 Thank you for joining the IBLC Town Hall. This is our second Town Hall for the year and our final one. We decided this year to do virtual. I just wanna go over the purpose of our Town Halls. This is our fifth annual year and it gives us the opportunity to share that important legislation that we think affect our community and gather legislative ideas and concern directly from the people. So we're glad that you're here. We'd love to hear what you have to say. If you have any questions, comments or concern, please feel free to email that us to us at IBLC at iga.in.gov or put it in the chat or the comments on Facebook. So I'm gonna go through and introduce our members that are here that's joining us today and also go over to members that aren't here that couldn't make it. And I'm gonna talk about their leadership positions. I know I think some people said, why do we go through the leadership positions? But I want you to know who's actually at the seat of the table when important decisions are being made and where they're at the table and then each member their expertise. So if you hear they're over a particular organization or committee, then that'll give you an idea of where these members' expertise is. The first one in no particular order is Representative Earl Harris Jr. He is our IBLC vice chair and he's the house assistant Democrat wet. For those of you who don't know those are people that are members of the shape and get them all on the same page. Representative Carolyn Jackson, she is our IBLC chaplain and ranking minority member for House Select Committee on Government Reduction. I know people asked last time what is the ranking minority member? That is the lead Democrat member on the committee. They work closely with the chair in deciding what the agenda should be, what bills are gonna be heard and they lead our caucus in letting us know about that committee. Representative Gregory Porter is the ranking minority member for House Ways and Means. Representative Cherish Pryor is our House Democrat floor leader and Representative Vanessa Summers is our ranking minority member for House Family, Children and Human Affairs Committee. Senator Greg Taylor, he is our ranking minority member for Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy and Representative Vernon Smith is our ranking minority member for House Education Committee. For the members that could not be here today, but wanted to, we have Representative John Bartlett, he is our IBLC parliamentarian and our former Democrat caucus chair and Representative Reagan Hatcher. She is our IBLC treasurer and the ranking minority member for House Courts and Criminal Code. And Senator Eddie Melton, he is the ranking minority member for the Senate Education and Career Development Committee. Senator Jean Brough, she is the Senate Assistant Minority Floor Leader, our ranking minority member for the Senate Health and Provider Services and Insurance and Financial Institutions. And she is the Vice Chair for the Senate Ethics and the Women Power Caucus, the Secretary. And lastly, we have Senator Lonnie Randolph who is the Senate Democrat Minority Whip and he's the ranking minority member for the Senate Judiciary and Public Policy Committee. And lastly, myself, Representative Robin Shackleford, I am the IBLC chair and I'm the ranking minority member for the House Public Health Committee and the Women Power Caucus Committee. And our lovely executive director who's probably out there listening, Raven Ridgell, who you speak to if you call into our office or email. So we welcome you all. I also wanna take this time to thank our supportive elected officials, our former elected officials and candidates that may be joining us today. Please say something in the comments so we'll know that you're there in the chat section. Just say hi, but we appreciate you all for being here. So thank you, Representative Shackleford. My name is Marshawn Walley of I'm Just Saying with the Indianapolis Recorder. For over 125 years, the Indianapolis Recorder has been preparing a conscious community and we are proud to partner with the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus for this important discussion on legislative policy. It is always good to hear from our elected officials for them to share with us what they've been working on and what they're doing. And this is also an opportunity to ask questions, learn about the process, learn about the issues and you might even have the opportunity to share some of your issues and some of your concerns. And so this is part of why the IBLC has these important town hall meetings. We have a number of community partners that are involved in this effort. That would be the Indianapolis Urban League, IBE, the NAACP, the Indiana Minority Health Coalition and NO Power. And so it takes a lot of hands to make a load light and we appreciate the work that this particular body does for us working with community partners and with citizens to try to make sure the over 20% of people of color in Indiana have representation, adequate representation in the Indiana General Assembly. And so we have state reps, we have senators here and we're going to move right into the presentation. You're gonna hear about crime, economic development, education, health. You're gonna hear about bills that maybe were of concern that did not pass. And so this will be a good summation of the things that you really need to know about from the legislative session. And then you'll hear some more in-depth conversations on justice and reform. That's an important topic that has been on the minds of everyone as we look at just what's going on with police and police community relations. We're also gonna talk about health disparities and we're gonna talk about the census. So we want you to hang in there with us. Please send your questions. We will make sure that we get to them and we're gonna go right into it. So with that, I wanna start off with Senator Taylor who's gonna put an update on courts and criminal code. Thank you, Marshawn. Thank you to everyone who's watching and listening to this program. Let me dive right into courts and criminal justice. And these are bills again that have passed the General Assembly and will become effective. Most of them become effective July 31st of this year, but in essence this year, these laws will be effective. Senate Bill 47, which was co-authored by our own Senator Lonnie Randolph, actually changed the law in regards to waiting periods for expungement. And the bill provides that if a court reduces a class D felony or a level six felony to a misdemeanor, that the actually five year waiting period for expungement begins on the date the felony conviction was entered and not the date the felony was converted to a misdemeanor. If you are familiar with the court system, sometimes we have a diversion plans that move your conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor if you are able to complete a certain period of time and there was some questions as to whether or not that starts to clock ticking again when your felony converts to a misdemeanor. This clears that up and says it's the actual conviction date. So therefore it goes back to the date that the conviction was entered. Another piece of legislation in regards to courts and criminal code that was passed in the Indiana General Assembly goes affected this year is courts and, excuse me, courts and family law matters. Some of you listening may already know that Indianapolis and the Small Claims Court in Indianapolis moved their statute for the limitation for disputes to 8,000 here in Marion County for Small Claims Court last year. House Bill 1313 that was co-authored by Greg Sterwall sponsored by again Senator Lonnie Randolph in the, as a member of the Black Legislative Caucus actually makes the $8,000 element applicable to all Small Claims Courts throughout the state of Indiana. So now you can have, you can take cases to court that have disputes up to $8,000 whereas that used to be $6,000 until this year. Also in that bill, one of the things that's very important is it talks about when a non-custodial parent relocates in a lot of jurisdictions across the state when people would move from place to place, if they moved even if they're within the same city, the courts had determined that they'd have to notify the custodial parent with that move, they're moving within a certain period of time. The law was changed now to say that you have to move, if you move more than 20 miles between your relocation area, then you have to notify the parents which clears up some of those things about people who may be moving into, moving for a shorter distance. Last but not least, we were able to get an advisory council put together and to look at jail overcrowding in the state of Indiana. There's a justice reinvestment advisory council that are looking at advice to how we should reinvest our judicial dollars and public safety dollars when it comes to overcrowdings and jails in other areas of the criminal justice system. So stay tuned for that, that's gonna be very important. That is all that I have right now. Well, one thing I would wanna focus on, Senate Bill 249, I find this to be very important to the senior people, people who are of senior age and it actually changed the law for exploitation of a dependent and an endangered adult. And it provides that a person commits an exploitation of a dependent or endangered adult if the person recklessly uses or exerts control over a personal services or property of the endangered dependent. And this only requires that you be in a position of trust. And that could be a relationship of guardian, that could be a relationship of a, you could have a grandparent and you have the grandchild taking care of the grandparent. And it actually increases the penalty if you have a prior unrelated conviction for that type of misconduct. So it does protect endangered adults and applies to people who exploit dependence or endangered adults. Thank you, Marshawn. Thank you, thank you for that update Senator Taylor. We're now gonna move to economic development and workforce and we'll receive presentations from Representative Harris and Representative Pryor. Thank you, Marshawn. I'm gonna go over really quickly three very important bills, Senate Bill 383. That is the reporting on a minority business enterprise and women business enterprise contracting goals. That is for minority and women business opportunities that was carried by our very on Senator Greg Taylor over in the Senate and in the House, Representative Porter and I were on that bill. And what the bill would do is requires each state educational institution in Indiana to submit an annual report to the state budget committee regarding the state educational institutionals progress in achieving goals as it relates to the governor's commission on minority and women business enterprises. There are goals that are set. And so the institutions like IU, Purdue, Ball State, Ivy Tech, Vincenzo would have to report to the state budget agency their goals and whether or not they're achieving those goals. The second bill is House Bill 1009. Title of it is various welfare matters but actually it's really dealing with employment opportunities. What the bill would do, it would provide that money earned by a child or a member of the child's family. That is participating in any type of, or anyone, any child in that particular family that has a job that money would not be counted towards qualifications for TANF and also welfare in Medicaid. This is important because a lot of kids who have that income, their parents may be just one paycheck away from not being qualified for receiving food stamps or a snap. And this bill is saying that that income would not count towards