“Don’t remain discouraged. Continue the fight.”
That was the message Rep. Chris May left with Brown Countians who asked questions of him and other lawmakers at Breakfast with the Legislators last weekend.
Continuing the fight is also what local legislators are doing as they push bills they believe important to the future of the state and nation, and it’s what local residents should do when things look uncertain, May and others told the assembled crowd.
May (R-Bedford) took questions from voters along with Sen. Eric Koch (R-Bedford) and U.S. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-Indiana). Hollingsworth had not originally been a confirmed guest.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]May’s comments about continuing the fight came at the end of the assembly as he encouraged residents to reach out to his office. About 75 people attended the Saturday morning event at the Brown County Playhouse; time permitted 10 of them to ask questions in front of the group.
One of those questioners was Dave Seastrom. Seastrom described himself as “from the wilds of Possom Trot,” but he’s well known around the Indianapolis Statehouse, May said.
Seastrom asked what “the way forward” is to get greater protection for Indiana’s forests. He and other locals fought to get Senate Bill 420 in front of legislators in 2017. Though it had “a lot of bipartisan support,” Seastrom said, the bill died in committee.
“We’re introduced legislation year after year and we’re getting no traction whatsoever,” Seastrom said.
Committee chairs have a lot of influence. That’s part of the structure of how bills move through the legislature, Koch told him.
“As I would tell any other advocate, keep it up,” Koch said. “Some things I’ve worked on have taken years, even a decade.”
The forestry bill this session is SB 610. Among the changes it would make are to establish a state forest commission so that decisions get public input, and to assign state forest land primary and secondary uses. For instance, if the primary use is logging, its secondary use must be recreation and habitat protection; and if the primary use is habitat protection, its secondary use would not be logging, but it could undergo “minimal management” such as for trail safety.
“I don’t know that I would suggest there’s more to do,” May told Seastrom. “I think you are handling this fight in an appropriate manner, in a professional way. … Don’t get disheartened. Continue to hold out hope that your bill will be heard.”
Drug treatment access
When people have been abusing drugs are ready to seek treatment, it can be hard to find a place for them in an inpatient treatment center, said Cathy Rountree, a member of Brown County’s Drug Free Coalition. She asked May and Koch what legislation might be considered to make inpatient treatment more accessible.
“I hear this a lot, that there’s not treatment available,” May said. “There’s up to a dozen treatment options available that I would say would be within a 60-mile radius.” He read a list from his phone. Some were treatment centers, others were support groups.
May suggested that organizations working on treatment “combine forces” in some way.
Koch noted that many people in need of treatment are incarcerated, and local jails don’t often have resources to address mental health and addiction. Two initiatives could address this, he said.
One is a proposal to move people serving time for Level 6 felonies — the lowest level of felony charge — out of local jails and back under the state’s responsibility.
Another is to create “regional detention centers” that would redirect some people who would normally go to county jails to a facility where they could receive rehabilitation services, addiction recovery help and workforce training, he said.
Township government
Vicki Payne, trustee for Van Buren Township, asked May why he voted to “do away with our (township) advisory board.”
May said he “didn’t 100 percent believe” in the bill in its form at the time, but he voted for it because he wanted “to see conversation continue regarding township government.” The bill later failed.
Twelve years ago, then-Governor Mitch Daniels tasked the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform with coming up with ways to make local government leaner. The Kernan-Shepard Report was the result of that study, and one of its recommendations was to do away with township trustees and advisory boards. Multiple bills have been proposed in the legislature since then concerning township government.
The problem May sees with some townships — not in Brown County, but in other parts of the state — is that some township officials are drawing large salaries while only a small percentage of the local tax money they take in is going toward poor relief. Poor relief is one of the central responsibilities of township government, along with contracting for fire protection and caring for cemeteries.
“I still think it would benefit all taxpayers that we continue to put forth this discussion, because there’s some failures in other areas (of the state),” May said.
