Governor Holcomb is bringing legislators back in May for the first special session in nine years.
The regular session ended last week with chaos and finger-pointing after the House ran out of time with a half-dozen bills still unvoted on by the midnight deadline, including two of Holcomb’s legislative priorities: a five-million-dollar boost in Indiana’s school-security grant fund, and a regulatory framework for self-driving cars.
Holcomb says he’s disappointed the self-driving car bill didn’t pass, but says it can wait till next year. But he says the school-safety bill and two others can’t wait. He says legislators need to align Indiana’s tax code with the federal tax reform which took effect in January — the Indiana Chamber has warned it’ll cost businesses at least 100-million dollars in productivity if they have to separately calculate their income in two different ways. And the governor is asking legislators to approve a 12-million-dollar emergency loan to the cash-strapped Muncie Community Schools.
Republicans had been pushing a bill which would have turned over management of the Muncie schools to Ball State.
