Next order of business is roll call members, please indicate your presence when the machine is open, all the members voted to roll.
Okay, welcome to the first episode of Session Sessions. I'm Blake Johnson, I'm joined by my very good friend and colleague, State Representative Mitch Gore. Mitch, thanks for hanging out.
My pleasure.
So we're a couple days away from the start of session. And I think one of the things I want to start talking about as this being our first episode is why we're doing this, why we think this is important. And why we're spending the time I think, even just leading up to the days of session to kind of give folks a peek behind the way things were going. And the number one reason I think we started with was to shine a light on some of the things that are happening in a place in the
state. That's very, very important. You know, a lot of important issues being brought up a lot of decisions being made, infrastructure, public safety, education, individual rights, housing, all of that is happening over the course of the next four months in the statehouse. And not a lot of people get a lot of visibility into that.
No, and you know, as to people who are there every day of session, you know, it's kind of incumbent upon us to pull the curtain back a little bit. And spotlights some of the issues that are moving through, maybe provide some insight into things that are going on, perhaps people don't know about how the sausage is made, really get people totally up to speed on on what's going on.
Yeah, and I think it's really interesting to me, because I think governments often really inaccessible. And to our discredit, I think as politicians elected officials, we often don't do a fantastic job of making things more
digestible. So this provides kind of an opportunity to, to look at this from our perspective to kind of look back on the week that happened and share with you all, what we saw, from our perspective, what we see coming down the pike, why issues matter what certain things are happening, and hopefully along the way, also introduce you to some legislators who maybe are your legislator, maybe they're not, but give you an opportunity to get to know them and things they care about, as well, there's,
there's another thing I wanted to bring up, which is a study I saw from John Hopkins is back in 2018. But it revealed some kind of interesting data that just points to how unimportant we are. And number one was 33%, could not name their governor. So this was of across the country, a survey done 33% of respondents could not name their governor, fewer than 20% could name their state legislators.
And if you think about that, I think it's critically important to understand that we think what we're doing is getting a lot of attention, and people are seeing all of it and they know the work that's being done. But a lot of people have no idea what's going on at all,
Certainly, and you can see this during election season. You introduce yourself to somebody say hey, I'd like to be your state representative. And he said, Oh, yeah, I know, you'll do a great job out in Washington, DC. Like no man, it's, you know, we'll be down at the State House, doing things that impact, you know, your day to day life, perhaps even more than what happens in Washington. So yeah,
That's absolutely right. Another statistic that I thought was interesting, 50% did not know if their state had one or two houses in the legislature. So I think we can, we can give you that information now that we have two, we serve in the House of Representatives. And across the hall is the Senate, we have 100 members, they have 50. 2 chambers in the Indiana legislature. Any of these other statistics jump out at you, Mitch, that you saw here.
You know, I mean, just at a baseline when you look at the study, and you see that more than 50% don't know if their state has a constitution. Right. I mean, you know, that's the founding document for, you know, what you and I do at the statehouse, and, and really guarantees some rights. I mean, they're, you know, the abortion rates going on right now. And, and, you know, the state constitution is brought up as a, as a means to addressing that
issue. And, and, you know, over half of people don't know if we have one or not, it is kind of kind of alarming, I suppose. Well, so
then the goal of what we're doing today is to help educate and help folks realize that what's going on here, as Matt is important, and they have an opportunity to get involved. You know, let's talk about what's already happened leading up to next week match once you take it away.
Yeah, sure. So you know, it all begins with the election. So in the Indiana House of Representatives, just like the US House members are elected. They have two year terms, so they're elected every other year. And that just occurred last year, and 2022. All 100 seats in the house were up. And it was also the first election that we had under our new district maps. So my district changed a little bit as did yours. Everybody's changed. Mine didn't change too
dramatically. But the result is that we have 14 new members in the Indiana House of Representatives, most of them as a result of of other members retiring. But there were some pickups for example, the Indiana house Democratic caucus gained one seat. We're still in the Super minority. We went from 29 to 30. Despite by the way, usually getting well over 40% of all ballots cast, you know what I'm sure we'll talk about gerrymandering at some point.
