You can make a difference
Indivisible has endorsed Judge Susan Crawford for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. If you want to help elect this well-qualified candidate and keep Wisconsin’s liberal majority on their supreme court, go to Indivisible’s Action Hub here: https://indivisible.org/scowis2025. Elon Musk is backing her opponent with his millions; let’s fight back.
We had over 100 in attendance at our public meeting on March 6. Buffy Adams from IYG was our guest speaker. IYG does essential work for LGBTQ+ youth, offering a community space snacks and hot meals, events and programming, mental health therapy and much more–all free. They have just opened a new facility on Route 30 in Schererville. Come learn about IYG NWI on March 18 at 6pm, for Soup & Soda with Buffy. Tour and ask questions. RSVP to badams@IYG.org by 3/14. Learn more about IYG: https://www.iyg.org/
Our next public meeting will be Thursday, April 3, at 6pm at the Merrillville Library. We will welcome Martin Del Rio, chief executive officer of the Armed Forces Services initiative in Washington DC. He is going to give us an up to the minute update on what services are being cut for veterans and what we can do to help. If you have a veteran as a friend or family member, please bring them to this meeting. Not only will he speak to us about what’s going on, but he will answer questions. Martin has been a good friend to our Indivisible chapter, and we are lucky to be able to have his observations on what is going on at present in DC.
The bills below have passed in their originating chamber and now are being considered in the opposite chamber. There is still time to stop bad bills and help good bills become law. Each bill has now been assigned to a committee.
For GOOD bills to get a chance at becoming law, they first need to get a committee hearing. Reach out to the committee chairs for the bills that matter most to you and urge them to give these bills a hearing.
Each bill must pass through committee to be voted on on the House or Senate floor.
- The committee to which each bill has been assigned is given and if you click on the committee it will take you to that committee’s page.
- Then scroll down to the bottom of the page to see links to committee members, including the chair. If a bill hasn’t been been scheduled for a hearing, contact the committee chair. For a bill you oppose, you can urge him/her to not hold a hearing or schedule a vote. Or, for a good bill, you can urge him/her to hold a hearing and schedule a vote.
- If a committee vote is pending, contact all members.
- If it passes, contact your representative (for Senate bills) or senator (for House bills).
Find contact information for your legislator.
MadVoters has a sample script to send to committee chairmen when bill has not yet been scheduled for a hearing:
If a bill has not yet been considered for a hearing:
Sample Script: “My name is [name]. I’m contacting you today to urge you as the chairman of the [Committee Name] to bring [bill number] to your committee / keep [bill number] out of your committee. This matters to me because [reason]. Thank you.”
MadVoters has a sample script for bills for bills receiving a committee hearing:
Sample Script: “My name is [name]. I’m a resident of [town/zip code]. I’m contacting you today to [support/oppose] bill [number], which would [summary]. This is important to me because [explanation]. Thank you.”
Unless otherwise noted, all of the following comes from MadVoters Bill Watch
| HB 1001 State budget The budget appropriates money for state expenses and operations, K-12 and higher education, Medicaid, transportation, and more. Our Concerns: Defunds Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library book program, which provides books to Hoosier kids aged 0-5. Removes income limit for school voucher eligibility, putting taxpayers on the hook for the richest Hoosiers’ private religious education. Gives more money to Secretary of State – despite him using taxpayer dollars to hire family members, awarding no-bid contracts to campaign donors, and deliberately obscuring his spending. Does not provide tax relief to working Hoosiers through increased income tax deductions or renter’s deductions. Does not eliminate Medicaid waiver waitlist for elderly Hoosiers or disabled kids. Decreases funding for Health First Indiana for public health initiatives. * Read more: “House Republicans reject all Democratic floor amendments to budget bill.” Referred to Appropriations Committee. Education Oppose Education-Oppose SB 518 School property taxes Requires school corporations to share revenue from property tax levies, operations fund levies, and debt service levies with charter schools. In IPS alone, this bill would lead to the closure of 20-25 IPS schools, cut transportation for 6000 IPS students, and take away 57% of IPS funding. “Within Senate Bill 518 are provisions to require all Indiana public school districts to share property tax dollars with charter schools in their attendance boundaries if 100 or more students leave the traditional district for brick-and-mortar charters. Districts under that threshold would not have to fund-share. Virtual charters also would not qualify under the latest draft of the bill. This bill is one of the most divisive of the session. (Indiana Capital Chronicle) * View Call to Action. * Read More from Black Indy Live/Wildstyle Paschall and Indiana Capital Chronicle * Letter to the Editor template * Legislator Email template Assigned to Ways and Means. Email Chairman Rep. Jeff Thompson SB 287 School board matters Makes school board elections partisan. School boards govern public schools, and selection of these offices should be based on relevant experience and commitment to the good of the school, its