Amendments hurt public access

In January, we had an editorial in support of House Bill 1338.

Now, at the end of the session, we oppose it.

The situation with this bill, authored by State Rep. J.D. Prescott (R-Union City), displayed a frustrating aspect of the legislative process — in committee or on second reading in a chamber, anyone can offer an amendment.

Most times, that is a good thing. Everyone should have a voice and an opportunity to be heard.

Occasionally, legislators seek to tack amendments onto bills that are only tangentially related to the original proposal.

This is done for two reasons:

1) To kill a bill. Essentially, the amendment becomes a “poison pill.”

2) To move more controversial legislation on the back of a bill that started with strong support.

With House Bill 1338, it was the latter.

In its original form, the bill would allow governing bodies to designate a time for attendees at government meetings to speak, set a time limit and take reasonable steps to maintain order. Such rules would need to be posted or announced. Attendees who break those rules would be subject to warnings, after the third of which they could be asked to leave the meeting or removed by law enforcement.

It was intended to help local government bodies maintain order and do business without frequent and constant disruption.

At its heart, it was a well-meaning proposal.

Then came the amendments.

As reported by Indiana Capital Chronicle, the amendments “would allow a governor to dismiss the state’s Public Access Counselor at any time, rather than a ‘for cause’ dismissal currently allowed during a four-year term” and “would also limit the Public Access Counselor to considering only the ‘plain text’ of the state’s public access laws and ‘valid’ court opinions when putting together non-binding advisory opinions.”

The amendments were offered by Sen. Aaron Freeman (R-Indianapolis). And he seemed annoyed when fellow senators, both Democrats and Republicans, questioned his proposals.

“He’s issued some opinions I vehemently disagree with,” Freeman said last week of Public Access Counselor Luke Britt. 

Good.

The Public Access Counselor is not employed to issue opinions that meet Freeman’s approval.

In fact, if he simply agreed with everything government officials did, his position would be utterly pointless. The whole idea of having a Public Access Counselor is to take a critical look at the activities of local government officials, state government officials like Freeman and even the governor and to call them out when they are not living up to the Indiana Open Door Law standards.

His opinions are just that, opinions. They do not carry the weight of law. But they serve to push the government to be more open and to conduct the public’s business in the public eye.

Freeman’s tactic of attaching this neutering of the Public Access Counselor to a popular underlying bill is what is wrong with the legislative process. If he wanted to address his concerns about the Public Access Counselor, he should have authored his own bill to do so rather than bringing an amendment to a bill more than three-quarters of the way through this year’s legislative session.

As Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, said, the addition of the Public Access Counselor language is a “step back for public access.”

So while we (and Britt) supported the original version of the bill, we simply cannot back the final version that made it through the General Assembly.

We vehemently disagree with the amendments brought by Freeman.

And we urge Gov. Eric Holcomb to veto. — R.C.