Indiana Politics & Government

 The more time I spend in the Nineteenth Century, the more I am convinced that Indiana needs to change how it is governed.

It is past time that we had the recall. That belongs to the Progressive Era and still has not arrived in 2026.

It is time that we had access to the referendum so that we could bypass the oligarchy that is the General Assembly.

'Middleman': Former Indiana ag director backs removal of LG's leadership duties (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Beckwith makes me like this idea. The thing is, it also makes practical sense. Indiana's governor/lieutenant governor relationship has not been closely looked at, at least by me. Indiana's governor has no great political power; his veto can be overturned by a simple majority. And it appears that it used to go to whoever came in second in the gubernatorial election. That changed in the Sixties; only the Lieutenant Governor still has great responsibilities. 

“We believe it is critical that the Indiana director of agriculture be elevated to a cabinet-level position with a direct line to the governor — a full secretary of agriculture, if you will — to ensure that agriculture, as a foundation of our state’s economy, has an advocate at the highest reaches of state government,” said Alan Dunn, president of the Indiana Corn Growers Association.

Dunn said the Indiana Corn Marketing Council supported the research of an emerging startup into a corn-based acrylic acid, which is used in adhesives, coatings, paints and more. Despite that Hoosier involvement, Illinois won the pilot production plant.

“While (the council) can invest in research and promotion of new uses of corn, what it can’t do is provide economic development incentives for locating production facilities,” Dunn said. “… This is an example where collaboration at the cabinet level of leadership may have been able to keep this opportunity in Indiana.”

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Rep. J.D. Prescott, R-Union City, said the change would present a “demotion” for the industry.

“Right now, our secretary of agriculture is … our No. 2 elected official in the state of Indiana,” he said. “I would actually view that as demotion, moving into a secretary position.” 

Perhaps a more technocratic than a political approach would be helpful. Especially since Beckwith's bigoties do motivate him so.

 No Surprise: Most of us get our news from scrolling on our phones (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Indiana’s newest statewide nonprofit newsroom, Free Press Indiana News (FPI News), debuted in June and first launched entirely on social media, because they know younger audiences get their news primarily from their social feeds. At the start of reporting each story, the newsroom staff discusses how best to tell stories on social channels and their website.

“Our Instagram, Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky and Substack accounts launched June 15, while our website launched July 15,” said Lindsey Erdody, FPI News editor-in-chief. “We’ve already seen great traction with our Facebook and Instagram accounts in particular.”

In a little more than a month, FPI News has gained close to 4,000 followers each on Facebook and Instagram. FPI News is owned by Free Press Indiana, the same parent company of Mirror Indy.

“Reaching younger audiences has been a conundrum for as long as I can remember,” said Oseye Boyd, editor-n-chief of Mirror Indy. “I don’t know that anyone has it figured out, but we are intentional about working to serve this demographic.”

From a comment made during one of the Friday sessions, the leader gets his news from TikTok. That makes me  suspicious of his knowledge. Not many in the group have online access. What do they do for news?

I do like it when Todd Rokita gets reminded that he has to obey the law: Indiana attorney general loses appeal in Haitian trafficking investigation (Indiana Capital Chronicle); Indiana's attorney general is not the head of Indiana's prosecutors. Our forefathers spread power around. 

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita can’t compel an Evansville manufacturer and migrant support group to cooperate with a human trafficking investigation in the absence of a specific allegation, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Monday.

The three-judge panel’s opinion affirms an earlier ruling from the Vanderburgh Superior Court denying Rokita’s petition to enforce civil investigative demands against Berry Global Group and the Haitian Center of Evansville in a 2024 trafficking investigation.

Judge Nancy H. Vaidik, who authored the opinion, found the attorney general’s demands were “unauthorized, invalid and unenforceable” due to a lack of particularized evidence.

“The record makes clear that the Attorney General is at most trawling for evidence of wrongdoing — looking for information that might eventually trigger an investigation, based on his alleged concern that someone, somewhere might be involved in labor trafficking,” she wrote.

Rokita has a problem differentiating between reality and what politically motivated blather comes out of his mouth:

Instead, the attorney general’s office claimed it had reasonable cause because Berry Global “is a large, sophisticated employer that actively recruits refugees and migrants and works with various migrant resettlement nonprofits” and support groups like the Haitian Center, according to the opinion.

