through the house Monday is the last day for third reading in the House and I think we have about 24 bills left to to process on Monday.

>> It's been a wild ride so far.

Wow.

And within all that too we're watching the smaller the number the higher priority.

This was a big week for Senate Bill three of being able to sunset the state emergency.

>> Talk a little bit about that that initiative.

Well, there's some enhanced federal money that comes with that and so there's a way we're trying to work on a glide path for when that will end.

And obviously right now we're still under the governor's orders.

But there's a if and when that expires, how do we continue the funding but not it won't continue forever.

>> But if the if it ends the funding right now will end in March.

It usually there are bills with a comparable number or intent in the other chamber.

This seems similar in some respects to House Bill ten to one which again is a low number high priority but it does not have the vaccine mandate language.

>> Right.

Does that language exist in another bill or is that the Senate versus where we get into conference time and into possibly a second half of the session?

>> I guess it could be a conference issue.

I am not aware certainly none of the committees I participated in had the mandate language in it.

>> I know Dan, you were watching Tenno one in fact yours your initiatives that you have a particular amendment accepted during the conversations about vaccine mandates and the concern of having businesses not be penalized.

I believe it is if an employee was released because of a relationship to the pandemic.

Talk about that.

>> Well, the language in the bill, Bruce , related to raising someone experience rate and unemployment if they didn't comply with the vaccine mandate language and the problem came in that many people business are well maybe not in business but as a not for profit for example would be a dollar for dollar reimbursable, which is a different type of of person in the unemployment system and those people don't have experience accounts and so you're raising rates on someone that has not complied over here and someone that hasn't complied over here gets no raise in the rates because they don't have an experience account and also there's a federal cap on the experience account rates and once you hit that cap you can't raise it.

And so it was a penalty only on on the employers that were good employers that very seldom laid people off or terminated people and it didn't penalize those people that lay a lot of people off because they were already at the maximum rate.

So it wasn't a fair across the board issue in my opinion and that's the reason I drafted language to take it out of the bill.

>> Got it.

And that carried over to the Senate.

And so this will be the second half of the session to see where things reconcile.

It's going to be interesting as as rules chairman I heard seven and a half hours of testimony on that bill as a preliminary draft and then once it was filed as a bill it went to the Labor Committee of which I'm a member and I got to sit through seven and a half hours more of testimony on the bill.

>> Well, in addition to that experience, I think it shared I think with your colleague because Liz, you're as chair of Judiciary, you're not only overseeing those measures brought before you but there are a couple introduced yourself and related to rates the focus this week seemed to turn to the topic of health care costs and Senate Bill 249 about Transpac to see from the insurance standpoint if I if I recall correctly take it from right.

>> We've had some bills in the past having to do with health care providers, primarily hospitals and making sure that the pricing is transparent, that you can get an estimate from them if it's a scheduled surgery or something like that and then they have public forums and things like that and so this and posting their prices.

So this is a I wouldn't say parallel but it has to do more with the insurers in terms of making sure the Department of Insurance is actually doing their rate review which they're supposed to be doing and and making sure that they don't make any that they post their their CPT codes so that people can providers can understand what their average or the customary and usual CPT codes are and what those prices are and things like that.

>> And actually I'd have to say all the stakeholders, the providers and the insurers are I think in a pretty good place that bill will be heard this coming week for final passage and I think everyone understands that health care is complicated but people just want to have more information at their fingertips to understand how much is it going to cost.

>> And any thoughts on that one because it may well be headed to the house.

>> I'm sure we'll take a look at it when it comes over.

There's a there's a lot of bills that the Senate sends us that we have to we have to you know, just tweak a little bit to make them write tidy.

>> Let's go to the phones and see about another piece of legislation that between the House and Senate the efforts continue and Cherry is on line one.

Sherry, good evening.

Welcome to Prime Time.

>> Go ahead with your question please.

Yes, good evening and thank you for taking my call .

I'm referring to the Public Employee Retirement Fund House bill of one to 27 from last year that evidently is effective for last year and this year regarding the 13th check which after 30 years of service my husband worked for the city was supposed to be increased to 500 dollars from 450 and it was supposedly to help with the cost of living and dedicated to public service employees.

So for those 30 years now in his retirement he received that every year and it was approved by the governor every year.

Now last year no check, no explanation, nothing.

Somebody said something about a one percent cost of living which was never part of this old pension plan.

And I would like to know how now that the state is so flush with money and revenues are up the pensioners that have dedicated those years all of a sudden the governor didn't sign it.

That's what I was told.

So could you kind of both of you explain how that happened because evidently it was approved with more than a majority in the House and then I can't find out any of the infamous as to what happened and if this can't be grandfathered in or repaid back in some other way because it's a big loss to people that are retired and coming up in 80 years, you know, there's a lot of people with medical expenses higher inflation seven point one percent.

