The 2003 session of the General Assembly is on. If you want to follow the fun, you can, over the internet.
Start with the General Assembly’s website. Click on Session Calendars to find out when the legislature and committees are meeting. Click on Bills and Resolutions to follow a particular bill. If you know the bill number, type it in the box and click "Go". Otherwise you can use the word search or scan the list of bills. The big one is the budget bill, House Bill 1001. Type “1001” into the “Go to Bill” box, and you’ll see a digest of the bill and links to what’s happening to it. The “Action List” tells you where the bill is in the process.
You can read a whole bill if you like. But the bills are often long and hard to understand. Instead, try the Fiscal Impact Statements. These have a summary of the bill, and then a rundown of what the bill is expected to do to revenues and expenditures. That often tells more about what a bill does than the legalese in the bill itself.
So far this is pretty dry—procedures and bills and fiscal statements. What about personalities and politics? Once the House and Senate actually convene you can listen to the debate. Click on Listen to the Indiana General Assembly Online shown on the legislature’s homepage. Calendars will tell you when they’re in session. Unfortunately, if they're not in session all you get is silence. Hard to tell if your software and internet link is working when that happens.
WFYI in Indianapolis does a show called
Indiana Lawmakers,
which covers the doings in the State House. It’s on several times during
the week, but you can watch it or listen to it any time over the internet.
Just click on "Last Week's Program" or "View Latest Episode." WFYI has
another show called
The Indianapolis Star usually has an article on each day’s session. Click on "News" in the upper left corner if the Statehouse article isn’t one of the top headlines. Some folks may want more than the central Indiana viewpoint. You can go north to The Times Online, which is run by the Hammond Times, or south to the Louisville Courier-Journal. Yes, Louisville is in Kentucky, but the Courier-Journal has an Indiana section that covers the State House. Just click on "Indiana" on the menu at the left of their homepage. (Careful--their link to "2003 General Assembly" is news about Kentucky's legislature.)
Ed Feigenbaum is an Indianapolis journalist who publishes newsletters covering Indiana government in detail. His IN Group On-Line website makes some of these news nuggets available for free. Click on “Indiana Daily Insight.”