Indiana IOLTA Funds Boosted By New Law

HARBESON: Public money for ‘free’ work

CLARK COUNTY — Republican State Sen. Ron Grooms is getting so good at writing laws to force his neighbors to hand over money to others that he’s now collecting awards from the groups who benefit.

Grooms received the President’s Award from the Indiana Bar Foundation for his help in authoring a bill which led to the new pro bono legal services fee that now must be paid by those filing civil cases in Indiana. The fee will go directly to this private foundation and is supposed to be used to help pay for legal services for the needy.

Helping people gain access to legal services can certainly be considered a good cause to support but is it any more important than the hundreds of other causes and needs that exist? Why should Grooms and his buddies single out one charitable fund over all the others who are also struggling in the current economy?

One reason may be that the bill’s other author, Republican Sen. Brent Steele, just happens to be a lawyer and just happens to think the work of this particular charity is important. Steele wanted to do something to help the struggling pro bono fund and said, “This is the only thing I could think of.”

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the only idea a politician might have is to create a new law to force people to fund his pet cause in the amount of $450,000 per year instead of going out and seeking voluntary donations.

Perhaps the reason his brain blanked out has something to do with the history of funding Indiana’s pro bono districts. The districts are primarily funded by the Interest on Lawyer’s Trust Account program (IOLTA), which comes from pooling trust accounts held by lawyers on behalf of clients which are either too small or too short term to be set up to earn interest for the client.

The interest earned from the pooled accounts is paid to the Indiana Bar Foundation and is supposed to be used “primarily” to support pro bono civil legal services. This idea of pooling trust accounts and giving the interest to groups who provide legal aid was controversial nationally from the start because these trust funds are private property of the clients.

When objections were raised about the setup, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that these programs do amount to the taking of private property, but hey, it’s OK because the interest is used in a manner that they considered to be the “common good.”

Yet many other charities and foundations do work that is in the “common good.” There is only one reason I can see that explains how this particular charity is deemed more worthy than others — it involves the lawyers and the courts. In other words, lawyers and courts told other lawyers and courts that what they were doing was OK because there are direct benefits to lawyers and courts.

The court also said no compensation was due to those whose property is taken since the accounts, held individually, would not earn interest anyway. (Of course if compensation was due, then that would defeat the entire purpose of what the lawyers and government courts wanted to achieve by taking other people’s property.)

This scheme of skimming interest off the pooled private property accounts of other people worked well for awhile — until the economy tanked and decreased earnings of the IOLTA fund, which is what led to the new legislation instituting the pro-bono filing fee.

This is not just about instituting yet another government fee either. Like all government actions do, this legislation also costs taxpayers in general. The state has already incurred the costs of pushing this bill through the legislative process and now there will be the continual costs of collecting and processing the fee.

In addition, the funds spent are supposed to be audited by the State Board of Accounts. Yes, that’s the same entity that has been so busy here in Southern Indiana finding mistake after mistake in almost every single local government’s spending.

Now the award-winning Grooms just gave the SBA more spending to audit, all because he decided this specific cause demanded the use of government force. Thank Ron for increasing government bureaucracy and costs the next time you see him.

By the way, all of the local legislators in Floyd and Clark counties voted in support of this new fee. State Rep. Steve Stemler even sponsored the bill for the House. I don’t know if he received an award though. If not, he should probably ask Grooms for advice.

One of the worst aspects about this type of legislation is that the politicians and people who run the private entities present themselves as the charitable ones. They send out press releases and grab all the glory as if they did something really virtuous. But all they did was collaborate to use the force of government to get what they want, rather than respectfully asking people to voluntarily donate to their cause.

If people were asked to pitch in a dollar to the fund, many would do so. If the property owners of the trust accounts were asked to consent to the pooling of their money to help pro bono districts, many of them would have given consent as well. No one asked though.

Politicians just went straight to the force and now here we are, with yet another new law and all the associated new burdens that are always attached.

— Clark County resident Debbie Harbeson would be happy to preside over any award ceremony for a politician, provided the token is a pin of some sort.

Public Intoxication Is Not A Crime

HARBESON: Designate PI law for repeal

> SOUTHERN INDIANA — Let’s say you — or someone you care about — had a few drinks one night and, knowing it would not be a good idea to drive, decided to let a sober person take the wheel.

Did you realize you can still be charged with a criminal offense? It’s true. The Indiana Supreme Court just affirmed this in Moore v. State.