it. Additionally, I was able to put in an amendment in that same bill that states that income earned if you are a temporary worker with the census, that money does not count towards, or does not count as credit towards a qualification towards TANF, SNAP, Medicaid, school launch programs and also educational scholarships as well. And the last thing that this bill does, it increases the value of a vehicle that a person can have in order to have be eligible for TANF. So that was another good thing that was in that bill. And the last bill that I'm gonna talk about is House Bill 1143. It is device implementation as a condition of employment. Representative John Barlett, who is a member of our caucus was on this bill. Also Senator O'Lanagh Randolph, who was a member of the black caucus was on this bill from the city. It will prohibit an employee, an employer prohibits an employer to require a person to place an implant in their body as a condition of employment. So your employer cannot tell you that you have to get something implanted in your body in order to receive a job. So those are the three bills that I have. Thank you Representative Pryor. I just wanna talk about a couple of real quick House Bill 1011. This is in relation to the governor's commission on minority and women business enterprises. It changes the name to the governor's commission on supplier diversity. The reason for this was to expand the reach of the commission. Its membership has expanded to include a focus on veteran owned small businesses. So minority and women businesses as a name didn't really fit well with the veterans part. That was added in. Three of us from the black caucus were involved in that piece of legislation. I was one of that originally from the house for Representative Guttwine. I was one of the co-authors and then it was sponsored by a couple of people from the Senate, their IVLC members in Representative, I'm sorry, Senator Bro and Senator Randolph. And then something we've kind of talked about earlier real quick is House Bill 1264. This has to do with childcare background checks requires employees and volunteers of a childcare facility who may not be present on the premises of the childcare facility during operation hours to submit a national criminal history background check. This is really just to protect our children. Make sure that they're safe. Make sure that we know that the people that are going to be in contact with them don't have anything in their history that will be an issue. And again, it's just important to make sure that they're safe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Representatives Pryor and Representative Harris. Now we're going to move to education and we're going to hear from Representative Vernon Smith. Representative Smith, I think you're still muted. Okay. Okay. Thank you for the opportunity, LaShawn. I would like to direct your attention first to Senate Bill two. It is known as the whole harmless bill. Those of you who may be aware that our student did not score well on the new state test call I learned. And what this bill did was to hold harmless any school who may have not performed well or any school district that may have not performed well, they could not get a lower school grade or district grade than what they had prior to this testing instituted. I would like to direct your attention next to Senate Bill 346. It's the bill that deals with students with disabilities. And it says that if a student is receiving accommodations during the year with instruction, if they also must be afforded those same accommodations when they're taking the standard-ass test. House Bill 1002 deals with teacher evaluations and I'm pleased to have been a co-author on that bill as well as the school accountability bill that I mentioned previously. What this bill does is it says that you no longer can use as a part of the evaluation the test scores of students as one of the indicators of success and destruction. House Bill 1066 deals with various education matters and I was also a co-author on this bill. It provides the school corporation shall accept a transfer student into their legal settlement area as a home student if there's an employee who is employed in the school corporation and if their salary is at least $8,000 if they are a four-time instructor and $3,000 if they are a five-time instructor. House Bill 1091 deals with education benefits relating to military service. And it says that a student who has a parent who resides in a district and there's a military installation in that district that they can be considered as local students, as students of residence and then of course the school corporation will receive the ADM which is the amount of money that is afforded for each child for their education. House Bill 1305 deals with the graduation rate calculation. We know that some students do not attend school maybe after a certain grade and this bill deals with grade 10 that you no longer would count a student as withdrawing student or failure to a student who has failed to graduate. If the parent bills are the statements saying that there's various conditions, most of it deals with religious purposes. I think those are the ones that are most important and I appreciate the opportunity to share. Thank you, Representative Smith. Now we're going to proceed back to actually Representative Shackleford and we're going to hear about health and human services bills. Thank you, Marshawn. I just want to remind everyone that this was a non-budget year so the bills that you're hearing, they don't directly impact our budget so they may not seem as exciting because during the short session we're trying to do some fixes. I'm going to go over a couple of bills that came out because you may recall last summer I did submit a study request that we look at the high cost of prescription drugs and healthcare costs. We had a great summer study chest in last summer. We came out with some good bills, not so great bills. So I'm going to highlight some of those because we did have a session that really dealt with healthcare this past session. Senate Bill 241 was Formacy Benefit Managers. During our summer study committee last year on prescription drug prices, we learned that a lot of the inflated costs that consumers were facing were coming from these middlemen like Formacy Benefit Managers. These are the companies who are supposed to negotiate the price on behalf of the insurance company. And we realized we didn't know much about them. We didn't know how many they were, how much they were making. So this bill will require Formacy Benefit Managers to get licensed by the States Department of Insurance by December 31st, 2020 to submit annual reports on their revenue and also adhere to annual audits. And we think this will be a great first step in trying to get a control or help with those Formacy Benefit Managers. Senate Bill 255, Insulin Drugs. We know insulin has been overpriced for years in causing diabetes and their family's economic hardship in trying to purchase. Although this bill didn't go far enough to reduce consumer costs, it is a step in the right direction. So the bill removes the requirement or a prescription to purchase insulin, which will allow people to purchase directly from a pharmacist at about $40. We will still continue to work on capping insulin costs and giving some kind of assistance if you don't have insurance. Senate Bill 275, School Concussion Recovery Protocol. To ensure we have a statewide policy to protect our students from concussions, this bill requires the Department of Education to develop and distribute by July 1st, 2021, a protocol for allowing a student who has received a concussion or a head injury to return to schoolwork. All schools public and private will have to comply with the recommendations that sit down from DOE. House Bill 1004, Health Matters. This was another one of those large bills that was supposed to reduce healthcare cost for consumers, but got watered down in the process. One of the good pieces that remain that directly benefits consumers is the good faith estimate requirement. Starting July 1st, 2021, healthcare providers have to provide a good faith estimate to individuals of the price for non-emergency services to be provided. So this means no more surprise billing. You shouldn't go to the hospital and don't know what you're gonna pay. Now they will have to give you an estimate. This will give more power to consumers when it comes to the ability to shop around with an estimate in hand. And lastly, House Bill 1207, Pharmacy Benefit Managers. This was a bill that we've been trying to get pushed for a while to work on the prescription drug costs. Here are some of the highlights that will interest you in that bill. Requires that a health plan provider may not require a pharmacy or a pharmacist to collect a higher cold payment for a prescription drug from a covered individual than what is covered by the plan. If you go to the pharmacy, your plan only covers $100, then they can't charge you more than what your plan covers. Allows the prescription for a patient to be transferred electronically by a pharmacy to another pharmacy. Previously, your provider office would have to authorize that transfer and this would delay you getting your scrap. So this will help expedite if you want to transfer from one pharmacy to another pharmacy. Next requires a health plan to establish of a seizure under which the amount paid by a covered individual for a covered drug purchase outside the plan is counted towards their deductible. So for example, if you pay $100 a month for a drug that is subsidized by the manufacturer you're on their discount program, that $100 will go towards your deductible. We are still fighting to get the amount that the manufacturer pay to also go towards your deductible. So keep an eye out for that one, but that is a step in the right direction. So at least the amount you pay now will go towards your deductible. And lastly requires an insurer when we're moving a prescription drug from the insurance insurance formulary or changing the cost share requirements have to give the insurer a 60 day notice and provide an appeals process. We ran into times where insurers were removing say you were on a certain drug they took it off your formulary is not covered. They weren't giving you enough time to switch to another drug or test out another drug or even appeal that decision. So now they have to give you a 60 day notice and you should be able to appeal it. That is it for healthcare. As far as the bills that was passed and I'm gonna hand it back to Marciaan. Thank you. Thank you representative Shackle first. So I'm Marciaan Wally of I'm Just Saying with the Indianapolis Recorder. We are with the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus and we are hosting their second town hall for this year getting updates on courts and criminal code and economic development and minority and women business developments and education and things happening with health and human services. We have community partners that are participating in this effort as well. The Indianapolis Recorder, the Indianapolis Urban League, IBE and NAACP, Indiana Minority Health Coalition and NO Power. We see that the questions are coming in. So keep the questions coming. We will handle the questions during the Q and A period after we get through a few more updates as well as some larger explanations of major reform efforts. And at this time, if you want to provide a question, you can either add it into the Zoom function and we'll capture that. Or you can go to the Indianapolis Recorder Facebook page and post your questions there. We are going to try to get to as many of them as possible. Thank you for joining us. And so now we're going to