Election mandates
Susanne Gaudin, chairman of the Brown County Election Board, questioned May and Koch about changes moving through the legislature that could affect local elections.
Among them are federal-level security requirements for polling places, which no place in Brown County has, she said. A Senate bill also requires a “voter-verifiable paper trail” of what choices a voter made at the polls. Another change would restrict who is allowed to transport voting materials.
“What are you looking at to make sure this is not an unfunded mandate?” Gaudin asked.
Koch said legislators are aware of the substantial costs that could be associated with these changes if they pass, but he doesn’t think the bill has the votes to pass in its current form.
Environmental protections
Laura Martin told Hollingsworth she was surprised to see him at the forum, and she encouraged him to have town hall meetings in Bloomington and Brown County. Her concern was about climate change and measures that are being taken to “strip away a lot of regulations in the EPA.” She said she considered the environment “to be a national security issue.”
Hollingsworth disagreed with the premise that “a vast number” of regulations were being “stripped away.” He asserted that the previous administration went too far in its work, making changes to regulations by executive order.
“Everybody I talk to wants to ensure that we have clean air, clean water, clean soil. I stand among them,” he said.
“We have to find a balance between creating jobs and creating opportunities for individuals and ensuring we have safe practices by those companies.”
Suggestions he’s heard, such as getting rid of all air travel or requiring expensive upgrades in every building, go too far, and only amount to “further political messaging instead of balancing,” he said.
Hollingsworth said he was continuing to meet with Citizens for Climate Change in Bloomington.
Hope for the future
About five Brown County High School students came to the forum. Teacher Alecia Adams asked what advice the legislators had for them “to get a leg up on the rest of the world.”
Koch encouraged them to participate in the Indiana Senate’s page program.
May advised them to have goals, but also remain open-minded, “because new opportunities come before you every day. Don’t be afraid of them. … If your gut reaction is not to do it, you should do it.”
Hollingsworth told them to have hope. “It is really easy to watch the news every single day or get on social media every day and think your future may not be as bright as you hoped it would be. … I want you to know with every fiber of my being, I know that is not true,” he said to applause.
“There has never been a day in this country’s 240-year history that we have not faced grave challenges, and there’s never been a generation that has failed to propel this country forward. … I continue to be wildly optimistic about the future because of our students.”
Teacher pay
Hollingsworth had told the crowd that “what really animates” him is being able to award a war medal to a veteran decades after he earned it. One such veteran, a 92-year-old survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, told him that if he had to do it over again, he would, even today.
Kathy Smith-Andrew, a retired teacher, feels the same way about teachers and their pay.
Beginning teachers in Indiana are paid an average of $9,000 less than the nationwide average, she said. That makes it hard for talented people to enter the profession and stay in it, especially if they are single mothers who don’t have a spouse to supplement their family’s income.
“Please pay attention to the absolute best determinate to our democracy, which is our schools and our education system. And you’re not doing your job, state or federal, to keep that of the highest quality,” she said.
May is married to a public school principal and his children attend public schools. “I’m not going to be allowed to ignore this situation,” he said. “… I’m just as frustrated as you, obviously, with school finances.”
He challenged local elected school boards to “right-size” quickly if they are facing a declining student population now, or if will be based on population projections. State money for education follows students, and if they leave a community’s public schools, that money is no longer available to their local district. He said some elementary schools in his district have 12 students to a class, while others might have 27 or 28 — indicating possible overstaffing in the school with smaller classes.
Additional money will come toward public schools, he said, but he couldn’t say how much, or promise that they would go directly to teacher salaries.
Koch had said earlier in the program that he was not in favor of setting teacher salaries as a state legislator; that should be done at the local level.
He also is not in favor of committing the state’s $2 billion surplus to other uses because that amount of money would only run the state for 45 days, and if another recession were to hit like it did 10 years ago, that surplus would be needed.
Smith-Andrew said she’s heard all this before, and she doesn’t know why the state sales tax she now pays on internet purchases can’t go toward a cause like public education.