Here’s some background on the case. A woman had a couple of beers at a relative’s home. While she was there, another person asked her for a ride. Since she had been drinking, she told him she could not drive so he drove while she rode in the passenger seat and fell asleep.

A police officer pulled them over because a license plate light was out and then discovered that the driver did not have a valid license. When the officer determined that the passenger was too impaired to drive, he arrested her for public intoxication.

There are several issues and concerns surrounding this ruling, one being the implications with regard to society’s strong push to prevent drunken driving by promoting the idea of designated drivers.

It’s not difficult to see possible problems when someone who is responsible enough to use a designated driver can still be charged with criminal behavior. As a matter of fact, as a result of this ruling, when the good folks at New Albany’s Irish Exit give rides to their patrons who have been drinking, it’s now theoretically possible for a police officer to pull their vans over for a minor offense and arrest their customers.

This ruling clearly illustrates problems with laws such as Indiana’s public intoxication law. It’s a good example of unintended consequences, a peril that all written law is susceptible to and is one reason why the less laws we have, the better.

Indiana’s public intoxication law is horrendously vague and depends upon the arbitrary discretion of law enforcement, which means it is open to possible abuse.

Worst of all, this law makes criminals of peaceful people who are not harming others. Lysander Spooner made an excellent case way back in the 1870s when he said “vices are not crimes.” He writes, “Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.”

When a law exists that can rightly be interpreted to say that one can commit a criminal offense even while sleeping in the passenger seat of a car, clearly we have a problem.

Indiana State Sen. Michael Young agrees that Indiana’s public intoxication law is much too vague and in the most recent legislative session, he authored Senate Bill 156. This bill added language to the law in an attempt to clarify the necessity of additional behaviors above and beyond merely being intoxicated.

It passed in the Senate, with local Sen. Ron Grooms voting for and Sen. Jim Smith voting against. The bill died in the House and Young says he will try again next year.

While it’s good to know some legislators seem to understand that criminal behavior should involve harm to person or property, I highly encourage Young to go further and push for the repeal of Indiana’s public intoxication law.

Adding language to bad laws merely complicates the issue even further and increases the likelihood of even more negative unintended consequences. Surely, Indiana has enough laws on the books for actual criminal behavior that law enforcement can use if necessary.

Other states have no specific laws against public intoxication and some specifically note that an intoxicated person is not committing a crime. To protect innocent individuals who have caused no harm to others, Indiana should do the same and repeal this law.

— Sellersburg resident Debbie Harbeson grudgingly admits that selecting a “designated driver” is a better idea than her suggestion of selecting the “designated intoxicated.”

If Only I Could Clean Out The Clutter of Laws Too

HARBESON: Debbie de-clutters

COLUMN NOTES: A commenter on the newspaper's site said "The same argument you make for libraries, could just as easily be made for the existence of National Public Radio, Public TV, and for that matter, the National Endowment for the Arts." I agree.

> SOUTHERN INDIANA — The file I use to collect material for possible columns is growing kind of thick which means it’s time to de-clutter. So today let’s take a quick look at a few of these topics before I throw out the trash.

The first item is an article about the Jeffersonville Canal. The government has started purchasing homes in the areas affected but at least one property owner, Fred Collins, says he isn’t interested in selling. When asked how they will handle such situations, government officials said they’d be as fair as they can.

What does this mean? If those in government were truly concerned about being fair, all they have to do is respect his wishes as a legitimate property owner and simply leave him alone. If you have any respect for the principle of individual property ownership, please join me in supporting Mr. Collins as he struggles to keep his home. Don’t let the government treat him as if he’s a bothersome piece of clutter.

Next up in my pile is a letter State Senator Ron Grooms wrote bemoaning the property tax circuit breaker because it affects the funding of one of his most beloved coercively funded institutions: government libraries.

To make his case for increasing the library’s options for additional coercive funding, he points out how many people love the library and gives statistics on local library usage. Grooms wants us to believe this is a valid argument for coercion, but it’s just as valid to argue that popularity proves there is no need to coerce. Such beloved institutions can surely be self-supporting because the many people who use the library and/or claim to love its purpose, as Grooms does, will act to close the funding gap with no need for government force.

For example, according to the numbers Grooms gave in the letter, if the Jeffersonville Township Library only made one change and charged a fee to check out materials, the cost would be less than 60 cents to use an item for several weeks. What library-loving patrons holding their daily $2 cup of coffee or 89 cent big swig of soda would object to this?

