TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Speaker Brian Bosma moved House Joint Resolution 3, the constitutional amendment to define marriage, to another committee Tuesday in an effort to get the controversial proposal to the full House for a vote.

Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said he heard over the weekend from a majority of the members of the Republican caucus who said they wanted a chance to vote on the amendment, which would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

“This seemed like the best way to do it,” Bosma said. He called it the “least intrusive, most respectful of the process.”

But House Minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City disagreed.

“I see a speaker with a lot of difficulties,” Pelath said. “It’s not unprecedented, but it is very unusual for something of such public magnitude. I think it’s a demonstration that there is a lot of division in the Republican Party.”

Bosma moved the amendment from the Judiciary Committee, where it had a three-hour hearing last week, to the Elections Committee, which has scheduled a hearing on the measure for 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. The speaker said Judiciary Chairman Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, told him he wasn’t confident the amendment could pass the committee.

Bosma said Elections Committee Chairman Milo Smith, R-Columbus, had been lobbying to have it in his committee.

Smith said he plans to take one-hour of testimony per side Wednesday. Smith said he hopes to have the committee vote on the proposal Wednesday, which would send the proposal to the full House. If it passes the General Assembly this year, it will go to the ballot for ratification by voters.

“I’ve said all along that it’s about the people voting on it,” Smith said. “We’re just debating this and it’s never going to get settled.”

New Rep. Holli Sullivan, R-Evansville, is a member of the House Elections Committee but didn’t say Tuesday how she’d vote on the amendment.

“I am keeping an open mind and listening to all of the testimony,” she said. “I am faithfully looking plainly for constituent formulas, polls and survey results.”

Rep. Ed Soliday, a Valparaiso Republican who also serves on the committee, said polls show people on both sides of the issue want a chance to vote, as well as those on the House floor. He said he would vote for the amendment.

“Letting two or three people decide an issue this big that’s fully vetted, where does that get us?” Soliday said. “Ultimately, rights arise from the people, we the people, and somebody has to vote. The issue is it’s so overwhelming with people saying ‘give me my say’ that I don’t see how you can tell them no.”

But Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, expressed concern about those who have already testified before the House Judiciary Committee and now have to take additional leave from work to testify again.

“Instead of letting hours of testimony and the democratic process play out, the speaker of the House has decided to start the clock over,” Lanane said. “Sometimes the legislative process does not garner the expected result, but that does not mean one gets to change the rules in the middle of the game. This kind of legislative maneuvering has no place here.”

Megan Robertson, campaign manager for Freedom Indiana, a group fighting the amendment, shared Lanane’s disapproval. Robertson said that while she believed most legislators serving on the House Judiciary Committee sought to represent their constituents, she thought Bosma “broke his commitment to Hoosiers to uphold the traditional legislative process.”

“Speaker Bosma repeatedly promised to treat this issue like any other bill,” Robertson said. “We are proud of the way we have conducted ourselves and disappointed that Speaker Bosma did not live up to his word.”

Bosma said he wasn’t sure the bill would pass the Elections Committee but it had a “likelihood of making it to the floor with this route.”

Pelath said he thought there were more important economic problems to consider this session than HJR3, which only divided institutions and citizens.

“The speaker already said publicly that he wants it on the floor of the house so I’m presuming he would not put it in a committee that wasn’t going to send it on to the full house floor,” Pelath said. “Then again, he probably thought he had that committee the first time around. But looking at the membership of the elections committee I see a lot of social conservatives on there that I think are going to be enthused about dragging the voters through this exercise.”

Reporters Amanda Creech, Halie Solea and Erika Brock contributed to this story. Danielle Faczan is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Paige Clark
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – A Republican-backed bill would allow Hoosiers attending virtual charter schools to participate in sports in their local districts.

House Bill 1047 – authored by Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour – passed the Education Committee with a 7-2 vote Tuesday.

The bill would have originally applied to all charter schools not affiliated with the Indiana High School Athletic Association. After an amendment, the bill only applies to students attending virtual charter schools, which are generally web-based with limited in-person interaction.

The bill also restricts students to playing for schools in their residential districts.

“There was some people that expressed some concern and would like to see (HB 1047) narrowed, which I think this amendment did,” Lucas said. “It took it down to just define virtual charter schools only.

“As I see it, there could be one child, one student, that helps bring the team forward so much that they become a sell-out,” said Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, R-Corydon. “People come to the basketball game, to the football game because the team is winning and there is a lot of revenue that comes in.”

Caryl Auslander, representing Indiana Connections Academy, told the committee about Alex Creech, an avid softball player from Bloomington.

Auslander said Creech chose the Indiana Connections Academy but wanted to participate at her resident school, Edgewood. Creech was deemed eligible by the IHSAA and proved she was a full-time student attending a non-IHSAA school, but the resident district superintendent denied her request.

“If Ms. Creech was deemed eligible by the IHSAA, and fulfilled all the requirements placed upon her by existing IHSAA rules, we respectfully request that she should be able to try out for her resident school teams,” Auslander said. “We are not requesting that she be placed on the team, but simply have the opportunity as any other student to have the chance to try out.”

John O’Neil, a lobbyist for the Indiana State Teachers Association, does not “want to deny anyone’s ability to participate in athletics” but still opposed the bill.

“Philosophically, we feel that when a parent and student makes that choice to go to school, that choice has been made knowing the consequences and services offered by that school, O’Neil said. “We don’t want to start seeing this picking and choosing where a student enrolls in one school and has the luxury of taking services from another institution “Public school students certainly don’t have that same luxury.”

Rep. Kreg Battles, D-Vincennes, said the amendment makes the bill “much better” but still thinks it sends a “horrible message.”

“The concept is there are plenty of opportunities for kids to participate in athletics,” Battles said, “Just because they made the choice of a virtual charter…we’re not taking them from athletics.”

Battles said virtual charter students could try club sports and the Amateur Athletic Union as alternate options for sports.

Lobbyist Mark Palmer said he had “personal issues” that stemmed from being the son and grandson of high school coaches. Parents “are not paying money that goes into the general fund, which is used to pay the coaches,” Palmer said.

“These parents are paying the coach’s salary,” Lucas argued. “Don’t (parents) pay taxes?”

“I’m sure there’s going to be some interesting discussion on it (in the House). There usually is with education bills. That’s the beauty of the process,” Lucas said. “We let both sides give their view of it, and then we’ll see how it shakes out.”

Paige Clark is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.