By Erica Irish
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — Members of the Senate Ethics Committee unanimously passed an amendment to its ethics guidelines Monday that add new protections for interns and fellows hired by the state’s legislative branch.

The amendment  says sexual relations between an intern and a senator, including relationships between consenting adults, constitutes unethical behavior and would be subject to an investigation by the ethics committee.

“A Senator violates this code of ethics if…the Senator knowingly or intentionally engages in sexual intercourse or other sexual conduct…with an individual who is participating in a paid or an unpaid internship with the Senate, the House of Representatives, or another agency within the legislative branch of Indiana state government,” the amendment states.

Committee members developed the amendment after the personnel subcommittee of the Legislative Council provided new recommendations for sexual harassment prevention policies Nov. 7. The personnel subcommittee is chaired by House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and includes bipartisan membership from each chamber.

One particular recommendation by the subcommittee included a call to both chambers to draft amendments to the codes of ethics in the state House and Senate to permit any person, including members of the public, interns, staff and more, to bring allegations of sexual harassment to their respective ethics committees.

Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, chairs the Senate Ethics Committee and said the amendment approved Monday serves as a vital step in protecting lawmakers and alleged victims alike. She added the amendment ensures lawmakers are held to higher standards per best practices followed by other states and in the corporate world, all of which were considered by the personnel committee.

“What has frankly disturbed me about some things is the lack of confidentiality, and I think for someone to come forward they need to deserve it,” Brown said. “Also, because we are elected officials, we also want to make sure people aren’t using this as a political tool, and so both sides should be protected until a thorough investigation is done.”

The House Ethics Committee, too, is preparing to propose an identical amendment, Brown said.

House Ethics Committee Vice-Chair Sue Errington, D-Muncie, confirmed her committee will discuss their version of the amendment Thursday during a public hearing. She said legislators in both chambers agreed to the change in an executive meeting with the Legislative Council last week.

“There’s such a power imbalance, even when [the relationship] is consensual,” Errington said. “These are young people. Their parents are expecting that we have the kind of standards that would protect [interns].”

While Errington said there was no indication Republican members are opposed to the change, members might propose unexpected amendments at the public hearing.

Rep. Sharon Negele, R-Attica, chair of the House committee, called the extended rule a “no brainer” for both parties and said she believes members will approve the amendment. But she said it is “well within the rights” of any member to propose additional or unexpected amendments. So far, Negele said what she has heard of additional changes is coming from Democratic members.

“It makes proper sense that [ethics rules for interns] should be spelled out,” Negele said.

The chairwoman is taking a hard stance in any situation involving an intern and lawmaker who want to pursue a consensual relationship, particularly as younger legislators start their careers at the Statehouse this session.

“My attitude as a mother is you can wait four months,” she said.

Although the Senate committee’s amendment passed 6-0, the change is not official until it is presented to the full Senate for a vote. Brown said the amended guidelines could make an appearance on the floor this week.

FOOTNOTE: Erica Irish is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – The decision by the Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray to bottle up hate crimes legislation in a caucus is instructive in so many ways.

It’s secretive.

It’s high-handed.

It’s an affront to principles of good and open government.

And it’s just wrong.

But none of that has stopped Bray, R-Martinsville, from doing it.

The question is why.

And the answer is – because he can.

Gerrymandering allows him to get away with it.

The surgical precision with which Republicans have drawn the legislative maps in Indiana produces several results, none of them good.

One is that it warps election results and thus often thwarts the will of the people.

Indiana is a solidly conservative, Republican state. But it is not an 80 percent Republican state, as the makeup of Bray’s Senate would suggest. It is not even a 67 percent Republican state, as the representation in the Indiana House of Representatives suggests.

The best guess is that Indiana is a 55 percent to 58 percent Republican state. It’s only a guess because there are legislative districts in which candidates run unopposed – another unfortunate consequence of gerrymandering – and this distorts the numbers.

That they come from districts cherry-picked for their comfort and convenience allows legislators, year after year after year, to ignore broad public mandates in favor of, for example, sensible gun laws or better school funding. Gerrymandering builds a firewall against public pressure for lawmakers and at the same time makes them more susceptible to the blandishments, enticements and pressures offered and exerted by special interests.

This, in turn, leads to the final and frustrating consequence of gerrymandering.

It creates a political culture in which amazing levels of arrogance can take root and flower.

Crafting hate-crimes legislation that addresses the problem of the increasing incidence of offenses motivated by bias without violating constitutional protections of freedom of conscience and speech will require effort. This likely will anger the most committed activists on both sides of the question, but there are plausible arguments to be made and reasonable concerns to be advanced both for and against hate-crimes laws.

For that reason, it is exactly the sort of public issue for full and open discussion.

But that’s exactly what Bray’s decision to keep the debate that matters locked behind closed caucus doors will deny us.

In doing so, Bray – an official elected, in theory, to serve the public – has decided to have other public officials determine what is in the public’s interest away from the public’s eyes and ears.

And, he’s doing it, again, because he can.

Gerrymandering allows him to get away with it.

There have been attempts in recent years to take the practice of drawing their own maps and thus selecting their own voters out of the hands of the state’s lawmakers. Because, though, such a reform must be approved by the legislators themselves, such efforts inevitably die.

In fact, all too often, they don’t even receive a vote in the legislative committee to which they have been assigned.

A committee chair from – you guessed it – a safely gerrymandered district just slips the redistricting reform bill into his pocket and offers a sly smile of contempt to the citizens’ howls of outrage.

Because he can.

Gerrymandering allows him to get away with it.

Our state has some genuine and significant challenges to meet. Crafting an effective and sensible hate-crimes law is only one of them, but, in this case, it’s symptomatic. So long as we have a political system and culture in place that rewards legislators for ignoring public concerns rather than addressing them, we’re not likely to make the progress we should.

As Rodric Bray’s decision to bottle up hate-crimes bills in caucus demonstrates, our lawmakers will continue to do public business in secret and act as if we work for them rather than the other way around without thinking twice about it.

Because they can.

Gerrymandering allows them to get away with it.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.