Democrat Senator Jim Arnold, of LaPorte, visited with the Knox City Council this week. Senator Arnold has picked up five townships in Starke County with redistricting, and he wanted to alert the council and other city officials of possible issues coming up in the 2012 session of the legislature.
Of course the biggest issue is the right to work legislation.
“This issue is going to be coming up again. It’s going to be House Bill 1001. Speaker Bosma has already set it as a priority issue to the Senate in this session. It’ll probably be brought up on Tuesday, January 4th and begin consideration of it because they want to get it addressed and get it out on the floor for a vote and hopefully put it to rest. I would encourage you to pay particular attention to this issue because it could be a session killer.”
Arnold said that he is against a right to work measure and even though he’s in the Senate Minority, he will be fighting to help defeat any right to work bill that comes before the body.
“My feeling is this: This is a needless issue to be brought up at this time. We have so many issues with our economy the way it is that we need to be addressing down state. We need to look for ways to relieve the cities and towns of financial burden. We need to address some educational issues after what we did to them last session. We have so many economic development possibilities in the state that this issue of right to work could be a session killer and could cause so much consternation that a lot of these issues that really need to be addressed are liable to be kicked to the curb and die for no reason.”
If the right to work bills become law, it would ban employees from negotiating contracts with unions that require workers to pay union fees.