students, and its teachers, not partisan affiliation that is largely irrelevant to the responsibilities of this particular office. That’s why 75% of Hoosiers oppose making school races partisan. Doing so would also allow big money campaign dollars to influence our elections, and distract from the real responsibilities of governing a school district. Plus, many Hoosiers would be ineligible to serve on school board because of the HATCH Act. Assigned to *Elections & Apportionment. Email Chairman Rep. Timothy Wesco. View Call to Action. * Letter to the Editor Template * Legislator Email Template Take action with the League of Women Voters HB 1002 Educational matters The bill is over 130 pages long! In sum, it provides a pathway to eliminate many public school programs, services, and requirements: Removes requirement that IN Secretary of Education have educational experience, live in Indiana, or have a college degree. Guts rights and responsibilities delegated to both State Board of Education and local elected school boards, and removes required offices on the board. Allows a public school district to be completely “charterized” – that is, public school districts governed by locally-controlled, elected school boards could be completely dissolved and replaced with charter schools governed by non-elected, appointed boards instead. Exempts charter school board members from submitting a statement of economic interest, reduces oversight of charters, and repeals language prohibiting discrimination. Removes consideration of cultural competency in developing school environment. Allows students to drop out at 16 without a qualifying reason. Allows schools to cut transportation services with just one year’s notice. Amended from original bill. * ICPE’s Notes. * View Call to Action. Assigned to. Education and Career Development HB 1041 Student eligibility in interscholastic sports. Requires colleges and universities to expressly designate sports teams as male, female, or co-ed; and prohibits trans women from participating in women’s sports at the collegiate level. This bill targets trans women and is written with the intention to exclude and demean, rather than resolve widespread problems. It also oversteps the purview of the NCAA, which currently is headquartered in Indiana and is a significant economic contributor. * View Call to Action. Has apparently not yet been assigned a committee. HB 1348 Nonaccredited nonpublic schools. Makes no distinction between diplomas issued by accredited schools and homeschools. Homeschools are exempt from all accountability requirements required of public schools; permitting them to issue the same diploma as accredited schools would make accreditation meaningless, and could lower the bar for quality education. Assigned to Education and Career Development ,Email Chairman Sen. Jeff Raatz * View Call to Action. SB 289 Nondiscrimination in employment and education. Prohibits the funding of DEI programs, officers, and initiatives at state agencies, state universities, and health professional licensing boards. Requires Indiana’s school corporations, charter schools, state agencies, and political subdivisions to publicly post all training and curricular materials related to topics such as diversity, equity, inclusion, race, ethnicity, sex, and bias on their websites, with specific details about the materials’ origins and accessibility. This would restrict or even eliminate training, activities, policies, and curriculum that explore allyship, antiracism, intersectionality, social justice, privilege, bias, race, diversity, and gender. Assigned to Elections & Apportionment. Email Chairman Rep. Timothy Wesco* View Call to Action. * Letter to the Editor Template * Legislator Email Template SB 523 School chaplains Permits chaplains to work or volunteer in public schools, offering both secular and nonsecular advice and guidance. Public schools are not Sunday schools. Students shouldn’t feel pressured or evangelized at school. Assigned to Education. Email Chairman Rep. Robert Behning. * View Call to Action. SB 442 Instruction concerning human sexuality Requires schools to publicly post curriculum involving “human sexuality instruction,” and to obtain written consent prior to teaching it. Prohibits a school from using learning materials that concern human sexuality unless approved by the school board. “Human sexuality instruction” is a very broad concept, so this bill will create a chilling effect on any mention of or reference to LGBTQ+ people or topics. Plus, the bill facilitates targeting of schools and teachers. Assigned to Education. Email Chairman Rep. Robert Behning. * View Call to Action. Support SB 403 Charter school requirements Holds charter schools accountable to the access to financial data requirements required of local schools, and requires that at least one member of the charter school board be appointed by the fiscal body of the county in which the charter school is located. Charter schools lack oversight, accountability, and local control, and this bill would help correct that. Assigned to Education. Email Chairman Rep. Robert Behning. * View Call to Action. Environment, climate, energy Oppose HB 1007 Energy generation resources From Citizens Action Coalition:”Forces Indiana electric utility customers to foot the bill for SMR [small modular reactor] design, engineering, planning, and permitting costs before the utility seeks approval to build the SMR, and even if they never seek approval and cancel the project.Gives hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue for the State of Indiana in the form of tax credits to the manufacturers of SMRs in Indiana.Reduces regulatory oversight of the monopoly utilities by fast tracking approval of new generation resources to