As the Indiana General Assembly approaches its next round of deadline dates for bill consideration, the pace of committee hearings once again quickened this week inside the Statehouse. David, Ryan and Christine attended nearly 20 committee hearings as bills were rapidly considered, amended, and passed in both House and Senate. Here are some of the highlights:

 

HB 1523 Fees for Public Records:

Current law allows public agencies to charge a printing and copying fee for responses to requests for public information, but not the time spent by staff to respond. This legislation would change this approach to allow a public agency to charge a set fee for time spent on responding to public records requests, if the request takes more than two hours to reasonably respond. Testimony on the bill showed examples of public records requests that took as many as 30 hours for a member of a county staff to respond to a voluminous request for public documents. The Senate Local Government Committee passed this bill unanimously, but included a waiver for documents recorded and bulk copies maintained in the County Recorder's office which have their own set of document fees under code.

 

For several years, the gaming tax revenue the state has collected has been dwindling due to increased competition from neighboring states. However, under a deal that was struck several years ago with counties that host casinos and non-host counties alike, the guaranteed distribution of gaming revenue was set at $48 million to host counties and $33 million to all other counties. HB 1350, legislation on a wide variety of gaming issues, was amended this week in Senate Appropriations Committee to require that these distributions fluctuate downward if the industry's taxable receipts continue to decline as they have in recent years.

 

Senate Bill 505 Predictable Fees for Recorded Documents:

This legislation is the result of over a year's worth of work on behalf of the Recorders' Association, Surveyors' Association, the land title industry, and many other interested groups. The bill, among other things, moves away from a wide variety of set fees on recorded documents to establish one set fee for recording of a mortgage and one set fee for recording of any other document. The bill also sets guidelines for contractual relationships between the county and companies which purchase bulk copies of deeds and other recorded documents. This bill was amended in House Local Government Committee this week, and passed to full House consideration. AIC would like to thank Sen. Rod Bray of Martinsville for his significant time and assistance in authoring this bill.

 

House Bill 1129 Local Income Taxes:

This bill includes several slight changes to the functionality of Local Income Taxes. Supported by the Indiana Auditors' Association, this bill exchanges DLGF responsibility for providing exact ordinance and hearing requirements with general guidance for passing a LIT ordinance. The bill also requires DLGF to notify a county within 30 days if the ordinance does not meet the general requirements. Further, there are technical changes to how levy freeze rates are administered and require that the allocation of property tax credits must be on the basis of the percentage of property tax replacement revenue within a property category. Other ordinance and allocation rules are also affected, so please review this legislation if your office is interested. The bill passed Senate Tax and Fiscal Committee, and is eligible for consideration in front of the full Senate.

 

This legislation was created to require local units of government to post any roll call votes to the unit's website within 24 hours of the vote occurring. Logistically, for many counties this would be quite burdensome to comply with as there are few counties with in-house IT staff or a website contractor that allows for frequent and timely updating of the website. Most units of local government only maintain websites as a sign post on the internet with basic information on how to contact the county or town. After discussion with the bill authors and sponsors, the legislation was amended to apply only to counties over 100,000 population and certain size municipalities that are more likely to be able to comply. The bill passed Senate Local Government Committee and is available for consideration by the full Senate next week.

 

Many other bills of high importance will be considered in the coming week. Keep an eye out for news on road funding, property tax assessment processes, and tax bill deadlines. Please let us know if you have any questions about these or other bills of interest to you!