With the Indiana General Assembly’s legislative session just a few months away, a group of lawmakers got together Wednesday to do a little metaphorical housekeeping and Marie Kondo some state-sanctioned groups that no longer spark joy—or more precisely, no longer meet but maybe still collect their funding.
The Interim Study Committee on Government is tasked with scouring the hundreds of boards, commissions, committees, councils and panels established by Indiana law and identifying those that have outlived their usefulness or perhaps inspired buyer’s remorse. The Legislative Services Agency (LSA), which provides Indiana’s lawmakers with nonpartisan research and support, identified 66 groups that appear to have been inactive for at least two years.
Wednesday at the Statehouse, the committee’s 14 senators and representatives tackled just a few, offering some interesting insight into how programs evolve into larger endeavors or stall despite good intentions.
For example, the Child Services Oversight Committee, not to be confused with the Interim Study Committee on Child Services, was added to state statute in 2013, only to be removed in 2014. Its mandate to study child fatalities among other things was absorbed by the Commission on Improving the Status of Children in Indiana, more powerful and larger in scope.
That was an easy case, with the commission’s executive director, Mark Fairchild, assuring the study committee members that the original group had received no state funding and it was OK to cross it off the list.
But name confusion was a theme.
The apparently inactive Medicaid Advisory Committee-Standing Fiscal Subcommittee MIGHT be the same as a Medicaid Oversight Commission that met recently, one member offered. But a cursory Google search revealed only a Medicaid Advisory Committee run by the Family and Social Services Administration and an Interim Study Committee on Medicaid that met last year.
Committee Chair Rep. Doug Miller, R-Elkhart, vowed to do more research and quickly moved on. But possibly also plagued by name confusion was the Interstate Rail Passenger Advisory Council, which has recently applied for a federal grant, a supporter testified, and has most definitely not derailed.
The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commission, organized to plan events around the state and federal observance, also sent word that its work continued though its website was outdated, but committee member Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, took some exception.
“I’m supposed to be on this commission. I can guarantee you, I haven’t met in two years,” he said. “I would love to know when they’re meeting.”
On a brighter note, the Indiana Civic Education Commission stopped meeting because it believes its job is done. Indiana approved new civics instruction for the state’s middle-schoolers in 2022.
“I did get a text from a member of the Department of Education,” said Miller, “and it just simply says that they believe that at their last meeting, they took care of what they were charged with doing. So, they’re looking further to see if there’s a need for that particular commission to stay in place.”
The Oral History Project Advisory Committee has not met for two years, the Indiana Historical Bureau confirmed through LSA, but staff turnover appeared to have played a role in that case. The project, begun in 2017, is supposed to collect the history of the Indiana General Assembly through firsthand accounts.
Lawmakers also wondered what was up with the Lewis and Clark Expedition Commission. The famous explorers rendezvoused in Clarksville in 1803, officially forming the Corps of Discovery and setting off West, and Indiana celebrated the bicentennial of that feat from 2003 to 2006. The commission, formed to plan the state’s festivities, stuck around to build on its success. Some 20 years later, the study committee members asked for a more recent accounting … which was not immediately available Wednesday.
The Interim Study Committee on Government will meet at least once more before the 2025 session starts, and members were each handed a full list of groups to research before next time. That’s when Sen. James Buck, R-Kokomo, vice chair of the committee, got a surprise.
Another member mentioned an apparently delinquent group on the list and Buck interjected, “I just found out I’m chair of that!”
The room erupted in laughter, and someone asked if his group had taken much funding. Buck had asked almost every committee or commission representative what allocation their group had received.
Buck didn’t know. “I hope it’s not a lot,” he said.
Colleen Steffen is executive editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. She worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for more than 13 years and is now in her 10th year teaching college journalists.