serve Big Tech and their data centers, plus a tracker to charge customers for these resources before they are generating any electricity.Makes it more difficult for Indiana utilities to retire coal-fired power plants. There are ZERO small modular reactors operating in the entire United States. The one SMR that had gotten the furthest along in the U.S. was the NuScale SMR in Idaho, which was proposed in 2015 and cancelled in late 2023 without ever beginning any construction,” years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.Assigned to Senate Utilities Committee. Email Chairman Sen. Eric Koch. *View Call To Action. Senate Bill 425 eviscerates local control in locations/areas defined as “energy production zones.” These zones are either abandoned coal mines or existing sites with electric generation facilities of 80MWs or greater. The bill got even worse when a committee amendment was adopted, which removed wind and solar from the eligible technologies to be constructed in an energy production zone, meaning local communities will still be able to block wind and solar projects from being developed. Assigned to Utilities, Energy and Telecommunications. Contact Chairman Soliday (Citizens Action Coalition) Health services Oppose SB 002 Medicaid matters SB 2 threatens healthcare coverage for more than 750,000 low-income Hoosiers by making extreme changes to Indiana’s Medicaid programs, including massive cuts to the Healthy Indiana Plan, limiting HIP enrollment, and adding burdensome new paperwork requirements to the program. Plus, it prevents advertising the program, keeping eligible Hoosiers in the dark about their healthcare options. * Read more: Experts, advocates challenge misinformation from lawmakers on Medicaid, HIP overhaul bill Assigned to Public Health. Email Chairman Rep. Brad Barrett . * View Call to Action. * Letter to the Editor Template * Legislator Email Template * Sign Hoosier Action’s Petition Support HB 1241 Trauma informed care Establishes the trauma informed care commission to study and make recommendations for use by health, educational, and other social service providers on best practices with respect to children, youth, and families who have experienced trauma. Adverse experiences have a huge economic impact as well as a personal impact, and improving awareness of and care for trauma can help individuals as well as our communities. Assigned to Senate Family and Children’s Services. Email Chairman Sen. Greg Walker * View Call to Action. SB 486 Family and social services matters Requires county law enforcement to help incarcerated individuals eligible for Medicaid to apply for Medicaid before their release. Mandates insurers to respond within 60 days to Medicaid claims. Prohibits denying claims just because of lack of prior authorization. Requires child care workers to be trained in pediatric first aid and CPR. Assigned to Public Health. Email Chairman Rep. Brad Barrett * View Call to Action SB 119 Repeals the certificate of public advantage concerning hospital mergers. Removes the COPA (which approves hospital mergers) requirement. “Indiana is one of 19 states that have COPA laws, which allow hospital mergers that the Federal Trade Commission otherwise considers illegal because they reduce competition and often create monopolies.” * Learn more. Assigned to Public Health. Email Chairman Rep. Brad Barrett * View Call to Action. Voting/elections Oppose HB 1679 Various election matters Outlines several changes to election and voting laws – one that would require a county voter registration office to conduct a “voter list maintenance program” at least once every 30 days. These programs can be unreliable and will flag and purge actual eligible voters, in addition to failing to protect data privacy. Read more. Assigned to Elections. Email Chairman Sen. Mike Gaskill. * View Call to Action. SB 010 Voter registration Makes changes to voter registration: School IDs will no longer be accepted for voting ID purposes – even when they meet all requirements. This unduly burdens college students’ ability to vote. From League of Women Voters: The bill also requires the county voter registration office to remove voters from the voting rolls if they have not cast a vote in the two most recent general elections; puts unreasonable requirements on county clerks to verify citizenship; and ends the requirement that BMV employees ask customers if they want to register to vote or update their registration. * Read More. Assigned to Elections & Apportionment. Email Chairman Rep. Timothy Wesco* View Call to Action. Take action with the League of Women Voters. Other Oppose Oppose SB450 – Article V Convention Take action with the League of Women Voters-Sends email to HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE -Link for including in emails and social media: The Indiana Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 21 (SJR21) to allow Indiana to become one of the states calling for an Article V Constitutional Convention, in Indiana’s case, to ask for Congressional term limits, something many across the political spectrum can get behind. But SJR21 moves our nation dangerously close to opening up our Constitution for unlimited amendments to be introduced or existing amendments to be altered. SB 120 DNA samples at time of arrest Requires a sheriff to take a DNA sample of a person taken into custody for a felony, and makes it a Class C misdemeanor if a person refuses to provide. This would seem to violate a person’s right to due process and privacy by compelling them to give their DNA . Assigned to Courts & Criminal Code. Email Chairman Rep. Wendy McNamara* View Call to Action. SB 001 Property tax relief (Hearing scheduled for 12:30 Central Time. View the video from this page) SB 1 claims to