Mission Accomplished?
This is going to be my last word on the 5-week walkout that ended this week for a while. But I thought it would be worth it to do a comparison of what Indiana House Democrats asked for when they left and compare that to the “concessions” they received when they got back.
List of “Concerns”
Education
- HB 1002 – Charter School Expansion. Diverts state funding to experimental schools at a time when the state has cut funding to local schools by $600 million over the past two years.
- HB 1003 – School Vouchers. Allows a family of four making over $80,000 a year to receive taxpayer dollars to send their children to a private school.
- HB 1479 – Private Takeover of Public Schools. Allows the state of Indiana to take over poorly performing schools and for these schools to be managed by for-profit companies. It removes local decision making in schools.
- HB 1584 – Public School Waiver of state laws. Allows school boards to seek waivers of almost any school law or regulation.
Labor
- HB 1468 – Right to work. Places the government between employers and their workers. It weakens the ability of working people to bargain for fair wages and safe work environments.
- HB 1216 – Public Works Projects and Common Construction Wage. Weakens the ability of government to ensure that tax dollars are paid to the best and most qualified workers on public works projects, and that these tax dollars are spent at home.
- HB 1203 – Employee representations. Ends employee rights to join a union by secret ballot and opens employees up to retaliation and firing by an employer who finds out they are trying to use their right to bargain. This is preempted by federal law. Will require the state to use taxpayer dollars to defend this legislation.
- HB 1450 – Unemployment Insurance. Shifts hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes from big businesses to small business and will cut benefits for unemployed workers by 25%.
- HB 1585 – Right to work for Public Employees. Removes collective bargaining rights at the local level.
- HB 1538 – Minimum wages. Precludes a community from determining what wages are appropriate for its area.
- HB 1001 – Budget Bill. Allowed no public testimony on a school funding formula that cuts state support for K-12 across Indiana.
List of “Concessions”
- Right-to-work legislation is off the table, preserving collective bargaining rights;
- The permanent ban on public employee bargaining is off the table in the House;
- Enabling legislation for private takeover of public schools is off the table in the House;
- Private school vouchers will be limited to 7,500 students in the first year and 15,000 in the second year, rather than the largest voucher program in the nation the Republicans originally wanted;
- Rather than an outright ban of Project Labor Agreements as Republicans wanted, PLAs still can be included with projects passed by public referendum; and
- The threshold for applying the common construction wage to projects would be $250,000 for 2012 and $350,000 for 2013, rather than the job-killing $1 million threshold the Republicans wanted.
So apart from a five-week stalemate, what was accomplished here?
