

For Indiana Senate, it pays to know federal tax law

Behind Closed Doors

3:13 PM, Mar. 2, 2013  |  Comments
Joel Miller was expected to be selected on March 2, 2013, as the new chairman of the Marion County Democratic Party
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The Indiana Senate knows how to take care of business - and its members' federal tax obligations.

The Senate wrapped up its votes on bills for the mid-point of this legislative session on Tuesday. And it didn't schedule any more committee hearings or floor debate for the rest of the week.

But a handful of lawmakers did return to the Senate chamber on Wednesday for a few minutes and then recessed.

Why? To save a few bucks on federal taxes.

"It's a tax factor. We gaveled out today instead of yesterday," Senate President Pro Tempore David Long, R-Fort Wayne, explained at a Wednesday news conference when asked about the gambit.

Under IRS rules that cover expense checks for employees - including legislators - the per diem expense pay checks are taxable if the legislator lives within 50 miles of the Statehouse. For those who live outside that, the money is taxable when the legislature is in recess for five or more days, as the assumption is that in a longer recess people don't need expense pay for lodging and food.

That meant that if legislators didn't want to be in session on Wednesday through Sunday, they'd have to pay taxes on their expense checks.

So they had a few senators come in on Wednesday so that they could call that a "session" day - even though no work was done.

"We do what the IRS tells us to do," Long said.

The IRS tells lawmakers to pretend to come to work?

Asked if they were gaming the system, Long said: "I don't think so."

Long, who is seeking a constitutional convention to push back against what some see as federal overreach, tried to turn this into an example of the federal government running amok.

"Why can't we just run our system the way we want to? Because the federal government tells us we have to do it this way," Long said. "So no. I think we're getting gamed by them."

No contest for new Demo chairman

The competition to succeed longtime Marion County Democratic Party Chairman Ed Treacy never really heated up. Before Saturday's reorganization convention, Joel Miller - long seen as a Treacy ally - faced no challengers.

Party precinct officials elected Miller as chairman and LaDonna Freeman as vice chairwoman during the morning convention. Freeman spends her days as the Democratic member of the Marion County Board of Voter Registration, a position she intends to keep.

The chair and vice chair positions don't pay full-time salaries, but Miller, 38, says he plans to leave his job as a project coordinator for a local engineering firm. He'll earn his living as a political consultant, possibly with some engineering work thrown in. He plans to restrict his clients to those outside Indianapolis, he said, given his new position.

"I am setting ethical parameters on myself," Miller told us. "I don't think it's appropriate for anybody in the position of the county chair to do that type of (consulting) work in the city."

This is the second time Miller's name has been connected to a high-profile political position. In late 2011, he briefly was discussed among potential successors to state Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, but Parker ended up rescinding his resignation.

With the reelection of Kyle Walker as the county's Republican chairman on Saturday during that party's convention, local politics is set for a new era - one guided by young guns.

Walker is 35, a few years younger than Miller.

It will be Miller's job to maintain and expand the increasing dominance of Democrats in Marion County politics while keeping various factions on the same page. Walker's aim has been on winning back ground the party has lost to Democrats while also adapting its strategy to the new political dynamic. Democrats now occupy all county elected offices and have the City-County Council majority, while Republicans, significantly, have held onto the Indianapolis mayor's office.

Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans have made the chairman position into a full-time paid job. Jennifer Ping, the GOP's vice chairwoman, is a lobbyist and consultant with Bose Public Affairs Group.

Walker and Miller have worked together before - or rather, we should clarify, in a similar opposing dynamic.

In 2005 and part of 2006, they overlapped in the Board of Voter Registration as their parties' appointees. That office is run by partisan officials who serve as a check against each other, and Walker said that together, they managed together to run the office efficiently despite occasional political interference.

"Joel Miller is a friend," Walker said. "His politics are dead wrong, but we've always been able to work together. I hope that will continue once he becomes chairman."

That is, at least in politics, as close to a ringing endorsement as you can get from the other side of the aisle.

Group that helped defeat Lugar targets Buschon

The Club for Growth, the conservative group that helped defeat Sen. Richard Lugar last year, has a new Hoosier in its sights.

The group is encouraging a primary challenger to GOP Rep. Larry Bucshon, the heart surgeon who has represented southwestern Indiana since 2011.

Buchson is one of nine House Republicans whom the group says votes too liberally for his or her district. They're being singled out on a website the group launched Wednesday,

"Big government liberals inhabit the Democratic Party, but they are far too common within the Republican Party as well,' said Chris Chocola, the former Indiana congressman who heads the Club for Growth. "The Republicans helped pass billions of dollars in tax increases and they have repeatedly voted against efforts by fiscal conservatives to limit government."

Although Bucshon voted to repeal the 2010 health care law - a top priority for the group - he's criticized for voting for this year's federal budget because some money will be used to implement the law.

Overall, the group says that Bucshon has voted the way they want only 68 percent of the time even though GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney comfortably carried his district. That means Bucshon could vote more conservatively and still get re-elected, the group argues.

Bucshon was re-elected with 53 percent of the vote in last year's three-way general election after winning the GOP primary with 58 percent against tea party activist Kristi Risk.

Bucshon's spokesman said Bucshon has "confidence his constituents in Indiana will continue to assess his record of consistently fighting to cut spending, keep taxes low, bring good paying jobs to Hoosiers and reform healthcare and not rely on a D.C- based organization to assess it for them."

But in case constituents want a different D.C.- based group to rely on, Buchson put out a press release highlighting the fact that he's voted with the American Conservative Union 86 percent of the time. Bucshon's release said the ACU has been the "go-to-source for determining whether an elected official's philosophical rhetoric matches his or her record."

The Indiana Democratic Party is using the spat to raise money, which could help it run a Democrat to take over Buchson's seat the way Democrat Joe Donnelly won Lugar's seat after his primary defeat.

"You'd think they'd have learned their lesson," Democrats wrote in a fundraising appeal. "We keep hearing Republicans are on a mission to unite their party and attract new voters, but it looks to us like they're still in self-destruct mode."

So many questions, so few answers

Gov. Mike Pence held a news conference Wednesday that left Statehouse reporters with more questions than answers.

In recent days, reporters wanting to talk to Pence about his views on various bills winding through the legislature were told to hold on until that news conference.

It lasted about 32 minutes - short by governor media availability history. And about 16 minutes of that were not questions, but Pence talking at length about his legislative agenda and his hope that he will still win his income tax cut.

When reporters were allowed to ask questions, they got six (plus one follow-up question repeating what had been in the original question) before the governor's office announced: "Last question!"

Now, those are fighting words to reporters. At that point everybody who has been waiting their turn to ask a question realizes that it's them against the rest of the press corps. What had been a fairly orderly process turns into everyone shouting out a question.

Which may be normal in Washington, D.C., but isn't the typical scene at the Statehouse. Gov. Mitch Daniels, for instance, usually just stayed until the press corps had exhausted its line of questions.

After the last call was given, Pence did hang around, taking not one but two more questions.

Then the press was ushered out, so the governor's office could prepare to hold its next event: His first bill signing. The timing of that event, a spokeswoman said, dictated cutting short the media availability. On the other hand, the governor's office did choose that timetable.

But it wasn't just the short timetable that left reporters grumbling. It was the feeling that they left not knowing a whole lot more than when they walked in.

Of the eight questions asked, how many received a yes or no answer? Zero.

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