move to miscellaneous legislation with Representative Jackson. Thank you, Marshaan. I'm going to start off by talking about Senate Bill 1. This bill was a tobacco and vaping bill. What it does is it prohibits any Hoosier under 21 years of age from buying or possessing cigarettes, electronic cigarettes or vaping products under this law, as well as federal status. Indiana retailers who sell tobacco products to underage purchases will be forced to pay a fine between $400 and $2,000. Basically, it will double what the current fine is. New tobacco retailers cannot be located within 1,000 feet of a school. This bill was sponsored by our own member, Lani Randolph. Senate House Bill 1,006. This bill is a bill that has a minimum age to marry. The minimum age in our state is 15 years of age. This bill will increase that to 16 years. Children ages 16 and 17 only can marry and a partner who is four years older and a juvenile court judge grants permission for this marriage. That bill was also co-authored by quite a few of our members represented by Smith and co-sponsored by Senator Randolph. House Bill 1070, distracting drivers. This bill makes it illegal for drivers to hold or a cell phone or any type of mobile device while operating a moving vehicle unless the device is in one of those mounted dashboard apparatuses or another surface in the vehicle. Otherwise, operating a hand, unless it's a hand-free device. Motorists caught holding these devices while the vehicle is moving will be fined up to $5,000 and possibly lose their driver's license if they have repeated violations. This bill was co-sponsored by again one of our own Senator Randolph. The last bill I'm going to talk about is House Bill 1265 drinking water testing. This bill was authored by myself and it was co-authored by Representative Harris and sponsored by Senator Randolph. Basically what this does is it requires all schools to test to determine if they have lead in the drinking water and if the lead is found in there to be more than 15 parts per billion, they will have to work to remedy the situation. These tests must be done by January 1st, 2023 unless it has previously tested and found to be in compliance since 2016. However, in Lake County, the water equipment in every school building must be tested for lead at least every other year, beginning in January 2023. Funds for this testing can be gotten from the Indiana Finance Authority. And that's all I have turning it back over to you, Marshawn. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Jackson. Now we're going to move to important legislation that did not pass. Thank you, Marshawn, for being our host tonight and thank you for everyone that is joining us this evening. Important legislation that did not pass. I think the one House Bill 1018, Student Hunger and Homelessness by Representative, our own Representative Harris, this bill established a Student Hunger and Homeless Subcommittee. We know that a lot of students could possibly be in school without lunch plans, without places to live. We do know that we have foster kids that end up in bad situations trying to better their lives for college. I think the one, a lot of things that did not pass were, for example, we had bullying legislation, we had racial profiling legislation. I had it in House Bill 1250, implicit bias in medicine. And we were about a couple months ahead of ourselves with the implicit bias in medicine. And we were about a couple months ahead of ourselves with the implicit bias subcommittees that, committees that we were asking for. So we're hopefully in this next session. Those are some of the things that we will be able to do. The other one was expungement of juvenile records, which was authored by our own Representative, Robin Shackleford. And he provided that the Office of Judicial Administration shall maintain a database on current laws and electronic juvenile records. And I think that's about all I want to cover. I'll hand it over to Representative Porter. Thank you. Thank you very much, Representative Summers. During this whole time, during the hundred, this legislative session, we had about 18 bills that was important to the Black Caucus that were not passed during this past session. And from our perspective, ladies and gentlemen, it's a missed opportunity. And as Representative Summers alluded to, we were a kind of head and some of the legislation that we really put forth. One legislation that was by our own Senator, Gene Bro, was looking at healthcare professionals for minority students. Now, this was not a budget year, as Representative Shackleford said, but that's very crucial because when you talk about disparities in healthcare, we want to see physicians are people that work in a healthcare area that look like us. And there's an opportunity for us to generate more workforce in regards to minority students in the area of healthcare. That would be about $4,000 in grants over a two-year period to become certified or to become a licensed person in the healthcare area. And you would have to work there for about three years, and then that scholarship would be totally be forgiven. That would be administered by Commissioner on Higher Education. A couple other pieces of legislation that was very important to us that did not happen was Lieutenant Rice by Representative Shackleford. We had a piece of legislation that, you know, we pay or quit legislation that she had authored that did not really get a hearing. But with COVID right now, as you can see, ladies and gentlemen, things have fallen a chain because what we, if you look at what we're doing, we were really ahead, as Reps said, that someone said ahead of the time. Reps, as someone mentioned that the bullying legislation, which is my legislation, 1167, for that bill is that we required traditional public schools to report bullying. Schools, charter schools, as well as non-public schools and other schools are not required to report bullying. We give about $200 million to charter schools and about another $180 million to non-public schools for school choice. And if they're going to receive the dollars from the state of Indiana, they should report the incidents that happened, that occurred within those schools. A couple other pieces of legislation that we looked at was Representative, our prior racial profiling stops and I know that she's going to reintroduce that this year. Again, if you look at the legislation that did not pass, a lot of it had to do with criminal justice. Representative Barton had a criminal justice committee and so a lot of it deals with the criminal justice arena. So we have all worked on our legislation and we are going to continue to put our legislation forth again. And lastly, the whole point that we look at is that all the disparities that we've had in regards to healthcare and education have come home to roots and we need to continue to fight and move forward and put those in our budget for next year. And next year is a budget year and we believe we will figure out a way to free up dollars to take care of the programs with Indiana Black, Leslie Caucus and others that are about the human infrastructure of this state are important to us that we'll move that forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, reporter. At this point, we're going to go to legislation of concern that did not pass and we're going to go to Senator Greg Taylor. Thank you, Marshawn. Thank you again to the listeners. Legislations of concern that did not pass would be legislation that were filed by members in the Indiana General Assembly that may or may not have had a chance to have a hearing yet these bills did not pass. The first one has to do with Senate Bill 148. Senate Bill 148 in its original form had to do with manufactured homes outside of mobile home community and it had to do with regulation of those. But in March of this year, the city of Indianapolis passed a tenants rights ordinance here locally in Marion County. And as a result, the members of the interested parties who were landlords passed, tried to add and amend Senate Bill 148 to prohibit local governments from regulating aspects of landlord tenant relationship with respect to privately owned real property located in certain jurisdiction in the state of Indiana unless it was approved by the General Assembly. Specifically what the bill would have done is it would have prohibited the actual regulation by the local jurisdictions. Again, going back to the fact that Marion County did pass this, it would have prohibited the locals from regulating anything that had to do with the screening process for landlords, security deposits, lease applications, leasing terms, disclosures concerning property lease, the right of properties to a lease, any fees that were charged in any other aspects of the landlord tenant relationship. Now, this bill in the waiting moments of the Indiana General Assembly this year did pass the legislature. However, in reviewing the bill, the governor's office vetoed that bill. So that bill, although it passed, did not become law in the state of Indiana. Senate Bill 449 would have made any youth between the ages of 12 and 16 eligible to be put in the adult court system for certain attempts to commit bodily injury, serious offenses that could lead to a term of incarceration up to six years. That bill, although it did pass the Senate, was not heard in the house and therefore that bill did not become law. In addition, House Bill 1279, which had to do with local transportation projects, at the end of the session, there was a push by the supermajority to actually regulate and change the law associated with Indigo in the advancement of what we call the red line system, a purple line system here in Indianapolis. That bill would have changed the requirements for the city of Indianapolis in order to continue that program. There were public hearings and everything was followed according to the law, and the legislature tried to change it in order for the implementation of a 10% of annual operations being raised privately by the Indigo or the local transportation department here in Marion County. Fortunately, that bill died on the house floor, was not heard, and therefore did not become part of Indiana law. But I would say stay tuned because it may come back up again. Those are the three that I had to talk about as far as legislations of concern that did not pass. There's quite a few more, but in the interest of time, I'll go back to you, Marshawn. Appreciate that. Thank you, Senator Taylor, for the update. We see your questions coming in, so please keep those coming. We have heard about what is essentially missed opportunities and times when the IDLC was maybe a few months ahead of what current events have been related to COVID-19 and policing reform in the larger community, and so they still remain the conscious of the Indiana General Assembly. At this point, we are going to move to some updates on some larger reform efforts, and we're going to go to Representative Pryor to talk about justice reform and IDLC's positions on justice reform. Thank you, Marshawn. I'm going to go over and give an update for IDLC as it relates to criminal justice reform. As you've heard, we have for years introduced several bills dealing with criminal justice reform. Unfortunately, many of those have not passed. However, with what happened with George Floyd and with all of the protests and rallies that is happening not only in Indiana but around the world, what we have known in the African-American community is in the criminal justice system, which is a pandemic, really also that we've been dealing with for years is now in the spotlight, and we're hopeful that we're able to get some significant changes as it relates to criminal justice reform. We did a