Under the new property tax cap system, agricultural land receives a 2% cap, while commercial land receives a higher 3% cap.

If successful in their efforts, golf courses stand to save on their property tax bills. One local course estimates a potential $14,000 savings. However, St. Joseph County estimates the change could cost the county around $100,000.

WSBT-TV: Should golf courses be considered farmland?

I had the opportunity to serve as chairman of this interim study committee this year. We received some informative testimony about a range of important environmental and energy issues that the Legislature will be likely dealing with next year.

At our final meeting on October 8th, we were able to unanimously agree to the following recommendations for inclusion in the final report:

Water and Wastewater Infrastructure. The EQSC recommends that the General Assembly support an updated study on funding water and wastewater infrastructure needs through a variety of funding sources.

E-Waste. The EQSC looked at existing E-waste programs in Indiana and other states, including the distribution of costs and landfill bans. After hearing testimony, the EQSC recommends to the General Assembly expanding opportunities for E-waste recycling and looking at the roles of manufacturers, retailers, and consumers with the goal of making it more widespread and convenient.

Energy Code. The EQSC recommends that the General Assembly and the administration direct the Indiana Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission to examine the Indiana Energy Code and look to updating the code with input from a broad group of stakeholders.

Green Building Standards. The EQSC recommends that the General Assembly find ways to encourage the adoption of green building standards, including Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Green Globe, or an equivalent standard, in publicly funded construction projects.

CAFOs. The General Assembly should adopt the confined feeding good character disclosure and enforcement requirements contained in SB 431-2007, amended to allow IDEM to consider a permit applicant’s compliance history outside the United States.

The recommendations do not include everything I would have liked to have seen, particularly regarding CAFOs and Green Building Standards. However, I think it is important the committee be unanimous in its recommendations, and this was the consensus we were able to reach.

I will post a link to the final report, which includes summaries of the testimony from each meeting, when it becomes available.

The Commission will not vote on it’s final report until October 24, 2008.

October 3, 2008 Courts Commission Minutes
WNDU coverage of the meeting (with video)

Here is a photo of Howard Park - the line down the middle of the river is actually the balustrade that runs along the river walk in normal conditions.

(image from the South Bend Area Blog)

I took this photo on Friday night to try to show the huge volume of water going over the dam downtown.

Our house is right on the river across from Leeper Park (which also flooded) - but luckily, on our side the bank is a good ten to fifteen feet up and remained high and dry.

The South Bend Tribune has several image galleries of local flooding online: Gallery1, Gallery2, Gallery3.

An initial reaction from election law scholar Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog:

“If Justice Kennedy is indeed troubled by certain aspects of the Indiana law (such as the two-trip requirement for indigent voters), the best result from the point of view of discouraging election litigation is to strike down the law, pointing out the flaws with the law, and telling the Indiana legislature to pass a revised law without the objectionable portions. This is what happened, to some extent, with the Georgia voter id law. A court struck it down, pointing to its most vulnerable sections, and the Georgia legislature rewrote the law, making it somewhat less severe.

Some have called this case Bush v. Gore II because of the possible 5-4 split on the Court, with a 5 justice majority seen issuing an opinion that helps Republicans and harms Democrats. I see a different parallel: Just as Bush v. Gore has spawned a great deal of election law litigation (statistics in my earlier cited articles), Crawford too has that potential. It is not a result that would be good for the country.”

Much more commentary is appearing now that oral arguments have concluded. See SCOTUSBlog and Election Law @ Moritz.

“Smithfield’s holding ponds — the company calls them lagoons — cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.”

The article goes into graphic detail, focusing on what the factory pork industry has done to the people of North Carolina:

“It was the biggest environmental spill in United States history, more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez oil spill six years earlier. The sludge was so toxic it burned your skin if you touched it, and so dense it took almost two months to make its way sixteen miles downstream to the ocean. From the headwaters to the sea, every creature living in the river was killed. Fish died by the millions.”

Some of the most descriptive passages focus on the unique, toxic stench associated with large operations:

“I’ve probably smelled stronger odors in my life, but nothing so insidiously and instantaneously nauseating. It takes my mind a second or two to get through the odor’s first coat. The smell at its core has a frightening, uniquely enriched putridity, both deep-sweet and high-sour. I back away from it and walk back to the car but I remain sick — it’s a shivery, retchy kind of nausea — for a good five minutes.”

It’s important to recognize that the stench, pollution, and runoff from CAFO’s and similar industrial livestock operations are not the normal “farm smells” that most Hoosiers are very familiar with:

“We are used to farm odors,” says one local farmer. “These are not farm odors.” Sometimes the stink literally knocks people down: They walk out of the house to get something in the yard and become so nauseous they collapse. When they retain consciousness, they crawl back into the house.”

Governor Daniels has made development of factory farms in Indiana the centerpiece of his agricultural policy, and many communities across the state are struggling to cope with the science and politics of permitting new operations seeking to locate in their backyards.

