INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -
House Minority Leader Scott Pelath said Monday that despite facing a
Republican supermajority in the chamber, he and his fellow Democrats will
press for an increase in Indiana’s minimum wage and other changes to help
middle class families during the next legislative session.
The Michigan City
Democrat said his caucus wants House Republicans to confront the issue of
the state’s minimum wage, which at $7.25 an hour is the same as the federal
minimum wage. Pelath said raising Indiana’s minimum wage to a reasonable
level would put more money in middle class Hoosiers’ pockets and help the
economy by fueling more spending and new jobs.
“We should adjust
the minimum wage upward and it should be up to a level that is affordable,
that is realistic and helps people get their lives back on track,” he said
during a Statehouse briefing on the eve of the Tuesday start of the
legislative session.
Pelath said
Democrats will seek to eliminate Indiana’s textbook rental fees, which
Democratic schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz has proposed, and expand its
preschool and full-day kindergarten programs. Democrats also will keep
pushing to retool the state’s school-funding formula to make it “fair” for
all schools, he said.
He said House
Democrats also want changes to Indiana’s ethics laws in the wake of an
ethics scandal that led House Speaker Brian Bosma to remove former state
Rep. Eric Turner, R-Cicero, from his leadership team.
Turner became the
focus of a House ethics investigation last year after he privately lobbied
lawmakers to kill legislation that could have cost his family’s nursing home
business millions of dollars. Turner won re-election in November, but
resigned shortly thereafter to take a job with a Christian mega-church group
in Atlanta.
Bosma,
R-Indianapolis, has said that ethics reform will be a centerpiece of the
2015 session. Pelath said Monday that the General Assembly needs “to better
refine what constitutes a conflict of interest.”
“There are lines
and they need to become bolder and they need to become clearer and members
need to know that if they touch the electric fence what’s going to happen,”
Pelath said.
Republican leaders
preside over supermajorities in both legislative chambers, and they improved
their numbers in November in the House, which they now control to 71-29.
Pelath said he hopes House Republicans and Democrats will find issues they
can agree on for action but he’s realistic about what his caucus will be
able to accomplish.
“It is my job along
with my other caucus members to remind Speaker Bosma and the Republican
leadership here in Indiana, that even though they may have 71 percent of the
seats that does not mean that 71 percent of the people agree with their
vision of the future,” Pelath said.