press conference several weeks ago and in that press conference, we rolled out a two-phase approach to criminal justice reform. The first phase is immediate, and that first phase has four components. The first component is that we urge the Governor Holcomb to issue an immediate executive order to immediately ban law enforcement from using chokehold restraints or any other means of restraints that cut off the ability to breathe as a mean of effectuating and arrest in Indiana. This order must include specific repercussions of officers who, if they violate that ban. The second immediate action that we had is again to the Governor or if the Governor is unable to or does not implement a ban, we're urging the local mayors and the city council and police chiefs in their departments to outlaw the use of chokeholds in anything that will restrain the airflow of a person or make it more difficult for them to breathe. The third thing that we have, which is something that can be done immediately also, is that we're urging the Governor to establish a statewide criminal justice commission, including a diverse appointment of civilians, not law enforcement officials, but civilians representing cities from across the state that has a significant African-American population to examine every aspect of our state's criminal justice system and recommend comprehensive criminal justice reform, including getting rid of racist policies and racist police officers. We expect these recommendations to become law, and it's something that we can get behind and the people can get behind and pass in 2021. Again, if there's, we also, and the fourth thing, I'm sorry, the fourth thing, we were urged the mayors, the city council's police chiefs and police departments to establish an independent civilian review board with members selected by the local community, activist groups, and from the public in addressing police violence. So that's the first phase that we are going into. The second phase is where the people on this zoom and at this town hall where you all have an opportunity to participate where you can get us feedback. This is our second town hall. Our first town hall was held on July 11th. This is our second one. We're asking for recommendations and feedback from people so that we can put this as the second part of our phase, which is our legislative action. Also, anything that you put in the notes from Facebook that you're seeing, we're going to take a look at all of those things. And we want to incorporate those into what we do next year when we go in session, because this is important for us to make sure that our criminal justice plan is something that the community has a part of. And it's not just something that we're doing. It's important to have feedback from people in the community. Some of the things that we already have, however, is as I stated the statewide criminal justice commission requiring the state, the statewide use of body cameras and dashboard cameras as well. A local wide special prosecutor for police misconduct and the use of fatal excessive force. The public reporting of local of lethal force involving law enforcement. The statewide public database for civilians complaints against law enforcement officials passing an anti racial profiling law. Many states already have a racial post filing law. Indiana is one of a handful of states that do not have it. Enhanced penalties for officers involved in shooting and inclusive hate crimes legislation. We, something was passed a couple of years ago, but it was not a truly inclusive hate crimes piece of legislation. Ensuring that the fraternal order of police contracts or public records and require a public hearing for renewal. The fraternal order of police for those that do not know that is the union for the police officers law enforcement officials. And the union of police officers. To require mental health reviews for police officers. To have a confidential whistleblower complaint process for officers. So that officers will come forward if they see inappropriate or excessive behavior. And then last implicit bias dispute, dispute resolution and de escalation training for police officers. So that's one of the things that we currently have and we're looking forward to getting more recommendations from you all. And again, many of us have passed some of these bills. And that you've heard, we're going to be introducing them again and hopefully we'll be able to get something done. We're also going to try to meet with the governor. As well. And then we'll talk about what his plans are and what his plans are to address some of these issues. Thank you, Marcia. Thank you, representative prior. That's, that was a comprehensive update on justice reform. We know that we have lost a mod, Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and we are even Dray Jean Reed here in Indianapolis locally. And so that thank you to the I BLC for continuing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Erin Bailey, Aaron Bailey, Michael Taylor. We can, we can go all the way back. The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, but it needs a little help. And it sounds like the I BLC is asking for additional ideas on justice reform. We will have another opportunity. Now we're going to go to representative Shackleford, who's going to talk about Indiana health disparities and the Indiana health disparities. And we're going to go back to the I BLC. And I think that the I BLC has really exacerbated a lot of the underlying health conditions that black and Latinx communities have faced that were known for some time. And so we appreciate an update that will come from representative Shackleford. Thank you. Thank you, Marcia. And so when we got the COVID numbers for actually the I BLC did a call for action. And we were able to get a list of the COVID data they dispensed by race. When we got that information, we realized that blacks were 20% more likely to be positive or die from COVID-19. At that point, we put a list together and came up with recommendations of what we would like to see to help with the health disparities, whether it was Monday, we was spending from the carers act, whether it was dealing with rent disparities, whether that main piece was those health disparities. We requested that a task force be put together and a corrective action plan be released by June 30th. So the governor complied him and Dr. Box. They did put together a task force. The conveners were the Indiana Minority Health Coalition, the Indiana State Department Office of Minority and Health, and the Interagency State Council on Black and Minority Health. We have met in our committees, several of our black caucus members are on the committees. We now have a draft that should be done tomorrow that is in the review process. We will have an external professors review it. We are having the State Department of Health review it. Black caucus members will be reviewing it. And we will have that planned out next week. I'm going to backtrack because some of the committees that we actually had working on this, we had over 100 people on this task force. We had eight committees divided up in these categories. So you will know what some of that information we're trying to really focus on. The first committee was incarcerated and detained. It included prisons, juvenile detention centers, sheriff and local jail and et cetera. Next, we focused on immigrant and migrant populations and undocumented. We then focused on un and under insured. We had a committee on frontline workers, including caretakers, cooks, clerks, et cetera. Next, we had a committee on nursing home and long-term care assisted living facilities. And the 65 and older, since we know this population was heavily affected by COVID. We also had a committee on underlining conditions, which included pregnant women, chronic diseases, and also homelessness. And then we had a communications committee that looked at education, comprehensive campaign. And then we had one group with special interest clusters. And that included the Indiana Minority Health Coalition, the faith-based organizations, the community-based organizations, the triple A's, the area agencies. So those groups were also in a committee. So we are excited about the feedback that we got, the issues and concerns that we brought out in this report, and also the recommendations. We are hoping that the governor and Dr. Box takes these recommendations seriously. They are not aimed at causing any blame. We're not trying to call out the State Department of Health. But these are actually concerns that has been going on for a while when you talk about health disparities. Once the report is complete next week, we will get it off to the governor and to all the legislators, all the legislators. During our summer study committees, we will actually have the task force come in and present to the legislative body on those recommendations. And so we're hoping to see action from the legislators and be abstracted. You will definitely see some from the IBLC members, but we are hoping everyone embrace these recommendations. And we are also asking the community rally around and advocate for whatever recommendations that come out of this report and that the IBLC put forth in legislation. So that is the update on that task force. I'll turn it back to you, Marcia. Thank you. And I'd actually like to take a point of personal privilege and recognize the fact that when I reached out to try to get data on COVID-19, I didn't really, and the race data particularly, I didn't get much of an answer. But when the IBLC reached out, all of a sudden it appeared. And so very much appreciative of the IBLC's advocacy on, for us in that regard. What we're going to do now is move to, this is a census year. This is a situation where we may have underperformed this year. And so we have time to catch up, but we're running out of time. And so representative Harris is going to give us a little bit of an update. So representative Harris is going to give us an update on response rates relative to the 2020 census. Thank you for your update, sir. Thank you for Sean. I want to give some background information, you know, walking into 2020 election and census were our two biggest largest issues we'd be working on. And then other things have come in. And unfortunately, census maybe has lost some of the attention that it really deserves because of the importance of it. I want to point out that the census counts, everyone counts in the census. Doesn't matter age. Doesn't matter place of birth. None of that matters. If you live here in the United States, you are to be counted. It's required by the constitution. By law, all responses are confidential. Personal information cannot be shared with any law enforcement agencies. We know we had some questions about a place of birth and things like that. None of that information can be shared with anyone, including government agencies. You can still respond online at 2020 census.gov. That's where most people are responding. It's quick and easy again. That's 2020 census.gov. You can do it at home. If you do not respond starting in August, people will be going door to door to check on those homes that do not provide an answer. And in fact, for those of you that are looking to earn a little bit of money, the census is actually still hiring. You can go to census 2020.gov forward slash jobs. Not necessary to work full-time. They have part-time evenings, weekends. There's lots of options. So if you're looking for a little bit of additional income, and I want to point out one of the things that, that is important about this is the census is looking for people that speak more than just the English language. They want to be able to make sure that no matter what household