It's really unconscionable at this point.

>> Well, Sherry, thank you for that.

And let's turn to our guests and Daniel I'll take a stab at it.

The mayor and Sherry, I think you were talking about the public the fund the public retirement fund which is about about eighty seven eighty eight percent totally funded by this by the actuarially funded across the board.

So then we have a turf fund which is the teacher retirement fund and it has about somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 billion dollar unfunded liability many years ago while I have been in the in the General Assembly, the cost to the fund is much less there's much less payout if we grant a 13th check some people come out better.

Some people come out a lot worse with a 13th check than they do with a cola cost of living increase this year.

>> This past year when we had a budget cycle we we did have more money to work with and we thought we were doing the right thing in granting people a cola a cost of living increase which in most cases and I'll say most cases the retired person gets more money maybe not with the 13th check at the end of the year which they really like particularly around Christmas time when it comes.

But the total that is is sent out of the fund is more with a COLA than it is with the 13th check right.

We put that into place in the budget and the governor did sign it.

It's pretty difficult to say we should give a thirteens check and a cola both and so the cola actually sends more money back to retired people than and there are some there are some cases when they don't but over about a four or five year period that cola will increase and they will get more money than they get currently.

Gerri, thank you very much for your call.

We appreciate that.

And listen, you hear anything you want on that?

>> No, I mean that's exactly right.

I know since I've been there particularly the teachers have asked for a COLA cost of living increase and the the fall back actually was the 13th check which isn't really a 13th check.

It's significantly smaller but it was something and I agree with totally with Representative Leonard we thought that the COLA which is what they'd been asking me for was a better path to go on and sometimes it didn't work out for everyone that way.

But I'm hopeful that unlike other states I mean as Representative Leonard said, he knows a lot more about the pensions than I do being on the ways and means as long as he has.

But I'd love to see us continue to pay down the debt.

I mean we're ahead of the game most of the other states but once they're fully funded we hope to be able to offer Colas annually.

>> Again, Sherry, thank you very much.

And if you would like to join our conversation to see the number on your screen, if you'd like to offer a question or comment to our guests this evening.

Speaking of schools and funding said bill to made it into the news this week and this is the one we referenced at the start of the show and you're very connected to this one as well.

School funding very important and the pandemic is is the great interrupter of all formulas and so speak to the importance of SB two and where we are now.

Yes, it passed I mean this is something we did last year or two and actually I'd have to say at least in my district Fort Wayne Community Schools and Northwest and they've done a great job of keeping the kids in school as much as possible.

But obviously some have had to not have to have had to have more virtual learning.

And so this is to make sure that because you've had to close down perhaps you've had a lot of kids out with covid or sick and you aren't able and you have to do more virtual learning.

You're not able to keep them in their seats.

We had passed years ago.

We are allowed virtual schools but they don't get the full allotment that are in the public school student would get and so just like we did last year, this will make sure they're not penalized because they've had to do this and that's why we've kind of smoothing out the way we count.

>> That's familiar to absolutely early last year we came in as Senator Brown can tell you and we passed special legislation to allow those people to get a full Admon average daily membership reimbursement from the state even though they weren't the student wasn't physically in school during that that required period of time and believe this will be the fourth year in a row now for another recent tradition which is the suspension of letter grades for school performance at least the House measure coming to the to the Senate would speak to that.

>> We've had it seems like a long time ago now Bruce .

We used to rate schools and actually give public schools letter grades on the quality of education that they were administering and during covid and during these times it's just it's just not right because some some schools are are doing virtual learning.

Some schools are doing all.

Some schools are doing very little virtual learning and it's just not fair to rate those schools with a letter grade in my opinion.

And and so that's the effort right now is to be fair to the public school system in the first few weeks of the House and Senate activity in Indianapolis, a constitutional carry measure was sent through committee to the House floor passed on its way to the Senate.

Meanwhile, there is another the Senate bill 14 also familiar to to you Liz.

>> It it seems similar but different.

Can you explain where we're similar and where we're different with before?

>> Well, I'm not really familiar with the House bill.

I don't know the point in that the original bill in Senate Bill 14 would have allowed it's not actually constitutional carry its permit list carry.

And so right now in the state of Indiana we have free licensing and our lifetime concealed carry permit is a show which means that if you qualify and you're not a prohibited person then well used to be paid your fee.

Now you go get your fingerprints and you get it and you have it for the rest of your life and there's another permitting process which is a little bit more arduous also free and that's because it's a reciprocity.

It's used for reciprocity.

