Here’s a look at how the key issues of the General Assembly’s 2013 session were sorted out in its final days and what these measures will do if Gov. Mike Pencesigns them into law:
Education issues - Public schools: On average, school districts will see their current funding levels increase by 2 percent in the budget’s first year and then another 1 percent in its second year. On top of that, $34 million will go into teacher performance grants.
- Vocational education: Pence’s proposal to launch regional workforce councils to design career and technical education curricula tailored to their areas was approved without a “no” vote.
- Vouchers: Students who would otherwise attend failing schools can qualify for a private-school voucher without having to attend that public school first under an expansion of the two-year-old program. Broader proposals cleared the House but were rejected by the Senate.
- Common Core: Indiana’s implementation of the Common Core State Standards already in place for kindergarten and first grade will be paused while lawmakers and the State Board of Education study the standards that have been adopted by 46 states.
- School safety: The new budget includes $20 million over two years for grants to schools that are seeking to hire “school resource officers.” At one point, the bill would have mandated armed security guards in every school, but lawmakers dropped that idea.
- Higher education: The University of Southern Indiana gets $2 million more per year for full-time faculty members and $18 million for a classroom building, and the state is increasing public university funding and paying for a set of construction projects in cash.
Transportation - Another $215 million per year will be split almost evenly between state and local roads budgets, and another $200 million annually will be pumped into a fund for long-term highway projects such as the Interstate 69 extension. Lawmakers rejected proposals to require local wheel taxes.
Rockport - The $2.8 billion Rockport coal-to-gas plant cannot move forward as a result of tough new oversight measures, according to Mark Lubbers, the project manager for Indiana Gasification LLC.
Utility bills - Gas and electric companies can impose rate increases to pay for infrastructure that is, power lines, substations and more without going through a full regulatory rate review under legislation successfully championed by utility lobbyists.
Gambling - Casinos didn’t get the two items they wanted most the ability to move riverboats onto land and table games at the “racinos” in Anderson and Shelbyville but they did get some tax breaks intended to bolster their competitiveness in the face of rising out-of-state competition.
Motorsports - The Indianapolis Motor Speedway will get a $100 million loan for improvements such as lights and grandstands and would pay it back over about 20 years through a new $1 ticket tax and through increased income and sales tax revenue. Meanwhile, other Indiana motor speedways would also get $5 million per year in low-interest loans.
Abortion - A new set of regulations will apply to clinics but not private physicians’ offices where the abortion-inducing drug RU-486 is prescribed. Those clinics would have to meet the same standards as places where surgeries are performed. As a result, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Lafayette, Ind. would be forced into changes.
Criminal sentencing - High-level felons would spend more time in prison and lower-level offenders would be directed more often into community-level programs under an overhaul of the state’s criminal sentencing guidelines.
Methamphetamine - In an effort to restrict access to medicine containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in the meth-making process, lawmakers approved an annual limit to have much individuals can buy. It’s far short of what Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke wanted a requirement that everyone buying drugs like Sudafed get prescriptions but advocates called it progress.