The Indiana General Assembly finally adjourned its 2010 legislative session early Saturday with deals including a one-year
delay on unemployment insurance tax increases and aid for schools reeling from state budget cuts.
Both parties reportedly agreed to tentative deals on the issues that threatened to push the legislative session all the way
to the brink, including a one-year delay for a planned increase in unemployment taxes.
The impasse between the two parties over a delay in an unemployment-tax increase is expected to drag the legislative session
into the weekend. "Nobody is talking right now," says one legislator.
Sticking points include a bill that would delay an unemployment insurance tax increase and provide tax breaks and incentives to create jobs.
The full Indiana House returned to the Statehouse after a five-day break, but partisan differences remained over an unemployment
insurance tax bill.
Negotiations on some major issues resumed in the Indiana General Assembly on Monday after a meltdown occurred last week.
Lawmakers plan to hold House-Senate conference committee meetings Monday on at least two of the major issues that remain unresolved,
including a proposed delay in unemployment insurance tax increases.
The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate kept working Friday while House Speaker Patrick Bauer adjourned his Democrat-led
chamber until Wednesday.
Lawmakers are close to a compromise on a work-site guns bill, but remain farther apart on several other issues.
The Indiana House approved legislation Wednesday that would repeal an unemployment-insurance tax increase and approved a package
of tax credits and other incentives designed to create jobs.
The legislation would repeal an increase on taxes that employers pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund, which is
deeply in debt to the federal government.
Both measures could be heavily amended before they are voted on as a whole.
An Indiana House committee endorsed legislation Wednesday that would delay for one year increases in taxes that employers
pay into the state’s bankrupt unemployment insurance fund.
Whether to delay increases in taxes that employers pay to Indiana’s unemployment insurance fund is becoming a
contentious issue in the General Assembly.
Whether to delay increases in taxes that employers pay to Indiana’s unemployment insurance fund is becoming a contentious
issue in the General Assembly.
Key measures cleared their chambers of origin by the Feb. 3 deadline.
The first half of a short session will close Wednesday, meaning bills must have passed out of either the House or Senate to
stay alive. Legislation regarding unemployment taxes and township-government reform easily met that deadline.
The fate of a bill that would delay unemployment tax increases on businesses remains unclear in the Democrat-controlled Indiana
House.
The Senate has approved a bill delaying unemployment-tax increases on businesses for a year, but the legislation may face
hurdles in the Democrat-led House.
Property-tax caps, unemployment insurance, ethics top list of issues awaiting General Assembly.