they go to, someone can communicate with people there to get the correct answer. So why the census matters? I'm going to give you a couple of real quick reasons. First of all, funding. Census data directly affects how more than 589 billion per year in federal and state funds are allocated to communities for neighborhood improvements, public health, hospitals, education, transportation, and much more. That's more than 5 trillion over a 10-year period. That really means that the more people you have, the more public services. The second thing has to do with power. Our census is used in terms of the amount of U.S. House of Representatives seats we have. There are 434 seats in the U.S. Indiana currently has nine. Depending on the census, those numbers for states can and have gone up and down. So one of the things here in Indiana, we don't want to go any lower than nine. So please let people, if you have not responded, respond and let everyone connected to you know that. This again is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. The census also affects legislative districts, school district assignment areas, and other functions of government. The third thing is intelligence. Census data is used to inform about your community's decisions. It's like a snapshot of ways to help people. Data can be used in crucial ways to provide building of new roads, schools, where job training centers are located. Also non-profit and for-profit companies base things on the census, which also means it will affect jobs and employment opportunities. Some important things because we know that there have been some scams going on connected to census. The Census Bureau will never ask you for your social security number. They'll never ask you for bank account or credit card numbers. They will not ask you about your political party affiliation and they will never ask you for money or donations. So when you talk about getting to the rates of response, Indiana is kind of in the middle. Our Indiana self-response rate is about 65%. About 50% of those have been on the, done over the internet. The national internet response rate is about 60%. So I'm sorry, the national response rate in general is 60%. The national internet response rate is about 48%. So we're not doing the best. We're not doing the worst. We're somewhere in the middle, but we really want to make sure that over these next few months, we put a lot of effort into making sure that everyone is counted. Again, the more people counted, more people live here, the more people counted, the better it'll be for the state. And once again, I just want to remind you that everyone counts. It doesn't matter your age. It doesn't matter if you were born here or not. Everyone counts. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Harris. And so now I believe we've reached the point. Where it's time for questions. And we have over 20 questions on here. So I wanted to just kind of give you that, that heads up IBLC team. They've done a good job of coming up with questions. So we'll want to make sure that we try to get through as many of them as possible. And we're just going to dive right in. So this question, I'm actually trying to figure it out a little bit. I'm just trying to figure it out a little bit. I basically, it's a science teacher with. An anthropology background. They are trying to petition to reform Indiana code. Law enforcement rules, regulations, requirements, and academy curriculum. And they've read somewhere that you need at least 200 signatures for a legislative body. I believe to consider. It is true. How do you start the process of finding a legislator? They've used a change.org petition. And they believe they have 500 signatures and they also list some of the changes that they'd like to see. So I guess the question is, does someone have to have a petition to engage a legislator? March on all acts that it sounds like, are they wanting to get a certification or certified. In some type of industry. No, no, it looks like they're trying to change the law. They're trying to sign a petition to change a law. That's not required to change any law. You can contact any of the legislators who you think have experience in that area. And see if they will author a bill for you or co-author a bill for you. So there are no signatures. We often use the petitions as an advocacy tool. So if you want to give some sway, if you want to give some power behind that bill, once it is drafted, then a lot of people do submit the signatures that are on those change.org positions that has helped in the past, especially when it has come to study different areas, but you don't need signatures to change a law. And if you want to contact the I BLC and see if any of our members would like to author that legislation. Please feel free. You can email it to us at I BLC at IGA.IN.gov. Awesome. Thank you. I think this question is probably for Senator Taylor. In relation to expungements, the General Assembly deluded Indianapolis's ban the box ordinance. This changed by the General Assembly negatively impacted ex-offender's ability to get employment. What are your thoughts about the General Assembly's actions on this issue? And how can we fix it? And it's actually from a candidate, Fatia Cordera on Facebook, from Facebook. No, that is correct. The Indiana General Assembly, I think it was in the 2018 General Assembly changed the law that said, that jurisdictions could have actually banned the box programs. The City of Indianapolis did a ban the box program. And the Indiana General Assembly, after that was done, then made the law retroactive and therefore eliminated the City of Indianapolis's program. And because it took away the authority of the federal and because it took away the authority of the locals to actually have their own program, it actually restricted other jurisdictions from having it. What we can do to change it? Well, first of all, the reason that people wanted to get away, the main reason I heard from testimony on that legislation was that the employers deserve have a right to know a person's criminal background. And my argument has always been, yes, as long as that criminal background has the effect of changing or having something to do, like for example, if they're working for a bank, if they have theft or something like that, that might be related. We have to change the dialogue. We've got expungement in Indiana, which, you know, helps people. The only thing I can tell is that we could change the law just like they changed the law to restrict. We could change the law back to actually make sure that local jurisdictions like Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, who all had been the box ordinances teed up to be able to do that. But as of right now, we take a change in state law to actually get the actual locals have the right to change that. Awesome. So that was a question from Fatty on Facebook. I'm going to go to a zoom question and I think it has to do with actually Senator Taylor, another law that you had talked about earlier, the endangerment of adults law. And basically the question is, does the does the endangerment belt law only count with physical abuse or can it be financial also? It does cover financial and property. That's very important because it could be the use of the stealing of someone's car, but it could also be the use of their property for, for example, you have, you're taking care of a loved one and you have people over who are destroying the property. It is, it covers the whole gamut from financial to property as well. Thank you. So another question of concern that's come up from at least two folks on Facebook, please expand on the info regarding tickets and fees in the new law that's supposed to go in effect with regard to cell phones and being caught holding a cell phone while you're driving. Mary Allen asks, when does that $5,000, I guess, penalty go into effect? Is it July one? The penalty, the penalty will go into effect July first. Okay. And it's not $5,000. It's $500. Okay. Like any other penalty, it will, it will obviously going to be based on the number of times that you are caught with the cell phone, but the, but the beginning fee is $500. And go ahead, Senator Taylor. One other thing, just like we had, if people remember we had the lane changing where you couldn't be in the low slow lane in the left side. Remember we made the change in that law in the state police decided that they wouldn't enforce it for a month for six months. I believe that I think, and if one of the members knows as well, I think they're going to actually delay giving out tickets for six months before they actually implement it and give out tickets. Okay. I think you may get a warning, but they will not be giving fines for at least six months is from what I understand. That's an administrative thing. And I think it will be up to the locals, but that's one thing that I know the state of Indiana is asking people to do. Okay. So sounds like a, there's a grace period and it's 500. Okay. I think this question is either for representative Smith or representative Porter. Okay. Okay. So that's one zero zero two education on teacher evaluations. And basically they're saying, is there another indicator to replace the test scores as an indicator for evaluations? I'll answer that. Okay. And what's the suggestion for school districts. This is coming from Gary Peters with zoom. Yes. Okay. So the test data that was used or the students performance data that was used as a small portion of the teacher evaluation was what was addressed in a hospital 10. Zero zero two. I'm sorry. One zero zero two. That the majority of the teacher evaluation comes from. Teacher observations that are made or classroom observations that are ranked in four categories. Effective. Highly effective. Infected or need improvement. And so teachers are still held accountable. That was just a small percentage of that that was able to use, but because the test was flawed. The asset test. Well, I shouldn't say it was flawed. I learned test students did not perform well on it. We felt that teachers should not be, that should not be included in their evaluation. This is just for a two year period. And so teachers are still held accountable because there must be four observations made of each teacher. During the academic year. Thank you representative Smith. It seems like there's a, was a follow up on zoom relative to I learn. And it's, it seems a little bit broad. Basically they're trying to understand if you can share. Our guests repeat any information you had. Relative to I learn and what you presented earlier today. It looks like this person missed maybe a bit of that. And I'm assuming it has to do with. Maybe what you just talked about. Yeah, during the previous academic year, when the I learned test was administered. School districts and schools did not perform well. On that test. And so what the legislature tried to do. During our last session was to hold people harmless of the test data. Because it was not a true picture of the performance of children within a school or within the district. So the I learned test is still in place. It would have been administered this year. Not then for the pandemic. And there is some question of whether it will be administered next year because of the conditions that schools will be operating under when they resume. Normacy and I put that in quotes. I don't know. I think the next question is, well, I don't think it's going to be a normal. But the next. Thank you for those insights. The next question is another zoom question. And it comes from mercy. Obini. I hope I, I said that right. Can prescriptions for controlled medications. Be electronically transferred. Hi, Marcia. I actually answered that with Dr. Obini. cannot