In December, the new president pro tempore of the Indiana Senate, Rodric Bray, assigned one of the most controversial bills — hate crimes legislation — to the Rules Committee (AKA the legislative graveyard.)
Bray, R-Martinsville, said killing the bill isn’t his aim, and I believe that in part because this issue is a priority of Gov. Eric Holcomb.
“My intention,” Bray said in a press release, “is to use the rules committee to hold all proposals related to this issue until our caucus has had the opportunity to fully discuss each proposal and decide which aspects, if any, of the offered legislation have support to move forward.”
That, in one sentence, sums up so much about what is wrong with the Indiana General Assembly.
The emphasis isn’t on the public having an opportunity to weigh in. It’s not even on the full legislature having an opportunity to debate the bill.
Instead, the emphasis is on “our caucus.”
What that means is that Senate Republicans want to debate Senate Bill 12 behind closed doors and decide what — if anything — is acceptable to a majority of the 40 Senate Republicans. That inherently cuts out the 10 Senate Democrats, not to mention all of the voters that all the senators — Republican and Democrat — represent.
Currently, Republicans hold supermajorities in both the Indiana Senate and House, where the GOP has 67 of the 100 seats. That means they can officially do business in either chamber even if every Democrat is absent. But it doesn’t mean they should simply cut them, and the voters, out of the debate.
Too often over the years in which I’ve covered the legislature, I’ve seen a controversial bill come to the floor for debate and a handful of impassioned opponents speak against it. But no one but the bill’s chief sponsor ever speaks for it, and then in only the most rote summation. Why? Because they don’t have to argue for it. They’ve done that earlier, in private, in caucus, and they already know the outcome.
In 1986, The Indianapolis Star filed suit against the Republican-controlled City-County Council because it was conducting hearings and votes behind closed doors, while holding only a perfunctory vote in public. A Hancock County judge ruled the council was violating the state’s Open Door Law and said that while they could still hold caucuses for political strategy, they had to conduct the public’s business where the public could see and hear it.
That same standard applies to the legislature, but the only way to enforce it is public pressure. Unlike the City-County Council, I doubt the legislature is taking actual roll call votes in secret. But don’t kid yourself; they know when they come out what the vote will be, and they’ve already heard the arguments for and against the bill.
Those debates should be held where the public can hear them. Unlike the Senate, House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, has assigned its versions of the hate crimes legislation, House Bills 1020 and 1093, to the courts committee.
That’s how this should be handled.
Public policy should never be decided by a handful of folks who cut the rest of us out of even hearing the debate. And a bill should get a vote even if it can’t get a majority of the majority, as Congress has done with the so-called Hastert Rule, which like the Pirate’s Code is really more of a guideline. That rule, made by former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, required that the only legislation to make it to the floor of the House already had enough votes from only the Republican majority.
I suspect that Republicans in Congress, newly in the minority, are discovering that the minority party shouldn’t be relegated to the role of a potted plant.
Democracy, though, is like a plant. It does best with sunshine.
Mary Beth Schneider covered Indiana government and politics for The Indianapolis Star for more than 20 years. She now writes for the Statehouse File. Mary Beth Schneider is now editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. Send comments to dr-editorial@greendfieldreporter.com.
Mary Beth Schneider is editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
