February 18, 2008

By Lesley Stedman Weidenbener
The Courier-Journal

This is the sixth in a series of question-and-answer interviews with Southern Indiana legislators, and House and Senate leaders.

INDIANAPOLIS — Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, is one of the General Assembly’s most prolific bill authors, pushing legislation this year on diverse topics that include the sex-offender registry, hunting and fishing, immigration, and domestic violence.

In fact, Steele is the author or co-author of more than two dozen bills that are still alive, according to the Legislative Services Agency.

And he’s sponsoring or co-sponsoring at least nine bills that have been passed by the House and sent to the Senate for consideration.

Among Steele’s bills is Senate Bill 86, which restructures Indiana’s Sex and Violent Offender Registry so it dovetails with federal law. The change would set up a structure in which some offenders would remain on the list at least 15 years, and the most violent offenders would stay on it for life.

The bill passed the Senate and has been sent to the House Ways and Means Committee, which typically handles fiscal issues.

Here’s what Steele had to say last week about SB 86 and other legislation:

Question: Why did you decide to author SB 86?

Answer: It’s basically adopting the Adam Walsh requirements that the federal government set down with regard to actually tiering out the people on the sex-offender registry.

This meshes out our system with the federal government so that our felonies work with the way they rate offenses. If you’re a seriously sexually violent predator or child molester with a crime involving penetration, you’re going to be on the registry for life.

But if it’s a lesser degree — if you can call any child molestation lesser — that involved no threat with a weapon or no penetration or no bodily injury, you could register for 25 years with an ability to get off (the registry) if you could prove to authorities you’d changed your ways and no longer posed a threat to any child.

By complying with the (federal) Adam Walsh legislation, it would allow us to some federal (grant) money. We have one more year to adopt this to get the monies.

Q: Will the bill pass?

A: So far, they’ve killed (SB) 86 in the House. They sent it to Ways and Means even though there’s no fiscal impact. It’s deader than a doornail, and I have no idea why.

It wasn’t that controversial and had the backing of the Criminal Justice Institute, the attorney general’s office, the prosecuting attorneys’ council.

Q: You were a co-author on the immigration bill, which cracks down on employers that knowingly hire illegal workers. What do you like about that bill?

A: I do believe the law is the law and people should comply with it. The thing that I see is this: We’re fostering a subclass of people.

And we fought a civil war over that exact same thing where you take advantage of someone’s race or ethnicity to your financial advantage.

If you’re an illegal alien and your boss decides to cheat you out of eight hours of overtime, where would you turn to? Would you go to the federal wage and hour board? No. You just take it.

If he doesn’t offer workman’s compensation to you like his competitor down the road does for his employees, he’s getting to operate at an unfair advantage against his competitor, and you get hurt and he tells you (to) take a hike. There’s nothing for you to do.

I don’t think that’s right.

Q: Do you think that bill or some parts of it have a chance of becoming law?

A: Yes, I do. I certainly do.

Q: You are a co-author of the bill that calls for an eight-hour cooling-off period before police can release someone arrested in a domestic-violence case. What do you like about that bill?

A: It gives the spouse who has been battered a chance to get out of the house, to clean out, and maybe go to mom or dad’s or get to the shelter. They need time to get the kids ready, box up some clothes and get out.

If the man is immediately arrested and makes bail and comes back, then there you are again. You’re right back where you were. It’s a reasonable thing to give a chance for people to defuse the situation, put some distance between them, both in time and in actual distance. I think it helps hold down the escalation of domestic violence.

Q: You are the author of a proposed constitutional amendment to create a right for Hoosiers to fish and hunt. Why is that important?

A: What has happened through the years is that there are several groups — I’ll call them animal-rights or anti-hunting groups — who have amassed several million dollars in a fund, and all they do his hire lawyers and go around and sue different states over the right to fish and hunt.

I just think it’s a part of our heritage that needs to be protected, and we need to avoid some of this litigation. I realize maybe people don’t hunt as much as they used to. I took all four of my boys hunting and fishing, but maybe that’s a thing that will eventually fall into the past. I hope not.

But I don’t want it to be sued out of existence.

Q: What do you think of the governor’s property-tax-reduction plan?

A: I’m more interested in a total elimination of real estate taxes for all classes of real estate and some form of substitute revenue. We heard testimony (that) we could actually lower our sales tax from 6 percent to 4.5 percent.

But I realize those are broad concepts and the people of Indiana need a chance to study that, mull over it, and make sure it will work. This is the kind of shot you only get to fire one time, and it needs to be right.

So until such time we can take a very serious look at that … I’m satisfied with what we’re seeing (in the governor’s plan). I like the local spending controls that are there. I like the idea of the referendum for capital projects over $7 million or 5 percent of your assessed value. That makes sense to me.

I like the idea that the state takes over the general fund of education and welfare, taking that off the back of property-tax payers. I like the caps (on tax bills).

But I want the 1 percent increase in sales tax we’ll adopt to have a sunset provision in the event a future legislature doesn’t pass the proposed constitutional cap (1 percent of the property’s assessed value). To me that’s a very, very important thing.

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