be transferred electronically. So this legislation does not supersede the federal legislation. Awesome. And then Representative Shepardsford, while I have you, what is the bill number related to insulin? And that's coming from Facebook, Mary Davis Rogers. Senate Bill 255. Senate Bill 255. Thank you. Can the community require new police recruits as part of training to take a class on the history of policing on blacks in this country since slavery? And this is coming from Carmen Polk on Zoom. Basically, can we make that part of the training a course on the history of policing of black people in this country? I don't know if anyone else want to answer, but I say yes. We can definitely request that that be part of the training. We'll already have a bill requesting for bias training, de-escalation training, racial sensitivity training. So we can definitely add that to the list and get that requested in that bill. Awesome. You all are doing a wonderful job, but the questions keep on stacking up. So we're going to keep moving here. Do you all have a packet of the information that you all have provided that you can email out? I think something was posted on your Facebook page. Representative Harris, did you, I believe you posted something or did you, did someone do that? Yeah, I did. Yeah, it's posted on Facebook page. It was also posted by someone in the chat. So take a look there and you can see it's something that's easily downloadable and you can check out things that we've discussed on the presentation tonight. Correct. In the press release that had the information for the criminal justice stuff, that's on our Facebook page as well. Okay. Once it emailed to them directly, we'll be happy to email it to them. If they just want to reach out to our office at 317-232-9827 and drop us their email address or drop it in the chat, we can email those documents to them. Awesome. So here's a question coming from Zoom. Denise Harris, she wants to know who will be responsible for students, children getting sick with COVID-19 when they must enter the school building? Many do not have health insurance. Will the school corporation pay? So there's a bit of, you know, frustration with the schools potentially opening and so what are... We are delving into unknown area this fall when we resume our school. But let me just indicate what school law has demonstrated in the past. The only way that you can hold the school accountable for it is if they're in the black hole. That's called a tort case. If they fail to be proven and to do the right things then for neglect, they can be held accountable. So if the CDC says that you need to clean off the desk daily, you need to clean off different items that are in the school and they fail to do that, yes, they can be held accountable. If social distance is part of the CDC and the school corporation fails to do that, they can be held accountable. But as long as you are following the policies, normally schools are not held accountable even though they have the power, what is called in local parenthesis, the power of the parents. So it sounds like maybe it could be an opportunity to engage the local school board and let those concerns be known. We are to be very prudent in making sure that our children are protected and the things that have been shown is wear a mask, okay, social distance and good disrespecting of things that children would touch or as well as the adults would touch it. So it's protection for the balcony and staff as well as for the children and every parent in this area. Okay, thank you for that. Going back to the cell phone, so that seems to be something that folks are still concerned about. This is a question coming from Facebook, Lindsey Gale, Gale Cat Turner. I'm really worried about the legislation regarding cell phones being used in cars. This seems good to stop distracted driving, but what if someone needs to use their phone to film police officers once they've been stopped? Is this going to leave people vulnerable to police saying they were using their phone while driving and not letting them film? So this question is directed to Representative Jackson. Thank you. According to the legislation from what I have read, it says that the vehicle must be moving, not stopped. So if you are in a parked position and not driving, I don't see where you would have to worry about receiving a citation. Okay, so as long as you're stopped and then you're not like moving, then you should be fine. You should be fine, Lindsey Gale. Okay, so the next question. What steps do you plan to take to ensure that instances of police violence are prosecuted with the same tenacity as crimes perpetuated by civilians? And this is coming from Michael Spagenberg on Zoom. And I think you all laid out a pretty assertive criminal justice kind of package of reforms that you're going after. I don't know if anyone wanted to just kind of touch on that a little bit. So Marshawn, I will say one, a couple of things. One, if we take away, because prosecutors and police departments work so closely together, if there is a situation where there is excessive use of force or someone has been shot or died at the hands of police officer, getting a special prosecutor for that, as well as I think the other piece, which is significant, is not allowing police departments to investigate their own police officers, taking that out of their hands as well and having some independence there. I think that will lead to a lot better trust with the community and hopefully it will lead to officers being more responsible. And I think doing those two things gets to the accountability to police officers. The other thing too is with the civilian board being of civilians and not having all the police being a another board for police officers to just give a rubber stamp to bad behavior as well. So those are several things that can be done as well as with the fraternal order of police in those contracts, making sure that those contracts do not have discipline as a part of the contract. That can be very beneficial to a chief of police firing an officer or reassigning an officer or disciplining an officer if that disciplinary process is not a part of that contract. So multi-agency investigations, independent prosecutors, both of those are 21st century policing recommendations coming out of the Obama task force, use of force boards with civilian majorities, and then also looking at the FOP contracts. That sounds pretty aggressive and it sounds like taking a thumb off the scales of justice as opposed to having one on there. We had a piece of legislation that was proposed about three, four years ago, which was a special prosecutor's office. And that special prosecutor's office was also for civilian and police affairs. So we've had legislation out there that's never gotten any legs. And so what you see is all of us as the Black Caucus and other members that put together pieces, we just hopefully will continue to move forward. Now this year, it wouldn't be in budget year, we have up to 10 pieces of legislation to propose. So last year was only five. So this year we can have up to 10. And so hopefully, I think in the Senate is a 20, I can't remember, but hopefully we'll be able to get some piece of legislation going through in some various forms during this upcoming session. So special prosecutor at this is that what you're talking about? This is a special prosecutor for citizens and impartial? Yes. Okay, sounds good. This is what Georgia does. And Marshawn and also just remember it, well for people that may not know, I think people probably have heard, the Congressional Black Caucus members at the federal level, they have a policing bill as well. So I think it is for people who are on the call to make sure that they call their congressional people and ask them to support the bill coming out of the house. It's important to say the bill that's coming out of the house that has some accountability measures in there that is sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus members. So people can get on that and have their congressional members and their U.S. senators tell them to support those, that particular bill. Please reform bill coming out of the house. Okay. Very thank you. So I think some an interest was sparked when they heard about employees being chipped. We got a Facebook question from Robin Harper. What was the information regarding employers cannot require employees to be chipped? I think that might have struck some people as surprising. Why would you need a lot of stop that? Why are people doing that? You know, with the 21st century in employers wanting to, I guess, have more, have a better idea of their employees, whereabouts, that bill was just to be able to say, hey, you know, you cannot have a person undergo this particular procedure or process as a requirement for them to be employed. So, you know, now before they could have, because employers can't have set up certain requirements for employment. But now this is saying, you know, no, you cannot ask a person to change their physical body or put something inside themselves in order to have, in order to get a job with the company. Okay. All right. This next question, it looks like it's about education. Is the Indiana legislature making any effort to alter American history school curriculum? What we teach our children in these classes should be more inclusive, nuanced, and well-documented. So many Americans do not know about events that have negatively impacted minorities that has something to do with where we are right now in terms of race relations that's currently coming from Zoom, Maryland, and LaMenda. I know Senator Taylor, I know you worked on an ethnic studies bill a little while ago. You might want to start out. Yeah, let me start out. Yeah, let me start out with that. You are correct, Marshawn. We do have legislation in the state of Indiana that says that every high school must offer as an elective and ethnic study course. It does not specify what ethnicity, but it leaves it up to the school district on which one that they would study. That bill, however, started out as a mandatory thing for children in fifth grade. It was amended to then only required as a and elective in high school. But I agree with the person that needs to be there needs to be. There are many pieces of literature. Let me say this. The school districts have the choice. There are standards that are put in it through the Department of Education. The curriculum that is chosen is chosen at the local level. So there are books on people like WB Du Bois that are part of the standards. There's a book that I know it's called something the America before the Mayflower that are part of the reading approved reading material through the standards through the Indiana Department of Education. Then it must go down to the local school board in the school district to what they actually choose to teach. They only have minimum requirements. Anything more than that has to be a local decision. So I would encourage those who are interested in that to actually go to their local school boards and find out what approved pieces of literature they're teaching children. And I want to emphasize elementary children. Can I respond on this question as well? Yes, sir. Can you hear me? Yes. What Senator Taylor said is correct. It really becomes a local issue. There are some state mandates. So I think it's important that we deal with an awareness among educators of the importance of diversity being addressed in our educational system. It has an importance about for minority children. It deals with their self-esteem, their self-worth, what they feel like they can do, the level of achievement for motivation in a number of areas that make a difference in the effective