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Noon Edition

2016 Legislative Session Recap

The Statehouse in Indianapolis.

This week, state lawmakers wrapped up the 2016 legislative session.

Legislators addressed fantasy sports, the BMV and police body cameras. Other points of interest this year include bills surrounding Hoosiers' health. Bills covering the second iteration of the Healthy Indiana Plan and regulation of the key drug in meth production were presented. Multiple proposals were introduced by Democrats, Republicans and Governor Mike Pence to address road funding in Indiana.

Political analyst, Ed Feigenbaum says the final $1 billon proposal was a compromise of all these plans.

"The three caucus plans that were offered and the governor's plan at the beginning of the session, you know, you went at that point and tried to take the best elements out of each, and you say, ‘That's basically what we ended up with,'" he says.

In addition, legislators tackled education reform. Representative Jeff Ellington (R-Bloomington) was sworn in this past December and says that the vote to remove ISTEP was one of the biggest bipartisan efforts by the General Assembly.

"We were able to work through that to vote to get rid of ISTEP and restructure that," he says. I think that coming up there for the first time and hearing from my community, teachers, parents, public officials, superintendents, and principals, I think was a goal they wanted, and it was accomplished."

Representative Forestal (D-Indianapolis) agrees.

"Doing away with ISTEP is absolutely the right thing to do, and I'm go to even go a step further and say that we should drastically reduce how often we test kids," he says.

Feigenbaum says he was surprised by the way the session turned out.

"It was very interesting to watch this session particular because you really did see a lot of bipartisanship. That was remarkable because I think everybody came into the session with a great deal of hesitancy about what we keep, given the massive overhang of civil rights and religious freedom issues really dominating the pre-session talk," he says.

The general assembly failed to produce a definitive position on LGBT civil rights during this session. Forestal and Feigenbaum agree that if Hoosiers want this to be covered next session, they'll have to start with ballot box during this year's general election.

Our guests:

Ed Feigenbaum, Political Analyst

Representative Dan Forestal, Democrat, Indianapolis

Representative Jeff Ellington, Republican, Bloomington

Noon Edition airs every Friday at 12 p.m.

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