So those states who recognize that with the background check that you can take go in another state if you're hunting or whatever you want to do and so the permit lists carry and I say that because the constitutional carry term is actually constitutional experts who testified we had a very long hearing on the Senate bill 14 even they testified that that's not really appropriate term that the Supreme Court's Heller decision said that you it is appropriate to have reasonable restrictions such as a gun store having a background check and requiring gun store owners to have background checks before they sell license in a licensed farm bill or I should say and things like that.

And so with the bill the idea that you would be allowed to if you were a proper person and not prohibited you could carry without going through the process sounded good in the beginning and then we had some testimony that was a little disconcerting that in the last two years almost eleven thousand people had applied for a permit to carry a concealed carry and which does not necessarily mean they are prohibited from owning a gun.

They're just not allowed to conceal it on their person and about eleven thousand people have applied in the last two years and they've been rejected because they are prohibited persons.

>> So there were some other issues.

It was a very long hearing as well.

>> Not as long as Representative Leonard US that he referenced earlier in the show.

But there were a lot of issues that I didn't feel like we could support and address.

I've had conversations with some of the groups I know that in terms of and it seems like it's always this way in Marion County which is Indianapolis that they have a lot more problems down their processing than we have in other parts of the state and so hopefully we'll resolve some of those issues as we continue to discuss that moving forward.

>> Right.

Lots of issues in a short space.

It's like how do you get all the tomatoes in the itty bitty can?

But among the pieces of legislation that you're following.

Representative what what what's what are some of the ones the top two or three that are of interest to you be that that you're one of my favorites is 10 or to ten or two is a priority bill in the House and it deals with tax cuts and we're we're doing some things to be honest about.

I'm not sure how much of ten or two is going to make it through the process but I hope parts of do I think it's a very important bill when we have when we have approaching four billion dollars in surplus money and and the forecasts are that that's going to go up.

We're sending back to taxpayers one hundred and twenty five dollars in taxpayer rebates across the state of Indiana.

I don't know of any other state that's doing that in Tennessee to we have proposals to cut the income tax in Indiana currently it's three point twenty three and we want to take that down to three percent just a flat three we want to in the bill has the doing away with receipts, utility receipts tax.

So if you are a consumer and you pay a utility bill no tax that's it's a marvelous bill for taxpayers.

I think it's good.

I think we have to be very careful about how much we cut taxes.

The total fiscal impact of the bill is about one point four billion dollars.

I'm not sure we can handle that much.

I'm a coauthor of the bill.

I'm all for tax cuts and I want to send money back to taxpayers.

I think taxpayers can spend their money much better than than I can or than the General Assembly and the governor can.

So I'm excited about Tenno too.

It has several other tax provisions in it as well.

But those are two that are are very strong in my wish list.

>> Got you help up for yourself as well.

That's it.

We'll have that conversation when that bell comes over.

It's interesting because we right now we anticipate having significant excess revenues and Governor Daniels put this default in place where this money is going to act now which is a good thing one hundred twenty five dollar refund.

But we do have a significant teacher's debt the teacher's pension debt to pay off.

So I I'd like to make sure since we don't really know what the future is going to hold and inflation is going up as Sherry mentioned seven point one percent.

I want to make sure we pay that debt down because once we pay the teachers pension fund off that's a billion dollars we free up in our budget every year.

>> Every year.

Yeah, every year.

I notice that the legal counsel for the Office of Management and Budget in the governor's office is looking at Telo to was was saying that this is not a tax proposal.

>> It is an economic development proposal he was looking at I believe the business personal property tax relief.

>> There's a portion of the bill that deals with doing away with business personal property phased out over several years.

One of the big issues is that 30 percent floor in Indiana when a company or an employer buys a piece of equipment it can depreciate out to 30 percent of its value but then they pay business personal property tax on that piece of equipment forever at that 30 percent floor rate we've crafted Tenno to so that the 30 percent floor would go away immediately with a tax credit from the state.

The business would still go ahead and pay their taxes to the local units business personal property is a local tax.

It's assessed locally and collected locally so we didn't want to hurt local units and then they can apply for a tax credit from the state against their state income so it would be paid for completely by the state in our final fleeting seconds you had a special day today a special presentation I did a Sagamore of the Labash presentation.

>> You have thirty seconds to tell us how it all went.

Norrin Claw is one of the greatest generation ever and it was such a supreme honor.

He's a World War Two that and he's ninety seven years old.

It was fabulous.

One of the finest things I've ever done and we continue to hope that all the other great things that are ahead for the session go well for you both and thank you for your time here tonight means a great deal.

>> Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

State Senator Liz Brown, State Representative Dan Leonard.

I'm Bruce Haines for all of us with prime time thank you for watching and allowing us to be a part of your evening.

Take care and we'll see you back here again next week.

Good night .