Indiana legislature goes all in on its big government era

Yahoo

03-03-2025

State lawmakers focus on taking away local control (Niki Kelly/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
The core message coming from this year's legislative session so far: state legislators know best. They know better than local police, sheriffs, athletic directors, teachers, school board members, and on and on. Looking at the bills that will be picked back up this week, it's hard not to conclude that the legislature is in their 'big government solutions' era (with apologies to Swifties).
Bill after bill usurping local control and imposing Statehouse-created one-size-fits-all mandates have passed committees. In many cases, the bill's author has little to no data – and few, if any, anecdotes – to support their moves to usurp local control and restrict professional judgment. And a shocking number of these bills passed without a single local official or community member testifying in support.
This inclination toward expanding state power has been obvious for years on big ticket items like reproductive freedom, parental rights on health care, school curriculum, and free speech. But, over time, it has crept into almost every facet of Hoosiers' lives. And few local officials or subject matter experts are off-limits, it would seem.
For instance, HB 1393 and HB 1531 both passed, doubling down on existing requirements that local police and sheriffs cooperate with federal immigration officials. In testimony on HB 1531, legislators heard concerns from the Indiana Sheriffss Association about immigration detainers. These are requests from the federal government to hold someone in jail past the time they can be held there under state law. ISA shared that sheriffs sometimes receive faulty detainers, including ones that require them to detain U.S. citizens. Nonetheless, the bill passed the committee by a large margin.
SB 289 and SB 442 both include extensive annual mandates for local school districts regarding posting information online about staff anti-discrimination trainings and human sexuality curriculum, respectively. SB 442 goes further by requiring that every school board in Indiana also annually approve all human sexuality curriculum. In advocating for his bill, the author commiserated with how overworked school board members are before mandating more work for them without any additional funding or support.
SB 143 makes every employee of every county and local government a 'mandated informer' who is required to turn over 'information' (undefined in the bill) broadly relating the minor's well-being if the parent requests it. Local government agencies are then subject to a lawsuit if they do not disclose 'information,' even if disclosing it to a parent may put the minor's safety at risk. And HB 1041 substitutes the opinions of legislators for the expertise of coaches, athletic directors, and national governing bodies for sports when it comes to inclusion of transgender women in women's college sports.
And beyond the bills that are still moving, at least two others came very close to passage. HB 1662 would have required local police to arrest and prosecutors to prosecute some people sleeping on public sidewalks or spaces. Not only would the bill have usurped the expertise of local officials when it comes to how to respond to homelessness, it would have also required those local officials to spend scarce local taxpayer dollars on increased nights in jail and transportation and storage of the belongings of the people they are forced to arrest. Finally, SB 143 would have required all counties in the state to cut early voting days from 28 to 14 regardless of the judgement of local elections officials about the value of those additional two weeks.
Taken alongside similar bills from previous sessions, many of which are now law, it's clear that state legislators are not only comfortable with usurping decision-making from local officials and subject matter experts, but are eager to do it. And, unfortunately, their actions are having real consequences.
The state rarely, if ever, allocates funds to pay for the additional mandates they put on local officials. Just like it doesn't take responsibility when mandates based on their opinions cause harm to Hoosiers that could have been prevented if experts were allowed to do their jobs. State legislation is supposed to focus on the big picture. In their zeal to control more and more aspects of Hoosiers' lives, state legislators are ignoring this; and we're all worse off for it.
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