Hi, friend!

Late Tuesday night, the Indiana General Assembly adjourned for the year. Any bills that passed both chambers, and in many cases out of conference committees, will now be sent to Governor Holcomb to sign into law.

This year gave us some losses but also some really exciting wins and it the wins happened very much due to the impact that advocates like YOU had on legislators. Thank you for your support for children and families in Indiana. Though the legislative session may be over this year, we will soon be starting to prepare for next year to ensure that good policies are passed that support the people that we serve!

Thank you again for your support of MCCOY's advocacy efforts this year.

Sarah 

 

HB1134 - Education Matters

 HB1134, "Education Matters" died early last week. Many advocates were concerned that legislators would take some of the language from that bill and re-insert it into bills that were moving to the Governor's desk.We were pleased to see that legislators did NOT decide to move forward with doing that.

This was a big win for education advocates this year, but the work is not over. Aleksandra Appleton and Stephanie Wang of Chalkbeat write: 

"While other states have debated the issue and passed bills, obstacles in Indiana set the state apart. But observers don’t regard them as permanently fatal flaws. The bill’s primary goals remain hot-button issues, and advocates on both sides expect they’ll reappear before legislators next year."

ZOMBIE BILL: Gun licensing

After legislators deleted the permitless carry components from HB1077, "Firearms Matters," they later inserted the permit repeal provisions into an unrelated bill and retitled it with the same name. By bringing this dead bill back to life, I choose to call it a "zombie bill."

This new bill that has passed both the House and Senate is HB1296, "Firearms Matters," and is now on its way to Governor Holcomb's desk where he will either sign it into law, which would be going against the wishes of the head of the state police along with most police officers, or he can veto the bill, which would go against the will of the conservative wing of his party and make him the sole Governor to stand in the way of supporting the so-called "constitutional carry."

Read more about the next steps for this bill here.

MCCOY shares the concern of gun safety advocates as well as police officers that this provision will allow for more people to carry guns in public places and will lead to insecurity among citizens as well as law enforcement.

Click on the link below to tell Governor Holcomb that he needs to keep our community safe and to veto the bill when it comes to his desk.

Book Banning

Another bill was close to becoming a "zombie bill" this past week when legislators decided to revive and then promptly kill language from SB 17, "Material Harmful to Minors." Had this language passed into law, it would have criminalized teachers and librarians who exposed kids to books and other materials that some view as obscene. 

There are already policies in place to deal with book challenges and passing legislation like this could have lead to censorship and book banning. We were pleased to see legislators remove this language from the bill, though similarly to the education legislation that was defeated this year, we must stay vigilant to ensure a bill like this does not re-surface during next year's legislative session. 

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