Indiana lawmakers lay out their thoughts on hate crime bill

With state legislators about halfway through their work for this year's session, Wayne County's lawmakers were in town on Friday to talk with the public about the work they've done so far and some of the bills that have made headlines.

State Rep. Brad Barrett and State Sen. Jeff Raatz took part in the second of three planned Legislative Forum events on the Indiana University East campus.

For an hour Friday morning, they took questions from an audience of about 30 people on topics that included hate crime legislation, workforce development, teacher pay, payday lending, charter schools and redistricting reform.

The issue that took up the most time was a bill that would address hate crimes in Indiana. Senate Bill 12 originally specified a list of protected characteristics, including gender identity, race and sexual orientation. But the Senate later amended the bill to take out that list, instead adding a provision that would allow judges to consider bias more generally as an aggravating circumstance when considering sentencing for a crime.

Raatz voted in favor of the change and explained Friday his reasoning for that decision, saying he believed the initial version of the bill wasn't inclusive enough.

"That's the big fight behind the concept of why would we put five or six characteristics of an individual in there when it needs to encompass everybody. I can understand the angst in not having a list, but the list isn't encompassing and so why would we put the spotlight on certain characteristics of folks or behavior and leave out everything else?

"This thing's turned into a real divisive issue, which seems like exactly what we're trying to fix is divisive issues," he said. "We want to be inclusive, and our state constitution talks about treating all Hoosiers equally. I think we've got to get into the habit of doing that as a community and as a state."

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