domain that works itself out in the cognitive domain in that deliverance performance on the part of students. But also for the majority raised. What it does is teach them tolerance also and appreciation of other racial groups. At the university level, we have been working and striving on trying to teach teachers how to infuse diversity and history of other racial groups into our curriculum. Our curriculum books and the package curriculums that we get do not adequately address this topic. But what we have born in our communities, our local communities, is this pressure that comes from high state testing. We have been so concerned about high state testing that we're no longer educating our children, but we're schooling them for a test. And so we've got to get back to what do we really value. If we value harmony and we value justice and civil rights and things, we must make sure that we make a concerted effort to infuse those things into the curriculum. A lot of teachers will tell you, I don't have time to teach black history because that's not part of the standards. Well, what you do if you value it, you infuse it in. So if you're teaching reading, you can read documents that are historical documents that may contain to civil rights issues and justice that we're dealing with. Now, you can read about successful black achievers. In science, we can infuse that in because most of the scientific discoveries, all the inventions were primarily by black folks because we did the work and so we were trying to find a way to do the work easier. And so I'm saying it's a way to do that. You can infuse it into almost every subject area if you have desire to. So I'll go back to what Senator Taylor said. At the local level is where the pressure ought to be applied. We certainly set up some standards and we said some things that are important, but it's going to be delivered at the local level. So it sounds like this is a situation where you need to engage your school board about the kind of curriculums that they are offering your students in a framework that's been developed by the state. But this is a When you're trying to bring about change, you bring in influentials. Senator Melton, myself, we are reversed in education and I think all of our members have a sensitivity for and we can bring in these kinds of people at the local level to testify before your school board meetings of the importance. So use us to undergird your effort to change. It sounds like there's an officer being a resource. You and they're doing so well that they don't. Hold on, Marshawn. Marshawn, I'm sorry to interrupt you on this. Representative Smith hit the nails on the head. It would not surprise me if every school district that is represented in the state of Indiana has not engaged a professional service for some issue that they have wanted to pursue, be it if it's raising funds for extracurricular activities, be it if it's coming up with a program to address STEM in the school, be it if it's associated with developing a curriculum for children who might have an IEP and things like that. They pay for professional development all the time in school districts. This would be no different. There are professionals throughout the country who could come in and advise the school districts on what pieces of literature would pass the standards for the school district, as well as how to implement those that into curriculums. Here's one thing that I want to emphasize about the public school system in Indiana. If you go throughout the public school system in Indiana and the traditional public schools, you will see that a lot of them are minority, a lot. This should be on their agenda in the public school system to have this infused into their curriculum. If not, then they're going to lose the next generation of kids. Remember, there's no longer an excuse that the information is not there. You can hire professionals to do this. It's actually simple. It's a simple cure. Representative Smith is right on the head there. I can add one more real quick piece of information. I know you have other questions. I actually used to live in Indianapolis and work for the Indianapolis Public Schools. Pat Brown, Pat Payne, she was with the IPS Multicultural Education Office. I haven't spoken to her in about a year or so. I think she's still connected to IPS. She would do this for the school district, and she would actually go out to other school districts. If you're looking for an expert, I'm sure contact IPS and find out if she's still connected to that school district. She can help anybody that wants more information about this topic. Awesome. So, IBLC team. Can I just add one more? 40 questions. I want to make sure that we get to some of the other questions since I think we kind of know where we're going on the education piece. One of the next questions is what actually is another education question and has to do with Gary Public Schools and the questions about the takeover. What can, well, I'll just read it. What actions do the IBLC plan to take to end the unjust undemocratic state takeover of Gary Public Schools? Our children are suffering, our schools are shutting down, and private interests are getting rich off of exploiting our community. That's another question from Michael Spangenberg from Zoom. I want to try to get maybe one, one response to this so that we can get to the other ones. Well, seeing that I'm one and listening, Gary, and I have been very vocal on this issue, I'll address the issue. The legislation says that we have to operate in the black. It's a fiscal issue. We have to operate in the black for two successive years in order to get free of this state takeover. My understanding is we're down to about six million dollars of deficit for operation. And I had a conference with Eric Parrish, who is one of the key persons with MGT, just this early part of this week. And my concern is some of the plans that they have to put us back into black so they don't continue to perpetuate themselves there. Because I don't think there's really any incentives for them to get us to a balanced situation because that would end their grading training, their money change that comes to them. We have got to get more involved in this situation. And when we're in session, and the person who has been the author of this, the godfather of it, is Representative Tim Brown, he has manipulated the whole process. Those of us who are concerned about it, got to make ourselves more vocal in demonstrating that MGT has not been the cure all. It has not been the panacea. It has not been the answer. And every time the state is that involved in education, they have failed. They need to leave it to the local community. So we've got to get more vocal about it. But certainly I've introduced pieces of legislation to try to downsize what they have offered, what they're doing in our school district. But the question is, what do we want, how bad do we want? If we want this to go back to where it was, not with all the imperfections it had, but go back to local control, then we've got to make that known. Now, one of the ways we're going to get to do that is because I've been able to work out a deal with the DUAP board. So they're now going to start allowing citizens to have input because basically the DUAP board has become our local school board. And so they're going to allow now people, citizens, to be able to ask questions of the DUAP board and get and receive answers. Plus they're making it mandatory in the contract with MPT, which is a two-year contract that's going to be signed, that they must have transparency. They must have meetings. They must allow people to ask questions and they must answer. So it sounds like it's going to be an issue of citizen engagement. There's another question coming from Zoom, from Tess Stevenson, and it's, how does someone partner with Representative Bartlett on the Criminal Justice Commission? My understanding is that maybe, I don't think that moved. And so this person says they have an organized group of organizations and an executive board. What I'd also like to add to that question is, there's a question about what steps can basically the IEBLC take to support meaningful civilian oversight of the police departments in local communities? I know you're advocating for them for civilian use of force boards or some independent boards. So Well, Marshawn, I'll just hit the first part of that. I answered her question. Basically, Representative Bartlett will be reintroducing that bill. It will be on our agenda. So we will be having advocacy boot camps and advocacy training that will give people more training, more information on how they can advocate on our agenda. So look for those advocacy boot camps to come up. If she wants to contact Representative Bartlett office at any time or contact our office, we can help people keep track of a certain bill. All the bills that will be on our agenda will be keeping track of will send out in Facebook, EBLAS, letting people know when is the time to come to the state house. This bill is coming up from our hearing. Can you send an email? So once we start session, you'll see those communications coming out that people want to get engaged. But prior to that, as soon as we release our legislative agenda, which we're hoping to have done by the end of July, and that will include a lot of the legislation for the justice reform. All those bills will be solidified by then and that information. So like Cherish went over, I think that second part of the question was about those excessive task force and review teams. You will see legislation on our agenda addressing the excessive task force in the review teams. We did already request that from the governor as one of our four requests for an executive order. We haven't seen any leeway yet on any of our requests that we sent into the governor for those four executive orders. So you will see us trapping legislation to address those. Great. And it sounds, go ahead, represent prior. For the second piece of that, what we can do as legislators is pass the bill that all local law enforcement agencies across the state has to abide by. That's the first step in the first piece. The second piece of that, though, is the local level where you have the counselors, where you have the mayors. So it doesn't just, it may begin, some of the stuff begins with us, but it also takes people putting pressure on the mayor and putting pressure on your local counselors to make sure that they're not allowing bad behavior exists, bad behavior and racism exists within the police department. So you have to be vocal and vigilant. Once we give you the tools at the state level and we say state, you know, locals, you have to implement this. This is the lay of the land now. Someone has to do the oversight. That's the council and the mayor, but it's the community people, the activists that have to make sure that they put their foot in the butts of those people to make sure that they are following through on those. Awesome. Great. So it sounds like this is again another situation where citizens will need to step up and have the opportunity to participate and serve on these boards. Yes. As far as there's another question, and I think we've kind of already addressed this, is the reform available to the public to review? And it sounds like you all have posted your ideas already on, you can go to the IBLC page and then is there another page where the information was posted? So our Facebook page and then I think our website, but again, the recommendations or ideas that people have that provide that they provide to us, you know, so we, this is, this is our phase two and phase two. We want to incorporate what people, the feedback that people give us. So this is not the final