“We’ve been waiting a long time. We keep waiting. As you’ve seen across America, teachers are tired of waiting,” she said.
“I’m not an active teacher here, but I am a retired teacher, and I’m out here with that 92-year-old guy who has to go back to the Battle of the Bulge. I’ll be there, too.”
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Before they took questions from constituents, local legislators Chris May, Eric Koch and Trey Hollingsworth talked about what’s going on the Indiana House, Indiana Senate and U.S. House.
REP. CHRIS MAY (R-Bedford)
- May is especially interested in workforce development measures which could stem the “brain drain” of young people moving out of state and Baby Boomers retiring. He’s hopeful about developing partnerships with career-technical education centers and mentorships with businesses. He called Brown County Schools’ Eagle Manufacturing facility in the high school a model that should be duplicated in other parts of the state.
- May has been carrying a bill which would allow a dollar per ticket to be added onto Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center fees. The “performing arts center admissions tax” money could go toward preventative maintenance of the county-owned music venue, which is under construction behind Brown County Health & Living Community; or it could go toward infrastructure development costs to serve the center, lease rental payments, or debt, the bill reads. It passed the House on Feb. 20 and is now moving to the Senate for consideration.
- Two new House bills require outgoing elected officeholders to train their replacements, so that knowledge and documents needed to do the job are not lost, May said. He said that some elected officials around the state had hid records or they had “magically disappeared,” and that’s what this legislation is aiming to clear up.
- May also highlighted a partnership with Ivy Tech Community College which offers $4,000 scholarships to active volunteer firefighters wishing to pursue a two-year degree. Volunteerism appears to be declining, he said. “I have a tremendous concern about losing our volunteer fire departments, and what happens then is we’re going to be looking at fire districts, and that’s an additional tax levy which comes out of our taxpayers’ pockets.”
SEN. ERIC KOCH (R-Bedford)
- Koch mentioned six “overarching issues” being discussed in the Senate: the state budget, money for public education, school safety, workforce “skills gaps,” the drug epidemic, and reform of the Department of Child Services.
- Senate bills 110 and 111 relate to drug treatment. One would change the offense of dealing drugs within 100 feet of certain buildings to include places where recovery groups or support groups are being conducted and drug treatment centers. “Drug dealers are hanging out there,” he said. “People are very vulnerable in that moment.” The other bill would direct state money to faith-based recovery programs via a grant program. He said faith-based programs have a higher success rate than other programs in the long-term. Grants would include money to help people get to treatment.
- The Department of Child Services has asked for an additional $330 million from the state to make changes in its department, but Koch isn’t sure that more money is the answer. He’s served under five governors, Democrats and Republicans, and he said this is not a new issue. In Ohio, which has twice Indiana’s population, less than half the number of kids are under DCS care than are currently involved in the system in Indiana, he said, to “wows” from the crowd. “We need to understand why,” he said.
REP. TREY HOLLINGSWORTH (R-Indiana)
- Government reform is one of Hollingsworth’s focuses. Brown Countian Clint Studabaker asked what he believes term limits should be for members of Congress. Hollingsworth said the number is less important than putting congressmen on notice that they “have an expiration date.” Members of Congress need to live like regular Americans; they need get a job and buy health insurance, he said. Hollingsworth pledged to serve no more than four terms in the House, for a total of eight years. He’s also in favor of a bill that restricts members of Congress from becoming lobbyists.
- “Work to secure our borders” is another focus, specifically “stopping drugs and potentially terrorists from coming into this country,” he said.
- Hollingsworth said he’s also looking at measures that would allow people to have the same economic opportunities regardless of where they were born or where they live in this country. He specifically mentioned broadband access and infrastructure, and barriers that might affect a person’s life expectancy, educational attainment or job opportunity access.
Brown County veterans will host another town hall meeting with legislators Saturday, March 16 at Southern Brown Volunteer Fire Department, on State Road 135 South in Van Buren Township.
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