Finally, I have several pieces in my file dealing with the crazy clutter of laws we have concerning alcohol. Indiana’s oh-so-wise politicians discovered that elderly people get irritated if asked to show identification when they want to buy a six-pack and have a lot of time on their hands to bug their legislators about the problem. So, to de-clutter their lives, i.e., get the old people off their backs, legislators are messing with this law again, hoping to find that sweet spot, the age where people are desperately clinging to the illusion that they still look young, but are much too busy to complain to their legislators when they realize that’s not why they were carded.

Let’s add one more alcohol-related item to this de-cluttering column. Did you know that wineries need special government permission to sell their product at festivals and can currently only engage in such business activity for 30 days a year? Well, thanks in part to the work of Representatives Rhonda Rhoads and Ed Clere, they might now be allowed to have festival permits for 45 days a year. Shall we all have a drink to celebrate this amazing freedom?

I just don’t get it. I’m sitting here looking at another item I’m about to discard, a postcard from Rhoads’ campaign that says she is for smarter government. Wouldn’t smarter government best be defined by the repeal of such idiotic laws rather than adding to them?

I guess I can understand why politicians love legislative clutter. It gives them work to do because there’s always something for them to “clean-up.”

Sellersburg resident Debbie Harbeson de-clutters so thoroughly that she’s accidentally pitched her husband into the trash several times. No, really, they were accidents.

Ron Grooms and Ed Clere Teach Me About Football

COLUMN NOTES: Boy, several people kicked my butt in the comments on the newspaper's website on this one. I used to respond to comments, but then I realized that if anyone really cared to discuss one of my columns, they'd send me an email.


HARBESON: I call illegal procedure on legislators’ moves

> SOUTHERN INDIANA — This year, I’m much more prepared to watch the Super Bowl and I owe it all to state legislators Ron Grooms and Ed Clere. Thanks to these guys, I now understand what it means to do an “end run.”

In football, an “end run” means the offense attempts to go around, rather than through, the defensive line. If the team can’t use their running game to gain yardage up the middle, they will often try an end run.

Similarly, Grooms and Clere have been running plays for special interest groups who have been unable to break through local government to get what they want. Both men are using their state positions to introduce legislation which will create new local government entities with taxing authority. These politicians are doing end runs around the communities they represent.

Grooms’ end run involves the creation of a regional airport taxing authority. As Grooms runs with this ball, he repeatedly spits out the phrase economic development, as if it’s something new and wonderful.

In reality, it’s merely a modern-day euphemism for the common good, a phrase that sounds much too socialist to the various business interests he is speaking for, including One Southern Indiana, a specific special interest group that endorsed him.

Not only is Grooms doing an end run around Clark County residents, he also wants to force other counties into his game. This is of course under the pretense that they will benefit.

I’m sure all the residents of these other counties feel the love as Grooms grabs their facemasks, acting as if he knows what is best for them and how his law will make their lives better.

Grooms even has the nerve to use the word “partners” when talking about this plan and how other people should pay for it. As if the idea of voluntary cooperation has anything to do with creating new laws and imposing new taxing authorities on individuals.

Grooms wants us to think his law is different. His law will be good for everyone. This cannot be true because it is impossible. A government action is never good for everyone. Never. Someone always loses the game.

Next, we have Ed Clere and his special interest group who have decided that individuals in Floyd County are failing to prioritize parks properly, so Clere wants to do an end run around them. He wants to create a new government entity with special taxing authority, this one specifically for parks in Floyd County.

However, it’s not just Floyd County residents who should be concerned about this end run. If you live in Clark County, or elsewhere in Indiana, be aware that Clere’s law would create the first park taxing district in the state. How long do you think it will take for “those who know best” to use this end run to increase government in your area?

To politicians like Ed and Ron, though, these increases in government are all good because these actions are perfect for their playbook. Ed and Ron are willing to do an end run around you because they think it’s legitimate to use government force to centrally plan your life and set your priorities.

Observing the behavior of these two legislators adds to the evidence that governments will always tend to grow, no matter which party happens to be in possession of the ball.

We can now see that when those who benefit from government can’t force their ideas of how you should prioritize and spend your money in the local community, they will go to the state-level politicians who are more than willing to try an end run.

Don’t let them fake you out. Keep your eye on the ball.

— Sellersburg resident Debbie Harbeson always keeps her eye on the ball, which has gotten her into trouble a time or two.