Legislation creating a “military police force” of Indiana National Guard members — to be deployed around the state at the governor’s behest — overwhelmingly passed the Senate on Tuesday despite bipartisan opposition.
The Senate also approved more than three-dozen other bills — dealing with housing deregulation, commercial truck driving, health care and more — ahead of a key third-reading deadline on Tuesday.
House Bill 1343 would allow the guard’s leader, the adjutant general, to establish a military police unit of members with police powers: arrests, searches, seizures and more.
Members would have to complete army or air military police training and Indiana-specific law enforcement instruction. They’d also need security clearances and clean records.
Gov. Mike Braun could authorize the force to exercise those policing powers throughout the state after providing “reasonable” notice to local law enforcement. He’d coordinate with them “as circumstances permit.”
What to watch in the last week of Indiana’s legislative session
Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, said she and a caucus colleague held a third house this month. A handful of constituents supported the bill and about 100 opposed it.
“I think, you know, they were probably colored by what happened in Minnesota, and that concerns me as well in this bill,” she said, referencing an ongoing, lethal federal immigration enforcement operation in that state. “I know it’s not the intent, but it happened. Two people were killed that shouldn’t have been.”
Becker said she turned to her sheriff. Evansville is the seat of Vanderburgh County, where Noah Robinson serves as sheriff.
“This is his quote,” she told senators. “‘There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state; the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.’ … I intend to vote ‘no.'”
Sen. Scott Baldwin, House Bill 1343’s sponsor in the Senate, emphasized that the military police idea predates “Operation Metro Surge,” and that those fatalities happened in a different “under a completely different set of circumstances.”
In his view, the bill adds safeguards via the training and other requirements.
The governor can already “deploy the state police or the National Guard nearly broadly for almost anything right now,” Baldwin said. “… This is professionalization and an increased level of training for a force that can already be mobilized.”
“On Indiana’s worst day, the National Guard is going to be there … alongside the state police and local law enforcement,” he concluded. “This legislation is nothing other than preparing Indiana for its worst day.”
The bill passed on a vote of 38-10.
All the bills referenced here were amended in the Senate, meaning that the House must consent to the edits, or delegates from both chambers must work out a compromise, before the bills go to Gov. Mike Braun’s desk. The session ends Friday.
Deregulating housing, education
Senators advanced three House Republican priority bills tackling regulations and state boards in the span of four minutes on Tuesday morning — with no discussion beyond brief summaries provided by the proposals’ Senate sponsors.
A bill to boost the state’s housing supply by curtailing what its supporters have derided as costly, “unnecessary” local regulations moved out of the Senate on a 35-13 vote.
House Bill 1001 has come under fire from members of both parties concerned about a “one-size-fits-all” approach that could overstep into local decision-making.
Another proposal aimed at cutting the number of state boards and commissions advanced 47-1, although it is less ambitious than first proposed this legislative session.
A previous version of House Bill 1003 targeted 63 boards, commissions, committees and councils for elimination at the end of this year. Senate amendments dialed that number back to 41 and delayed the eliminations until July 2027 to allow for possible changes during next year’s session.
The Senate version retains the state’s Natural Resources Commission, which the House-backed bill would’ve scrapped.
Another contentious action remains in the bill, however: elimination of the Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission, with its building code responsibilities shifting to the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
Also approved was a measure continuing a multi-year effort to strip unused or outdated language from Indiana’s education code. Senators approved House Bill 1004 in a vote of 28-20.
CDL limits, public records and carbon sequestration
A Bureau of Motor Vehicles bill commandeered Tuesday for driver English-language and immigration checks exited the Senate one day later on a unanimous, 48-0 vote.
New language folded into House Bill 1200 would require commercial driver’s licensees to pass a skills exam in English to operate a commercial truck in Indiana. Drivers could also lose their CDLs if they lack legal immigration status.
An anti-bot overhaul of the state’s public records law additionally garnered unanimous support in a 48-0 vote. House Bill 1360 would allow state and local public agencies to set up online portals distinguishing bots from humans and Hoosiers from out-of-staters.
Sen. Liz Brown, the Senate sponsor, offered her colleagues a poem: “There once was a bot named ‘Chat’ whose need for info was bad; if you want the data, you will now use CAPTCHA, or else the county can say nah.”
Despite sustained local opposition to all things carbon dioxide storage, the Senate approved legislation requiring the Department of Natural Resources to pursue primacy over the well permits for those projects. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently reviews them.
House Bill 1368, which also outlines a state-level regulatory scheme, moved on a 29-19 vote.
Care for young and old Hoosiers
Another measure would require the state’s Department of Child Services to publicly release more information about child abuse fatalities through a beefed-up annual report and to news media. House Bill 1257 passed out of the Senate on a unanimous, 48-0 vote.
House Bill 1277, pitched as a fix for Indiana’s troubled Pathways for Aging Medicaid program, passed the Senate in a unanimous, 47-0 vote. Pathways is a managed care model for long-term services and supports.
Tuesday was the deadline for bills to receive votes in the opposite chamber from which they originated. Lawmakers have through Friday — the planned end of the legislative session — to finalize their proposals.
Deputy Editor Tom Davies contributed.
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