Tagged: Indiana General Assembly

The chairman of an Indiana House committee says the panel won't vote on a bill that would end Indiana's longtime ban on Sunday retail alcohol sales.

House Public Policy Chairman Bill Davis says he's decided against holding a committee vote on the measure.    Davis' decision means Indiana residents who want to buy carry-out alcohol on Sundays will have to wait at least another year.

The Indiana House has approved a plan to overhaul the state's specialty auto license plate system that requires all the groups with plates to sell 500 a year and undergo a financial review once a decade.

House members voted 92-6 in favor of the bill today.   A similar overhaul plan was derailed last year by some Republican legislators who sought to revoke the plate issued to a gay youth advocacy group.

Indiana legislative leaders say they want a proposed statewide career council to include efforts to reduce the state's high jobless rate among military veterans.

House Speaker Brian Bosma says he was startled to learn that 20 percent of Indiana's post 9/11 veterans are unemployed. Bosma says the bill establishing the Indiana Career Council was amended to include a requirement that it involve military and veterans organizations as its proposals are developed.

Indiana voters would decide in next year's election whether to add the right to hunt, fish and farm to the state constitution under a proposal approved by state senators.

The Indiana Senate voted 38-10 today  in favor of the proposed amendment. It would go before voters in the 2014 general election if the House also approves the proposal.

Indiana would join 17 other states, including Kentucky, with similar constitutional protections for hunting and fishing. Supporters say the measures are needed because those activities are threatened by animal-rights activists.

The commander of the International Space Station spoke via video hookup to the Indiana Senate today.

Astronaut Kevin Ford is a native of Blackford County, Indiana and a graduate of the University of Notre
Dame.

During a 20-minute chat with lawmakers and schoolchildren, Ford said dozens of experiments are being conducted aboard the space station, many of them medical tests involving the station’s zero-gravity environment.