But so our new colleagues are Dr. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, and our friend Kyle Miller up in Fort Wayne. Democrats last Terry Austin, she'd been there for about two decades, our good friend, huge loss for the house. Terry was incredible.
Let's talk about Terri for a second. Because I feel like hopefully we can get her to come and chat with us at some point throughout session and kind of give her perspective after all that time when the legislature I don't know for me, Terry was she was assigned as my mentor, somebody who was looking out for the newest members, and we were freshmen just one session ago. She really had our backs, I think,
absolutely the kindest person, which really is the foundation of I think being a good politician, a community oriented, elected official is just really enjoying spending time with people and caring about people. And I don't think anybody epitomizes that more than Terry.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, we also had organization day. So after the election, everyone is given the opportunity to come be sworn in what's organization day all about? What do we do?
Yeah, I mean, it's the ceremonial first day of session. We don't actually come in until January 9. And there are some, you know, rules that that have to be created. The Constitution lays out how the process goes, each chamber has to inform the governor that they're meeting on a certain day, they have to inform the other chamber. We have to adopt house rules, we have to elect the speaker. I think as far back as anybody is recorded, it's always the leader of the
majority party. Unlike the US House, which is going through big speaker kerfuffle right now,
at the time of us recording, they're probably going to be getting ready for their seventh vote. I think that's what's about to start happening. Right now. So okay, so what else anything else happened that day that we, you know, folks need to understand?
Yeah, I mean, we have to adopt the rules of the house. This governs floor procedures, everything you can think of, that we do in the house all is boiled down to these rules. And they can be amended. And they were amended. And there was a little bit of a fight behind the scenes on those house rules, which you know, about intimately as you know, ranking member of the Rules Committee. Yeah, it's an
interesting thing, because this, this marks my first session is a ranking member of rules, ranking minority member rules. And it was fascinating, because my first two are my first organization day, you know, you and I were kind of hanging out trying to figure out the bathrooms were what this job meant, all that kind of stuff.
And this time, I was, you know, meeting after meeting, trying to make sure we get these rules hammered was interesting about the rules, we start out in a series of meetings, Democrats and Republicans, looking at the rules, making suggestions, seeing what the majority party wants to do, and then seeing if we can kind of negotiate our way into rules that are a little more advantageous to us, but also to make the body work a
little bit better. So a couple things that were put forward, I think we had one that was the speaker would have the opportunity to review any kind of visual aids used on the floor, that we would limit the number of bills from 10, and five to eight and four. And that would limit the amount of time a person could speak at the microphone. And our caucus
didn't like those changes. We, I think we were okay with the idea of the speaker be able to see what might happen in terms of visual aids, I mean, that's going up on TV, you know, if you've got a member, without a sense of decorum, they could go up and put something really kind of offensive up on screen and you don't want kids or something to see something like that that
might be disconcerting. But on the other to, like, we kind of view that as a way of giving up some of the few tools we have to spark debate and to share our ideas. And so we ultimately did not adopt those rules. And the negotiation was, I think, very bipartisan and very, very productive. But each each time we organize for a new legislature, we're having those conversations and seeing what what changes we make to how things actually happen on the floor.
Yeah, and I, you know, I appreciate that our caucus and you as the ranking minority member, we're particularly cautious about how we proceed it because it's, you know, it may seem like a small deal to limit you know, the speaker's time to 20 minutes or to change the bill filing limit
and make it a lower number. But it's in those it's in the margins where a lot of things can occur and, and we want to be particularly cautious about you know, going too far in one direction limiting the minorities ability to to engage in the process. So I was really grateful for all the work he did on that and our caucus his voice on the on the issue of
We go through organization day, and one of the things we didn't mention is that the speaker has an opportunity to share his agenda for the year. And we'll come back to, I think what the Republican priorities are going to be coming into this session. But so now what's happening right now? What are what are folks doing in these last couple days leading up to the start a session on Monday,
I know, I just popped by the Statehouse to file my last bill for the session, so I filed as many as you could, and, you know, some of which, I know, will will go absolutely nowhere. But you know, and this is why we wanted to be able to file as many bills as possible, we make statements with with what we file, and we make statements with what doesn't get to hear and when it should. And so I just stopped by and did that.
