OK, I admit that I’m still wincing about last week’s column about a peaceful, easy feeling in the General Assembly
as it approached the leadership-targeted early-adjournment date.
Sticking points include a bill that would delay an unemployment insurance tax increase and provide tax breaks and incentives to create jobs.
The full Indiana House returned to the Statehouse after a five-day break, but partisan differences remained over an unemployment
insurance tax bill.
The plan approved by the Republican-controlled Senate would transfer the duties of the Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation
board to the State Department of Health.
Negotiations on some major issues resumed in the Indiana General Assembly on Monday after a meltdown occurred last week.
The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate kept working Friday while House Speaker Patrick Bauer adjourned his Democrat-led
chamber until Wednesday.
Lawmakers hoped to adjourn by midnight, days before a March 14 statutory deadline for finishing business, but are still bogged
down on several issues.
The Indiana General Assembly approved a bill that lets workers keep firearms locked in their cars in trunks or out of sight
while parked on company property.
The buzz as the days ran out suggested that nothing on the agenda was “must-pass” legislation, leaving Democrats
and Republicans, the House and the Senate, and the governor and the General Assembly with little leverage to exert.
Lawmakers are close to a compromise on a work-site guns bill, but remain farther apart on several other issues.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels says lawmakers are doing a pretty good job as they head toward adjourning the legislative session
by Thursday.
The most sweeping bill in years to tighten Indiana ethics and lobbying rules goes to Gov. Mitch Daniels for his likely signature
into law after a 97-0 vote.
The Indiana Senate has given final legislative approval to a bill allowing Indiana’s microbreweries to sell beer for carryout
on Sundays.
Republican leaders in the Indiana Senate stripped several tax credits and other measures to create jobs from an unrelated
agricultural bill Monday.
Indiana House Minority Leader Brian Bosma says it's more important to pass sound bills on key issues than it is to adjourn
the legislative session.
Key House Democrat recommends summer study for a Gov. Daniels legislative priority: consolidation of the $14.2 billion Indiana
Public Employees Retirement Fund and the $8.1 billion Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund.
The bill now likely will go to a House-Senate conference committee to try to resolve the House-passed and Senate-approved
versions of the bill.
The ongoing smoking-ban debate is getting a new spark from convention leaders trying to light a fire under
lawmakers, who have been reluctant to approve the kind of comprehensive smoking ban that
health—and now tourism—officials say is needed here.
The most sweeping Indiana legislation in years to tighten ethics and lobbying rules cleared the state Senate 50-0 Thursday
and appeared headed soon to Gov. Mitch Daniels for his signature.
Indiana's microbreweries would be allowed to sell beer for takeout on Sundays under a bill approved Thursday by the state
House.
