May 8, 2009

Penalties, childhood poverty commission, charity gaming adjustment among ICC legislative successes

By BRIGID CURTIS AYER (Indiana Catholic Conference)

April 29 marked the close of the regular session of the Indiana General Assembly. Upon adjournment each year, lawmakers’ action and inaction brings success and disappointment for many of the Indiana Catholic Conference’s legislative priorities. This year is no different.

Bills to enhance penalties for feticide; create a child poverty commission, and adjust charity gaming rules will become law this year and were legislative successes of the Indiana Catholic Conference.

Senate Bill 236 authored by Sen. James Merritt (R-Indianapolis), a father of twins, said his proposal would enhance the penalty for a person who commits murder or attempted murder where the unborn is concerned.

Twins carried by bank teller Katherin Shuffield of Indianapolis were only five months gestation when they were killed. Current law allows murder charges to be filed only if the fetus has reached seven months gestation.

In the case of the bank teller tragedy, SB 236 would have subjected the offender to an additional term of imprisonment of six to 20 years because two unborn twins were lost. SB 236 also increases the penalty for feticide from a Class C felony to a Class B felony, Merritt said.

“Many of my constituents are customers of the Huntington Bank and frequent the neighborhood where the hold-up and shooting occurred,” Merritt said. “Plus, as the father of twins, this story really hit home with me.”

Nationwide, 37 states have feticide laws, and 18 of those consider the killing of a fetus at any age to be murder, Merritt said.

“It’s time Indiana catches up with the rest of the country on this important issue,” Merritt said.

SB 236 defines feticide as the termination of a human pregnancy. The bill passed the Senate 40-9. The House passed the bill 96-0. Since the bill was amended by the House, the Senate had to vote on or concur with the House amendments. The Senate concurred by a 44-2 vote. Gov. Mitch Daniels is ex-pected to sign the bill into law.

Lawmakers passed a measure to create a childhood poverty commission to conduct an in-depth study of childhood poverty in Indiana. The 23-member panel will be composed of child poverty experts from governmental agencies, non-profit advocacy groups, faith-based community groups, and area academia from Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame, and Purdue University.

Sen. Dennis Kruse, (R-Auburn), author of the proposal which passed the Senate (41-7) said that the purpose of the bill is to keep the issue of children in poverty before the Indiana General Assembly. “Poverty has been with us since the beginning of man and will probably always be with us, but that doesn’t mean we ignore it or accept it. I think we have an obligation for our generation to do what we can do to reduce childhood poverty,” said Kruse. “The commission will be an effort in Indiana to reduce childhood poverty by 50 percent by the year 2020. There are roughly 20 other states that have similar commissions in place to address the problem,” he said.

Kruse said that Indiana ranks 30 out of the 50 states in childhood poverty. “Indiana has more than the national average of children in poverty,” said Kruse. This is something Sen. Kruse hopes to change through the commission.

The original bill to create the commission died, but the contents of the bill were added to SB 365 which passed.

A bill to adjust a charity gaming regulation also passed this year thanks to the efforts of three Catholic lawmakers Reps. Mark Messmer (R-Jasper), Matt Bell (R-Avilla) and Sen. Jean Leising (R-Old-enburg) who authored a proposal to allow festival workers to participate in activities other than the game they are working.

Senate Bill 414 passed the House unanimously on April 15.  The bill allows charity gaming workers at festivals to participate in gaming activities. The current charitable gaming law does not allow workers who work for only part of an event to partake in activities at multi-day or multi-game events, such as church festivals. 

“I think the unanimous support for this bill proves that the reasoning behind the legislation is sound and uncontroversial,” said Messmer. “The bill does nothing to expand gambling in our state, it merely clears up an oversight in existing code that didn’t allow these volunteer workers to take part in gaming ac-tivities.” Rep. Messmer co-chaired the Holy Family Church’s parish picnic in Jasper for the past two years. Having worked on this event, Messmer said. “I have seen the way that this oversight in our law is a financial drain on these organizations. Even more, it took some of the fun out of these festivals for the folks who volunteered their time to work.  The Sen-ate concurred on the House amendments by a 39-7 vote and the governor is expected to sign the bill.

Because the Indiana General Assembly did not agree on a budget by the April 29 adjournment deadline, lawmakers will reconvene when called to return by Gov. Mitch Daniels. The governor is expected to call lawmakers back in June. Law-makers must agree on a budget which will go into effect July 1, or the state will not have an operating budget.

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