Our surveys went out. I had some of my neighbors who were a bit more seasoned, save a stamp, and they just came on by and rang the doorbell and woke up the baby and gave me the surveys back in person. So I got to see them, you know, the same day they arrived in their mailboxes, which was it wasn't it was really interesting. And that is probably the baby hope.
Do you read through those as she is now awake? And I
She's awake and upset, and I'm holding her and you got to read to them, you know, all the time. And so so you're shaking your head, guys, like, as I got? All right, Mandy, you know, Tom and Judy think that medical marijuana should be legalized but not recreational? Can you say recreational, you know,
so she's asleep, just
yeah, just passed out.
But these constituent surveys are interesting, too, because I think, you know, I know you're this way, I'm this way. But I read every single one of those that comes back. And I know most of our colleagues do the same. So if you get one of those in the mail, fill it out, send it in, or go online and fill it out online and know that legislators are taking a look at it. And sometimes you'll be on the
floor. And you'll see that they've got them on their desk, so and kind of the downtimes they can take a look and go through and write some notes. It's a very useful way to share your thoughts and opinions about what we should be doing in the statehouse.
Yeah, when there's not a contentious issue up there, you know, and I can still listen to the speaker, or whoever is speaking. Yeah, I mean, many of us just, you know, go through our our surveys and see what the comments say or see if they've written anything in the margins, and super helpful.
So I think, you know, we've we've had organization day, we're getting all ramped up, I think that the next question really to answer is what people should expect from a long session. And the main thing that happens a long session is budget session. So this is the time religious leaders come together and craft the budget for the next two years. And what's also interesting about this is that it's not just us that is chiming in on what should happen here. All the agencies are chiming in.
Obviously, the governor's office just recently put out their priorities for what the budget should look like. Ultimately, it lands on the legislature though. Okay, so in terms of what we've seen from Republicans is what their priorities are going to
be. We've read a couple of articles come out, the speaker has given some remarks, obviously, it seems like education, health care and workforce have been the top the top issues that those folks are sharing, I've got a quote here that we can think both and react to this is from Speaker Houston, quit, we're going to lay out a plan to really reinvent High School to make sure High School is much more relevant for students, that it becomes an opportunity for kids to work, they have more work based
learning opportunities that they learn what's actually in the economy. And for me, I found that interesting, right. I you know, I think education is a very polarizing issue in the statehouse. It definitely falls along party lines a lot of the time. This is something I think that we all recognize could be a pretty useful discussion to have, as long as Republicans are willing to actually have a discussion and not simply dictate what's going to be going on.
Yeah, certainly. I mean, you look at the quote, ever you hear it on the floor, as we did, and you think, Well, that seems completely reasonable. But of course, the devils in the details, and it's how are we going to accomplish this? You know, are we going to further support public schools, like, you know, like I would advocate for we're going to dramatically expand vouchers, there's just so many different
elements to it. And of course, you know, over half of the state budget, goes towards education. So, you know, anytime you make adjustments, is a huge deal. Yeah. And I
think, you know, this is also what the only thing is, we pause about this right now, just at face value is, if the legislature is going to spend this session working on the curriculum of of education in our state. There are some things other conversations that are happening that make me very
nervous about that. So we've seen conversations about a don't say, gay bill being filed in the legislature, much like the one that happened in Florida, that right now, you're seeing schools that are even just removing any books that have gay characters in them. So, you know, I think that's a dangerous path to go
down. So I think if we start to go down the curriculum pathway that isn't about relevancy to the workforce and the economy, but is instead about kind of these culture wars that take up a lot of time and space and the public discourse, that could be a devastating thing to have happen. Absolutely.
