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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana General Assembly passed a flurry of bills on Monday, mandating party affiliations in school board races and expanding so-called “payday loans.”
With the committee deadline over, lawmakers are now working with fewer bills in the 2025 session. The deadline to move bills out of their original chamber is Thursday.
Making school board races partisan
Senators voted 26-20 to pass a bill requiring school board candidates to align themselves with a political party.
Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville, drew upon his local political experience on a school board when crafting his bill, saying “outside interests” funnel thousands of dollars into local races and many voters skip the school board section when casting their ballot.
“Senate Bill 287 is a bill about fairness, leveling the playing field, transparency and standing up for Hoosier parents and taxpayers. It’s also about accepting the reality of the way things are and not how we’d like to pretend them to be,” said Byrne. “School board races are already partisan. They’re already political. SB 287 is about accepting the reality and no longer pretending that our school boards are something they haven’t been for a long time.”
School boards already have duties that can be considered partisan, such as curriculum, library offerings or dress code decisions, he said.
He defined a political party as “shorthand for your overall world views, your values and the way you will vote in office.”
Byrne said just four states have partisan requirements for school boards.
Senate Bill 287 would also restrict pay for the office to 10% or less of the lowest starting salary for a teacher within the school corporation.
Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, said that candidates can already advertise their party affiliation and local county parties can endorse a specific slate of candidates.
“Requiring candidates to name their party, it’s requiring them to jump through several hoops that could have some unintended consequences,” said Hunley, a former public school principal.
Candidates might also need to shoulder additional costs by running in both a primary and the general election going forward, she said. She pointed to the influx of outside dollars in a school board campaign as a mutual concern, noting that campaign finance bills she’d authored hadn’t advanced.
Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, noted that the federal Hatch Act, which prohibits certain government employees from running for partisan office, might further limit eligible candidates for school boards. This can include military members, postal workers and more for an office that already struggles to attract candidates in some areas.
“There’s a barrier we’re now putting [before] ordinary people who’ve never participated in political party politics,” Brown said. “I think school boards represent their communities pretty well. I don’t necessarily agree with all their positions, but I think they’ve done a great job.”
Brown said she ran for local school board and lost before her foray into state politics. She said she didn’t know if she would have campaigned had there been a party affiliation requirement.
“If it applies to the county council, I don’t have a problem with it applying to school boards,” countered Byrne on the application of the Hatch Act.
Sen. Chris Garten, who said he’d previously been employed by the federal government, said political logos alone can violate the act. He praised the bill for what he said was clarifying language and giving voters more information.
The bill now moves to the House for further consideration.
Lending bill squeaks by
In the House, a lending expansion measure advanced to the Senate on a 51-46 vote, drawing opposition from both sides of the aisle.
House Bill 1174 seeks to create new, longer-term loans of up to $5,000—but with monthly service fees of up to $200 per month, which could be charged every month for the life of the loan, in addition to interest and other charges.
The legislation would also allow lenders overseeing larger borrowing—like car loans—to charge interest rates as high as 36%, up from the current cap of 25%.
Currently, Indiana law allows for two loans for subprime borrowers: a short-term, payday loan under $825 that’s available on the borrower’s next pay date and usually must be paid back within two to four weeks, and a second, larger loan up to $25,000 that can be paid back over several months or years.
Bill author Jake Teshka, R-South Bend, said many Hoosiers with bad credit but in need of quick cash turn to the internet where “they’re served up with a host of options from out of state and tribal lenders that are unregulated and unanswerable” to Indiana’s Department of Financial Institutions. Many of those loans, Teshka emphasized, come with annual percentage rates of up to 600%.
He said hs bill instead “provides a safe and regulated lifeline to our constituents who find themselves in a bad spot.”
“True subprime borrowers typically don’t qualify for these loans. They’re geared towards near-prime borrowers. And so what happens if you are a subprime borrower in the state and your transmission goes out, or you need a new furnace?” Teshka asked. “The cost of covering these emergency expenses has skyrocketed over the past several years—along with everything else—meaning that this gap leaves subprime borrowers in a very precarious situation.”
But Democrats have remained adamantly opposed to pushing forward a bill they argue is “predatory” and “will do more harm than good.”
“When borrowers receive access to credit they can’t afford, they overdraft accounts, miss payments and end up in a downward financial spiral,” said Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-Portage. “In states without high-cost lending, consumers use a variety of other strategies to address financial shortfalls, such as negotiating with other creditors, using more affordable credit options, delaying purchases and turning to community support before the financial spiral can escalate.”
House Democratic Leader Phil GiaQuinta, D-Fort Wayne cautioned that lawmakers “have been down this road before.”
“House Bill 1174 is still an explosion of predatory lending, no matter which way we package it and tie it up in a bow,” he said, expressing specific concerns about the monthly service fees in the bill.
“Lenders could very well lure folks in by advertising low-interest loans and credit building products. The interest rate cap of 25% may seem pretty attractive at the time—even, frankly, compared to credit card—but then a lender slaps on 5% or 6% monthly service fees on the original principal for the loan, then all of a sudden, folks are paying much, more,” GiaQuinta said. “Let’s work to raise wages around here for these folks. Then we wouldn’t have to be in these predicaments, either.”
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.
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The argument that people don’t know those running for school board and should, therefore, be able to identify them by party membership is an amazing statement.
If you don’t know anything about the person you are voting for it is, in my opinion, a a disservice to vote for or against them. After all, if you don’t know the candidates involved, you probably don’t know the issues facing that office. It also relies on voting straight ticket at the top of the ballot — a practice that should be banned. A voter should vote for each individual candidate, not a gang.
so if I wanted to run for a school board, I’m forced to join a political party? That would seem to violate my First Amendment rights regarding Freedom of Association. The government can neither discriminate against me nor hinder my membership in an otherwise legal association, nor compel me to join such an association. I should always have the right to run as other than a political party representative.
What they really needed to address is the trend among political candidates running as part of a political party’s slate to not identify the party on their campaign signs or in their campaign literature. Why are candidates afraid of declaring the party with which they are affiliated? What are they hiding?
Now for the lending bill…the sponsor of this bill works as a business development officer for a credit union. He wants to be able to lend more money to people who don’t qualify for regular loans, and at pretty substantial interest rates. Conflict of interest between the day job and his role in the legislature? Well, fortunately for him, Indiana doesn’t mind its legislators having such conflicts…in fact, its encouraged.