Local state government officials met Saturday with the public at the Hoosier Heartland Success Center. One state senator and three state representatives gave updates on recent legislative issues and answered questions from attendees.
Freshman State Senator Spencer Deery, who represents Montgomery County’s western townships of Coal Creek, Wayne, and Ripley, said his first legislative session has been informative as he learns his way around the state capital and learns the process of how a bill becomes law.
State representatives in attendance were Sharon Negele, Beau Baird, and Jeffrey Thompson. Thompson replaced retired Crawfordsville state representative
Dr. Tim Brown as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
Each official answered each question from the audience. Crawfordsville attorney Elizabeth Justice started the question-and-answer time asking each official about recent legislation on the abortion limits and a woman’s reproductive health. Specifically, Justice asked what gives the right for legislators to make the decisions about abortion in Indiana.
Deery claimed he believes it is important for the unborn child to have a right to live.
“The question really becomes what point does a child in the uterus have value,” Deery said. “That child does not have a voice. I believe life begins at conception and someone needs to protect the child and be the voice for the unborn child.”
Negele has worked on legislation enabling birthing women the opportunity to have long-acting reversible contraceptives implanted after the delivery of a child. She pointed that 60% of women who have an abortion already have children.
Negele’s bill would change the way a LARC is distributed to hospitals and would allow hospitals the right to implant any unused device they have in storage. Presently, if the hospital is sent a LARC device for implantation and the woman decides against the procedure, the device sits in storage at the hospital, and it cannot be used on anyone other than the original potential recipient.
“What better way to help a woman prevent more children with a LARC then at birth,” Negele said.
All five legislators agreed the life of a child begins at conception.
Baird spoke directly to Justice and reminded her of the differences they have on the subject.
“We have spoken about this before and you and I have different opinions on when life begins,” Baird said. “I have a strong belief life begins at conception.”
Negele said the real need to prevent abortions is better education to prevent pregnancy.
“I do not believe anyone wants an abortion or plans to have one before they are pregnant,” Negele said. “The problem is there is very little education on birth control and many women have no access to birth control. We need to get better at educating women about how to prevent pregnancies.”
All the representative agreed the new abortion legislation has not been reported correctly in the media. Citing abortion remains legal with the new law.
Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton took the opportunity to voice his concern about a bill that would change the format of tax increment financing. Currently the city and county have used TIFs for successful economic development projects such as the Tempur-Sealy production facility.
“I am concerned with HB 1085 and the proposed changes to TIFs,” Barton said. “I am telling you if we had these changes the Tempur-Sealy project would never have happened. And, I have an upcoming announcement about another project that would never happen under the proposed changes.”
Thompson said 95% of Indiana communities are correctly using TIFs, but 5% are not. It seems the senator believes communities abusing TIFs are not funneling collected funds back into the communities. He said the changes would help solve the problems of TIF abuse.
“We need to find the sweet spot between counties who are using TIFs correctly and those who don’t,” Thompson acknowledge. “We need some kind of guardrails to make sure TIFs are not abused.”
Barton seemed to get Thompson’s ear as the two continued their discussion about TIFs after the meeting.
Other issues discussed at the meeting included concern over funding of education between private and public schools and soil and water conservation.
The legislative breakfast was a Crawfordsville/Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce event.