Asked in trial court, state attorneys could not identify a suspect or act of human trafficking either, according to the opinion.

The court held that allowing Rokita to enforce CIDs in the absence of a specific suspect or allegation would violate First and Fourth Amendment protections and burden business.

Indiana law “authorizes the issuance of a CID only if an ‘investigation’ is being conducted,” Vaidik wrote in her opinion Monday.

“For an investigation to exist, there must be a factual predicate — an articulable reason to suspect that particular wrongdoing may be afoot. A mere hunch will not suffice. Here, the Attorney General has not shown that he has information of any sort, he is searching for something to investigate. Therefore, the CIDs issued to Berry Global and the Haitian Center were unauthorized, invalid and unenforceable.” 

Voter subpoenas denied in recount of narrow Indiana Senate Republican primary (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Republican member Paul Mullin supported her motion to question 11 voters who disclosed in social media posts or to news reporters that they had cast Republican primary ballots in Senate District 23 to support Deery despite being Democrats or self-identified “progressives.”

Morales saw his reelection bid fail last month at the state Republican convention after losing the support of top state party leaders. That included U.S. Jim Banks, whose political organizations spent millions of dollars to support Copenhaver and other primary challengers to Republican senators who opposed redistricting.

Morales said in voting against the subpoena request that it wasn’t proper to question voters after they had cast ballots.

“This is the right thing to do, to make sure that we reject the motion to subpoena any voters because I don’t believe that’s the right thing to do,” Morales said. “I believe everybody has the right to go and vote, but they need to do it the right way. And the right way, again, is I encourage the General Assembly next session to close our primaries so we can avoid all of this.”

Every so often the wrong person, for the wrong reasons, does the right thing. Depose voters and ask them who they vote for? Not the business of any politician. Morales is a bum, what we get from the political inbreeding in Indiana's Republican Party.

 Indiana inspector general discontinues publication of investigative reports (Indiana Capital Chronicle) 

Former Gov. Mitch Daniels created the Office of Inspector Genera in 2005 to investigate allegations of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement and wrongdoing in state government.

Investigative reports, which generally do not include the names of uncharged persons, are publicly available online dating back to the office’s founding — except for the years 2006 and 2026.

The OIG released nine investigative reports last year summarizing investigations into contingency fee contracts, falsified case management entries, improper gifts, falsified time sheets and other allegations.

This year: None.

The OIG issued two news releases when criminal charges were filed against a former case manager from the Department of Child Services and an employee from the Indiana Veterans’ Home.

Court records and State Ethics Commission reports remain public record, offering at least partial access to information the OIG used to release.

But if criminal or ethics charges aren’t warranted the public won’t know of key allegations or findings. For instance, in 2023, a report showed that the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration lost dozens of laptops, worth thousands in the chaos of setting up and winding down a statewide vaccination hotline during the height of the pandemic.

This sounds too much like Trump firing inspector generals at the federal level. It is the people's government, not Governor Braun's and not any political party's.

Speaking of Trump, this sounds like it has more to do with Trump's agenda than what Indiana needs: Braun directs state to revisit coal power plant closures (Indiana Capital Chronicle).

Gov. Mike Braun directed his energy and natural resources secretary to revisit settlements that closed or sought to close coal power plants in Indiana.

Settlements identified in a Friday executive order include those that would close a plant before 50 years of service — described as the average age of retirement for electric generation units in Indiana — or where there was no allegation or finding of wrongdoing. 

The secretary should also revisit agreements between plant operators and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, justice department or environmental groups where the State of Indiana was not a party, the order said. 

“These consent decrees and settlement agreements should be re-evaluated in light of the current and future need for energy to power existing demand as well as future economic development in Indiana,” the order stated.

The order noted a projected 7 gigawatts-plus of Indiana coal electricity generation retiring or transitioning to another source across the next 12 years, as well as an assessment from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation determining Indiana may not have the electricity resources to keep pace with upcoming demand.

Braun aligned the need to revisit these closures alongside recent federal backing for coal plants in the state. 

Ball State has the Digital Civil Rights Museum for Indiana. You should check it out.

And what is it Li am learning about nineteenth-century Indiana? That we feared the blacks, that we kept them down, that systemic racism is a real thing.

My evidence? Read the following:

Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 327 (Ind. 1874)

State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389 (Ind. 1871)

School Desegregation (Encyclopedia of Indianapolis)

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