The recently concluded short session of the Indiana General Assembly produced some important legislation and some that could be damaging. It also brought the demise of some promising and some ill-conceived bills.
Here's a rundown of important developments, three positive and three negative, out of the Statehouse.
THUMBS UP
ISTEP: While state government has generally made a shambles of the Indiana State Testing for Educational Progress Plus standardized exam, the Legislature did move decisively to stop the madness.
After the administration of ISTEP last school year was fraught with needlessly difficult questions, technical glitches and miscommunication, the results of the test were both brutal and a poor gauge of student and school progress.
The Legislature passed two important measures related to ISTEP, one for damage control and one that holds promise for a new and more effective statewide exam. First, lawmakers rendered the results of the test null, meaning that schools would be held harmless for their students' scores. Then, on Thursday, the last day of the session, a bill was approved that will scrap ISTEP altogether and establish a better alternative for statewide testing of student achievement and progress.
Infrastructure funding: It isn't nearly enough to fix all of Indiana's crumbling roads and decrepit bridges, but a two-year measure that approves $800 million without raising taxes was an acceptable compromise.
Of the funding total, $585 million is devoted to fixing local roads. The money will come from the state's $2 billion reserve and from shifting some gasoline tax money from other purposes back to road funding.
Concussion protection: Anderson Democrat Tim Lanane wrote legislation that easily passed both houses to expand concussion protection protocol from just high school football to all Indiana school sports in grades 5-12.
If Gov. Mike Pence signs the bill into law, it will require that, beginning in July 2017, head and assistant coaches complete a certified player safety course. The protocols include on-the-field concussion diagnosis and a medical clearance before athletes return to competition.
With recent research showing the potentially devastating lifelong repercussions of concussions, this legislation is important to ensure students across Indiana get coaching that diminishes the chances of getting a concussion and to provide access to informed health care.
THUMBS DOWN
LGBT: In the aftermath of last year's Religious Freedom Restoration Act debacle, establishing a statewide civil rights statute that protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination was of utmost importance.
But the Republican majority in the Statehouse failed to muster the courage to push such legislation through. As a result, Indiana remains a pariah in business circles and among the enlightened majority of Americans who believe that no citizen should face bias because of their gender, skin color, sexual orientation or other reasons.
Hate crimes: Indiana is one of only five states with no hate crimes law. But a proposal to rectify this inexcusable omission didn't even get a committee hearing, thanks to House Republicans.
As with the lack of a civil rights statute to protect members of the LGBT community from discrimination, the absence of a state law that designates harsher penalties for bias-motivated crimes perpetuates Indiana's reputation as a backward bastion of bigotry (please excuse the alliteration).
Pseudoephedrine: New legislation that gives pharmacists the latitude to allow people they know and trust to purchase cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine while denying it to others they don't know or don't trust is a lawsuit waiting to happen. It opens the door to discriminatory sales practices and is a poor space-holder for what Indiana really needs: a law making such products available by prescription only.
Pseudoephedrine is often used in the manufacturing of methamphetamine, a highly volatile and addictive illegal drug that has ravaged Madison County and other Indiana locales. States that require a physician's prescription to buy products containing pseudoephedrine have seen steep declines in methamphetamine production and use.