And perhaps the, you know, the culture war issues are being brought up to obfuscate, you know, what is actually happening to bills that are moving, you know, a bill doesn't have to move through the chamber to be useful to the majority, you know, it could just serve as a distraction. While you know, very substantial things are going on in in seemingly harmless bills that are moving through. So
the governor's budget seems to have $1.2 billion and increase for education funding, I think that's another thing that we all can agree is a step in the right direction. And the devil, again, will be in the details, bringing down health care costs, you know, I think our caucuses, obviously, obviously spent a lot of time advocating for better price, transparency, and all
kinds of things like that. And I think if we can be on the same page across the two caucuses, and across the two chambers, about really doing some of the health care costs, that'd be a big win for Hooters as well.
And as of right now, you know, my God is telling me the way I'm being lobbied about health care issues. There's one group in particular that has been, you know, I know that my home has been geo fenced and I'm receiving, you know, targeted digital ads, and Facebook ads.
And so, you know, as long as, and this can be set for anything, as long as we're executing these things in a reasonable fashion, and we're meaningfully addressing, you know, all the actors involved in healthcare, and not just picking on hospitals or not just picking on health insurance providers, not just picking on pharmacies or pharmacy benefit managers. Yeah, I'd like to do some meaningful work their healthcare, everybody knows
healthcare is too expensive. But right now, my gut says that we're not going to attack this in a in a reasonable way. But
no, so as for what you're focused on, right, you said, you filed your full 10 bills, you want to give a couple of highlights on the things that you're you're gonna be targeting this session?
Yeah, I think some of the more practical things that I'm going to attempt to address now that I'm the ranking member on courts and Criminal Code, and I think I have a good working relationship with with most of the members on that committee on both sides of the aisle. And I, you know, I happen to share a large swath of my district with Senator Freeman, who is now the chair of the matching committee in the
Senate. Indianapolis has some some crime issues, we're making tremendous progress, but we need a little bit of help. Specifically, there's an inconsistency in our definition of a machine gun and state law. And it's potentially leading to people who will drop in a component to their Glock pistol to make it fully automatic. And perhaps that's not under the
definition of a machine gun. So I MPD and the city of Indianapolis and their attorneys and some appellate professionals want that language changed, because we have folks spraying bullets indiscriminately. 30 rounds in like one second out of their Glock machine gun, and they're currently being charged, but will the conviction hold up? So I was asked to take that on and I'm happy to do it. And then I filed this, the last two
sessions as well. But now that Governor Holcomb has mentioned, increasing funding for preventing suicide and veterans, I want the green alert to be instituted in Indiana, we'd be one of the first states other states have done it. It's just like a Silver Alert or an Amber Alert. But it's tailored to a missing at risk veteran. Because the response to that is different from somebody who goes missing under a Silver Alert or when a child goes missing or is
abducted. Because veterans when they do go missing, they often abscond with the intent to harm themselves. And so it's a critical situation. I'm glad that, you know, the governor wants to focus on that particular issue. And it's also dirt cheap. I mean, the notification system already exists. You just change the word silver to green, when appropriate, and you know, send the notification out. So won't cost, you know, hardly anything, but could really make a difference for veterans in
Indiana. So I think
you know, as I think about the bills, I've been filing, we've got a lot of things on the on the docket that I think we need to address and you mentioned public safety. And I think one of the issues that you and I agree pretty strongly on is around pedestrian safety and and what's happening on our streets in terms of just vehicle recklessness, right, like reckless driving has seemed to skyrocket since the pandemic and
the numbers bear it out. 930 people died in Indiana due to fatal crashes in 2021, which was an increase over 2020 which was an enormous increase over 2019. I mean, this is going in the wrong direction. So I've filed legislation focused on how we can use automated traffic enforcement as a as a mechanism of addressing some of this and
the bill is narrow. It's It's focused only on school zones, but As you know, especially in a place like Indianapolis, which we both represent, some of our main corridors have multiple school zones on them. So we could really slow the rate of traffic in places like Washington Street that have become very, very dangerous.