product that we have. And even what you see on, on the Facebook and on our website, we've also added individually some more items that were not even on the list that I read off. Right. And this is, this is literally your listening to listening, listening tour. So if they have ideas, put them on Facebook. So we're at question 20 out of 40. So we're going to try to just clip along here. So there's a question about will you all be in attendance and active at the March on Washington this August? That was just, folks just wanted to know about that. Oh, I haven't gotten any information on that. Our office hasn't gotten any information on that. So if someone can send that to our office and we'll look at it, that would be great because then we can send it out to our members. You can email it at IBLC at IGA.IN.gov. The next question is what enforcement or compliance power is associated with the civilian review board? Will police have harsher punitive repercussions for over-aggressive behavior or excessive complaints? This is coming from DeRoe Peterson from Facebook. I might have stated Mr. Peterson's name. So that would, will depend on one how we introduce the legislation and we have not introduced that legislation yet. Okay. One of the questions that I've been circulating here is, is there a mandatory minimum threshold for the number of community members involved? I like to ensure that there's a balance of community members versus law enforcement officials and government leaders or government or government appointed seats. And so it sounds, this kind of reads more like a recommendation of making sure that there's going to be some balance maybe. Have y'all had a chance to think about that? So their warning, their recommendation is that they want police officers and on the board as well, but just want to make sure that there are more civilians on the board. That's their recommendation. That's, that's kind of what I'm seeing. I didn't say that they just want it. They said balance of community members versus law enforcement versus. Yeah, I think, but people I talked to move in and said they want more civilians on there. So it won't be dominated by, by police officers or those appointed people who a baby have like minds in another way of being more punitive and prescriptive. Or relatives or real close to the situation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So command staff, this is a suggestion sounds like command staff should be required to live in Marion County. I think this is referencing IMPD. How do you govern where you do not reside? So that's that sounds like a suggestion. So sounds like I command staff to live in Marion County. Representative Hatcher, I'm sorry. Representative Hatcher has a bill that will require law enforcement to live in the communities that they police. All right. That was, that was part of, that was one of the bills that they did not make it out of this, this bad session that was not heard in Court of Criminal Code or judiciary. It was House Bill 1358. And if she reintroduces it, it'd be another, another House Bill with a different number. Okay. So I've worked on it, didn't pass, maybe it might come back. It wasn't heard at all. It wasn't heard at all. Okay. And it hasn't been heard as well. Okay. Does the criminal justice reform plan include mandatory body cameras for every law enforcement officer that they be turned on during all shifts and failure of use that this tool be, so if you fail to use it, well, there'll be disciplinary action. And this is Raymond Baker. This is a Zoom question. There is already body, police body camera legislation in the state of Indiana. And Representative Pryor, I believe, You muted yourself, Senator Taylor. Representative Pryor worked on that legislation quite a bit. I believe it was in 2018 and Representative Pryor, but here's the thing that 2017, 16, there has been legislation on the books in Indiana for police body cameras, when you turn them on, when you turn them off, how long you have to store them, who has access to them, what the protections are, when they must use them for four years. And it's been up to the locals as to whether or not they have them. So we've already beat them to the punch on that. We've given parameters at the state level. Representative Pryor, I know you have something to say. I just, that question frustrates me. It really frustrates me that locals have not adopted this program. No, not move forward. Okay. How does one follow the, how does the community follow these task force? This is coming from Belinda Drake on Zoom. So you have the, you have the health disparity, you have a census task force, and then you have the justice reform task force. How are people to follow? So I will say for, we only have one task force going on right now, and that is the health disparities task force. There is nothing publicly about it. Usually we'll just issue, we'll put this task force together and say they have to issue a report. So that report will be made public where everybody can see. The justice reform, what we're working on, that's the Black Caucus members. So that's not a specific task force. That's all 13 of us. And then for the census, we don't have a task force in particular, not unless there's something going on by the feds or the state for another group, but there's no specific task force for the census. The federal census group has asked us to help them out. So most of this work is just being done by the IBLC, and you can follow us on all our avenues that we've discussed before, reach out to us. Okay, we got a couple more questions. So, well, here's one question. What is the Black Caucus's stance on schools reopening for the upcoming school year? Do you have one? Kind of a big one. Yeah, that is a big one. And I know Dr. Smith has some comments on that. As we know, I think some of the school corporations are already like some opening August 3rd, some opening July 30th, or 29th. You know, we leave it back up from my perspective, and I'm part of my life, it's in public health, leave it back up to Dr. Virginia King and what she feels was going on. And she's been in constant consultation for the last six or eight weeks with the superintendents. And I think the Black Caucus members and other members have also been talking to superintendents. So the answer to the question is that it is against a local issue, local concern, you know, but whatever it has to be done has to be done the right way. The bottom line is just how much money is going to cost us through the cares that it's going to cost more money. If you school bus is going to have to run more routes, you have to run more social distancing, things like that. So to me it's not about also about how much you're going to, when you open, but what is the cost factor on reopening school? And I think that's going to be tremendous. Yeah, I think with this issue that we have, we are very diligent in trying to protect our children, but I encourage parents also to use common sense. They feel like that their children are in danger, then they can demand a learning package. But we must keep in mind that during this pandemic, the feedback I've gotten from teachers is that children of color are not performing well. And Gary read an issue that we didn't have the equipment that we needed for e-learning. Children didn't have their laptops and their e-books and their Chromebooks and other kinds of things that they use. And then among our people, we didn't have Wi-Fi access. And so now the school corporations are moving forward on trying to get packages that have spots that connect with the equipment. But we must keep in mind that all of our children don't learn the same way. There's theory out there called multiple intelligence, and we know that if everybody doesn't learn, every student, even adults, don't learn the same way. And so our children are inter-personal learners, which means they need to be around others to learn. They are musical learners. They are motor learners. And we learn instead in front of, even though we live in a game generation, our children don't learn the same way as some of the majority children do. And so we must keep in mind, some of the children need to be back in that situation. And during that situation, though, maybe some of our parents are not able to assist their children to the degree that we would desire it so they could be acting successful. So there are teachers who are pushing them for going back into the normal way of instruction. But we must be very methodical in doing this, and then we must be cautious in doing it. And if you find out we have a spike, then we may have to go back to even learning. So I think it's a situation that has to be fine. Thank you for your insights. We have one more question before we close out. And this question comes from Facebook. It comes from Dana Black. And she says, is it just me, or Dana says, is it just me, or does anyone else still pride and joy interacting with our IBLC? Anybody want to take that? Tell Dana. Dana is a wonderful, wonderful person in Indianapolis, trying to help the Democratic Party. And we love her. And thank you. And you're a constituent. Great. So what I'd like to do at this time is hand it over to Representative Shackelford, who's going to have basically some closing comments. And we'll go from there. Thank you, Don. And thank you for everybody for participating, for joining us, whether it was by Zoom or by Facebook. If we did not get to your question and you still have ideas, questions, please email them to us at IBLC at IGA.IN.gov. You can give us a call, our executive director is there answering the phone, and she will get that information to us ASAP at 317-232-9827. Also, thank our partners. We cannot do this without our partners. They have made it such a great virtual town hall experience this year. We're usually out in the field. We're usually traveling from city to city. But our partners, Indianapolis Recorder, New America, Indianapolis Urban League, Indiana Minority Health Coalition, Indiana Black Expo, the NAACP, and InnoPower, they have made this such an easy job for us. And we greatly appreciate it. Thanks to Marshawn Wally for keeping us on track, making sure this ran smoothly. We appreciate it. He is doing great things at the Recorder and in our community. I remember working with him at the mayor's office. So I'm just happy to see everything that's taking place with him. Those ideas, remember to keep in touch. I want to also remind people that we have paid internships with the Indiana House Democrat Caucus. One of those interns will be selected to work with the Black Caucus. These internships take place during January. You start in December, you get paid biweekly a stipend of $750. Applications are due October the 30th, 2020. And you have to be at least a sophomore in college. You can find more information about those internships on our Facebook. We've been sending it out on Twitter, on our website. So thanks everyone for joining and remember to continue to advocate. We cannot push this agenda and get it across the finish line without you and you being at the state house and advocating to all the legislators. So we appreciate you and advocacy works and thanks for everything and being here. And I think we'll just leave at that. My name is Marshawn Wally with the Indianapolis Recorder. Columnist for I'm Just Saying. We have been with the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus hearing the good, the bad, the ugly and even the hopeful aspects of what could happen in the next General Assembly. It's going to require all of us and we will all have to work together because ultimately advocacy works, but we got to show up. So thank you all. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Marshawn. Bye everybody.