The Indiana Department of Agriculture, with the Indiana Land Resouces Council, is currently conducting “listening sessions”to develop model local ordinances regarding land use and zoning to apply to factory farm operations, but the Department of Agriculture’s announcement of these meetings specifically points out that the “Indiana Land Resources Council will not consider a farmland preservation program or environmental regulations” as part of their recommendations.

Several bills dealing with CAFO’s have been filed this session (inculding HB1197 and SB447 ), and the topic was raised with IDEM Commissioner Easterly at our last Environmental Affairs committee meeting. The Commissioner said IDEM would support a policy of requiring local approval of CAFOs before IDEM issues its permits. However, he also felt it was currently too difficult to discern what exactly would constitute official “local approval.” That may be an area we are able to do some work on this session.

For more information, see:
Kemplog - day-to-day coverage of CAFO issues in Indiana
Grace Factory Farm Project - anti-CAFO
Farm Bureau - generally pro-CAFO, or anti-regulation
Journal of Extension - generally neutral research into all sorts of agricultural issues

Since many bills have yet to be assigned to committees, legislators typically use the first week seeking co-sponsors for their bills and working to shore up support for their proposals. Once all the bills have been published, the committee schedules will rapidly fill up.

I have scheduled an organizational meeting for the Environmental Affairs Committee next Wednesday. Commissioner Tom Easterly of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has agreed to appear and update the committee members on current IDEM projects, rulemaking, and legislative requests. The meeting will be broadcast live on the internet on Wednesday, January 17, 2006 at 10:30am. You will be able to access the webcast here (click on “Watch video from House Committee Room 156c”).

Let me know if you have any questions you would like the Committee to ask Commissioner Easterly.

I know I have been bad about updating here over the interim, but will try to get back into regular posting during the session.

The first few days of session are mostly administrative. The bill filing deadline for the House is not until the fourth meeting day in January – which I believe is next Monday. So committee chairs do not have much to work with yet as far as scheduling goes.

The House committee chairs met today upon adjournment to discuss general committee policy for the session. The main point of agreement was in re-establishing an orderly business schedule. Last session got a little out of control – bills piled up on the calendar in a spectacular heap that resulted in massive backlogs at various deadline days. Many bills died due to lack of time, in spite of regular late-night session days.

At the committee level, we will likely implement a policy of scheduling committees several days ahead of time to avoid much of the last-minute rush. For example, I am Chairman of the House Environmental Affairs Committee, which meets on Wednesdays. I will be turning in my schedule request by the end of Thursday so members can be notified and bill packets can be prepared on Monday, and the meeting can be announced publicly at least 24 hours ahead of time on Tuesday morning.

The administrative side of the Legislature is not particularly exciting, but a well-run Legislature generally results in better legislation, so I hope some of the changes and tweaks we are making will be effective.

Feel free to leave a comment if there is anything in particular you would like me to post about as the session progresses.

Like Doug over at Masson’s Blog, Angie and I recently bought a house. It’s a 101 year-old beauty right on the St. Joseph River in downtown South Bend. Buying the house, moving in, unpacking, and generally futzing around with the place has absorbed a great deal of my spare time.

Now that we are nicely settled in, we finally have time to take our belated honeymoon. Almost eight months after the wedding, Angie and I are going on our long-planned trip to Europe for two weeks – so I will not be updating here again until August.

In the meantime, if you need any assistance, please feel free to contact my office while I am away.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

The state will re-establish the Indiana Land Resources Council (ILRC) and take other steps to preserve Indiana’s farm land, including drafting a model zoning ordinance for local governments.

Sarah Simpson, manager of regulatory affairs for the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA), announced the administration’s plans to save farm land during a recent videoconference broadcast to 25 locations throughout Indiana.

The Governor effectively dissolved the board in January of 2005 by asking for the resignations of its staff and members just before it was to present recommendations on planning policy to Lt. Governor Skillman.

In 1999, the Legislature established the Council (IC 15-7-9) to study and make recommendations on land use and planning issues. After it was dissolved, I introduced legislation to establish a new “Growth and Development Task Force” (HB 1242) to re-establish a working group in this important field. HB 1242 did not pass, but its goals included making several policy recommendations that could be picked up by the ILRC:

(1) Ensuring a process for making development decisions that are predictable, fair, and cost effective.
(2) Establishing ways to direct development toward existing communities and existing infrastructure.
(3) Integrating fiscal, transportation, energy, and environmental policies with land use planning.
(4) Encouraging the preservation of farmland, open space, and critical environmental areas.

I hope the new ILRC looks to an integrated planning approach that not only creates quality development, but also helps keep taxes down by fully utilizing our existing infrastructure.

The initial comments on the goals of the new ILRC are encouraging:

“We have some exciting objectives for the council, (including) state incentives … and providing a model ordinance and land-use tools to local government,” Simpson said. “We have a very aggressive initiative for that council when they are reconvened.”

Indiana needs a land-use strategy because the rapid loss of prime agricultural land to development compromises the future ability to feed the nation; reduces open space, wildlife habitat and groundwater recharge; creates rural-suburban conflicts; and requires the costly extension of roads, sewers and other infrastructure, Simpson said.

I look forward to following the Council’s progress. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about the ILRC or land use policy in general.