Certainly. And you're right, it is narrowly targeted legislation that we both supported in the last session. And it's very practical. Because when you look at Washington Street through Irvington, for example, your district, you hit two school zones, right there, as you approach Irvington from the west. And, of course, you know, your district suffered a tragedy a couple years ago, and, and Hannah's passing. But, you know, most districts in Marion County, have the same, you know, the
layout for their school. So on Raymond street, you know, through my district, you'll pass three school zones, three large school zones, all on four lane wide roads, where people are just blasting through there, all the way up to Carroll Road, which is my eastern boundary. And so if, you know, if people had to slow down at each of those junctions, you know, overall traffic speed will decrease on those main arterioles. And hopefully, we can make something happen with it this year.
And I think one of the realities about being super minority is that not a lot of bills get a chance, right, and getting a hearing is a big deal. Getting a vote is a bigger deal. Getting the floor is unheard of in 2022. I think one bill from Democrats that was you know, the Democrat was the primary author was passed into
law. It's kind of a discouraging thing, kind of what's your take on on how that all goes about being in Super minority as we think about these bills that we know are good ideas that we know Republicans agree with? In large part? You know, what's your reaction to that?
Well, you know, as people listen to this first episode of this absolutely amazing podcast, you know, they'll get to the part where I mentioned the green alert for missing at risk veterans. And I say it's cheap, the state claims that wants to focus on it, who can disagree with helping veterans in need of services when they go missing? And that I mentioned, it's cheap, right? So the super majority that is all consumed with saving money or making sure programs don't cost
too much money? How do we not at least give this a hearing, you know, if something else crops up a during the committee hearing, and it turns out that it needs some work, and maybe we can consider the next year, fine. But to not get a hearing on some of these pieces of super practical common sense legislation that can help a subset of Hoosiers that everybody agrees needs some increased attention. It's just asinine, and it happened. And that's just one of my bills.
Right, I filed several you'll file several are 30 members all together will file hundreds. And they will not get a hearing. And Representative Delaney has said it on the House floor several times. You know, he'll get up and they'll say we have good ideas to you know, let us do the work, let us represent. But often we're reduced to, you know, getting our, our successes in committee, where it's much easier to have a win, and you're still affecting legislation in a substantial way. So
a lot of our members, too, will take their ideas to Republicans. And I think this is this is the sign of like true public servants and true leadership, right? Where you don't need the credit. You go to Republicans say, Hey, I got this great idea. I'm not gonna get a hearing. Could you take this, and we've already got examples, I think, coming through, and we don't, you know, don't get to talk about those.
But we have examples that coming through already where great ideas are gonna get through, but it's because the Democrats gave them to Republicans to pass. And I think you know that and I think that's probably the way government should work. If you're in the Super minority, you can hope that you build in the kind of relationships where you can still get your ideas to the finish line. Sure. Okay, so we're here at the end of the show. And I want to do a section here, just where we answer
questions from listeners. And so we've got three questions here. And we'll answer these and if you want to send your questions in, you can leave us a voicemail at 317-721-2483. If you're lucky, maybe we'll play your question on the air and, and answer it directly. So first question is Mindy from Indianapolis? Do you imagine that abortion or reproductive freedoms will be revisited this session?
Well, first, I think it's important to say that as the father of a baby named Mindy, just an incredible name for a great listener. They have said that there will be no abortion bills considered in the house in the coming session. But we'll see. I mean, you know, I think that it was one of their bigger downfalls, you know, electorally is pursuing it so aggressive Linus special session
right before elections. But it ended up you know, because of gerrymandering, it ended up not going too poorly for them, they're probably happy to have at least one fewer member. So maybe they're emboldened. And, you know, we always have bills where they claim it's not about abortion. But it ends up, you know, coerced abortion was a bill we had in the last session. And that wasn't a they claimed it was a public safety issue. And you know, it's not an
abortion bill. But everything is designed to chip away at at some of these reproductive freedoms. So I hope not, I think her state has visited it enough.
If anything we should have been doing versus Yeah, doing what they've done.
But as we mentioned, I know many of us will have bills designed to do just that. But they won't get due consideration.