provide property tax relief by allowing homeowners to defer property taxes and capping property tax growth. But, this could lead to future financial burdens. SB 1 will cost local communities $1.4 billion in lost revenue. The plan does not offer a replacement revenue stream. Plus, it does not offer relief for renters, who have also experienced increases in housing costs. And, it restricts schools to referendums every two years. * View school district impact. Referred to Ways and Means. Email Chairman Rep. Jeff Thompson. View Call to Action. HB 1174 Charges for supervised loans Expands Predatory Lending – which targets vulnerable Hoosiers and extends the cycle of poverty. This bill would permit payday lenders to loan up to $5,000 at APRs of nearly 150% – double the rate of what is currently defined as felony loansharking. * Read more: “Payday lenders could charge ‘loan shark’ rates under Indiana bill” *View Call to Action. Assigned to Senate Insurance and Financial Institutions Committee Email Chairman Sen. Scott Baldwin SB 143 Parental rights Prohibits a governmental entity from: (1) advising, directing, or coercing a child to withhold certain information from the child’s parent; or (2) denying a child’s parent access to certain information. This bill could risk children’s safety and prioritizes parental control over a child’s health and wellness, in addition to being an overly broad bill at risk of government overreach. Assigned to Judiciary. Email Chairman Rep. Chris Jeter * View Call to Action SB 405 Labor organization membership Prevents a government entity (like a city, state, or local government) from requiring a business or asset they own to require workers to join a labor union as a condition for doing business – essentially imposing right to work policies within the government sector, and overruling local control. Assigned to Employment, Labor & Pensions. Email Chairman Rep. Heath VanNatter* View Call to Action. HB 1461 Road funding Opens more interstate highways to possible tolls, including routes like I-64 and I-65 in southern Indiana. For years, Indiana’s governor has had the choice of asking federal authorities for permission to toll existing interstates — an approach that hasn’t yet been used. The law now requires the first such toll lanes to be 75 miles from existing toll roads. But House Bill 1461, a sweeping road funding measure, removes that requirement. Rep. Ed Clere, a Republican from New Albany, voted against the bill in “I have a number of concerns, including the tolling language. The bill eliminates important safeguards and, as a result, makes tolling easier and less accountable,” Clere said.” I can’t support that, nor can I support the language requiring municipalities and counties to impose new taxes as a condition of receiving road funding.” (WDRB) Assigned to Homeland Security and Transportation. Contact Chairman Michael Crider Support SB 142 Eviction issues Automatically orders an eviction expungement (rather than requiring the tenant to request expungement) once the tenant has satisfied a money judgment. Indiana has one of the highest eviction rates in the country, and eviction records impact the ability to acquire housing in the future. Assigned to Judiciary. Email Chairman Rep. Chris Jeter* View Call to Action: Immigration Oppose HB 1393 Immigration notice Requires a law enforcement officer to provide the name, address, and other identifying information to ICE after arresting or issuing a summons to an individual suspected of not being lawfully present in the United States. Will lead to increased racial profiling. Assigned to Corrections and Criminal Law. Email Chairman Sen. Aaron Freeman. * View Call to Action HB 1531 Various immigration matters Clarifies that the enforcement of federal immigration laws may be carried out by federal, state, or local law enforcement. Removes the mens rea standard in the statute concerning governmental entities or postsecondary institutions violating the citizenship and immigration status information and enforcement of federal laws chapter. Per Indiana Latino Caucus, HB 1531: * Coerces local law enforcement agencies into holding people on ICE detainers, facilitating a pipeline for deportations — a system ripe for due process violations. * Creates Reporting Requirements for School Districts of Students Who Are “Unlawfully Present,” “Non-English Dominant,” and/or Non-US citizens. * Creates Reporting Requirements by School Districts on Employees who Provide Bilingual Instruction. * Creates strict reporting requirements for schools employers and parole sponsors and Creates Numerous Penalties. Assigned to Senate Judiciary Committee. Email Chairwoman Sen. Liz Brown * View Call to Action. SB 430 Grants for participation in the 287(g) program. Establishes the 287(g) agreement grant program, turning local law enforcement into federal immigration agents. This creates a culture of fear towards law enforcement and will discourage immigrant communities from seeking support from law enforcement. Assigned to Veterans Affairs. Email Chairman Rep. Steve Bartels* View Call to Action. Support HB 1413 Rape kits Creates a fund to help law enforcement and testing labs reduce the backlog of untested rape kits. Indiana has the nation’s 2nd highest number of untested rape kits; data collected per this bill would inform on best practices to address the backlog, and empower and support victims as they seek justice. Assigned to Corrections and Criminal Law. Email Chairman Sen. Aaron Freemain * View Call to Action.In other newsRead about how federal cuts are hurting Indiana; a bulleted summary on our website here: https://indivisiblenwi.org/2025/03/how-federal-cuts-are-harming-indiana/ and more detailed from the source of the information, Indiana Capital Chronicle |