So Steve from Irvington asks, How can I get involved in legislative process as a voter and Steve as your representative, I think I'll just share the two one of the things of staying in touch. And, you know, that's one of the goals of what we're doing today is to provide some degree of dialogue back and forth so that you have a better understanding what's going on in the building, you can share with us your
thoughts more easily. I mentioned that constituent survey, fill that constituent survey out or go online and fill it out online. Share your thoughts that way, come see us at the Statehouse. It's a fascinating place to come visit for a day. And if you give us a heads up, or if you just come to the office and say can I meet with my legislator, there's a great chance that we'll be around them and combined say hi. And then also I think, really it
is paying attention. It is you know, if you're listening to this, that's a pretty good sign. But you know, paying attention to what's in the news, but also just what's happening day to day. Because a lot of big decisions are being made you have an opportunity to be a part of that you can share your thoughts in real time as we move
through the process. Maybe in a future episode, we'll go through just that process of how a bill becomes a law, because there's a lot of moments along that pathway where you can have an influence. It's kind of a it's a drawn out process a lot of the time. Okay, we got John from Carmel, what's the working relationship between Statehouse Republicans and Democrats? And how do you think it'll impact how session goes this year? I think we can both answer this one. But Mitch gonna take it
away. What's the relationship like with State House Republicans, I
was just thinking I mentioned earlier that, you know, I share a large swath of my district with the overlapping Senate District, which is Senator Aaron Freeman, you know, and the Senator and I have a lot in common, you know, grew up in Franklin Township, and, and he was a deputy prosecuting attorney, and I'm a law enforcement officer. And so we see eye to eye on on quite a bit, and we represent a large
portion of the same area. And, you know, we get along pretty well, we're, you know, if we're at receptions together, or what have you. And this can be said, for almost all of our Republican colleagues, we get along pretty
well, pretty cordial. There are several who, you know, I'd be happy to just, you know, have a chill evening with just hanging out with, and we do that sometimes, any ad often comes back around the discussion as to, you know, legislation or what's going on in our various committees, but it's not all transactional, sometimes we just hang out with them. But, you know, overall, I'd say that the overarching principle is that they're decent people, they're pleasant to be around for the
most part. But, you know, the nature of politics is that there's a guiding principle that, you know, we want to get things done and the way we think it should be done, and, and politics plays a part. And we, you know, we're going to keep that we're will work under the penumbra of politics and exacting our mission. And, you know, so at the end of the day, it's just like we've said, not a lot of bills get heard, you know, professionally, the relationship can be strained
personally. A lot of great, I mean, a lot of friendships on the other side.
Yeah, you know, I'll be a little more cynical, and not that I don't think we have great relationships, I think we really do. I think there's some really strong relationships across the aisle that are that are useful and productive, and folks who want to work with you and want to see great policy get done. But it seems like because of special session, that a lot of that a lot of that goodwill kind of at
least got jolted. And I think it's it's been a little more challenging, because that was a very personal, very significant public policy debate. I think that is this played a big role. You mentioned just about the bills, not getting heard, and great ideas not getting their
their day in the sunlight. And so I think there's this thing where, you know, I can absolutely there civility, right, we're in that building together, we are civil with one another, we are friendly, and we are all working towards hopefully making Indiana better. But there's not necessarily compromise. And so civility without compromise isn't great
government. And so I think that there should be a moment right, where we start to really question like is, isn't it possible that like, you guys don't have all the only ideas and from a from a user standpoint, like Democrats do have some good ideas that we could bring forward and there's nothing wrong with coming to the table and saying, You know what, like, you know, a couple ideas work, and we can make that
happen. So hopeful We we can see that day come and maybe it's not an election year, maybe maybe we'll have a different outcome than just the one bill that got through last session. Hopefully. What am I thanks for tuning in. We are out of time now. We'll be back next week. To share additional details of what happened in the first week of session. We'll share some of the priorities from Philadelphia Quinta, our minority leader and what he'll be sharing on the floor about what Democrats are
fighting for. And as I said before, if you want to call him this question, 317-721-2483 We'll be happy to answer them on the air. Have a wonderful weekend.