Small Businesses

I am an advocate for small and local businesses and will do everything I can to promote legislation that supports and is conducive to small business growth. I believe in protecting worker’s too and in raising the standard of living so there must be a sensible balance between these two interests. I will always look to balance both the employer and employees’ interests so that Indiana is both attractive to businesses and employees. I’m concerned about how COVID has affected small business owners. If you’re a business owner, let me know what challenges you face so I can effectively advocate for you.

Health and Medical

Everybody should have access to affordable basic medical coverage. Is the current system working for you? Please share with me what your issues are concerning the Healthy Indiana Plan, Medicaid, lack of coverage or private insurance. I want to know what the shortcomings are so that I can advocate for you.

Indiana Veterans

I will never knowingly support legislation that disadvantages veterans. If you served our country in the armed forces, you deserve our absolute gratitude. I will promote any effort that assists veterans with healthcare, jobs and housing. No Hoosier Veteran should ever go homeless, unemployed, or untreated for medical or mental health related issues.

Let me know the issues you’re facing. I want to help.

Education

Children are the future and therefore we should invest in them by providing a robust education to pave the way for productive citizenship, leadership and innovation.

I support the following:

1. providing competitive salaries to teachers. Our wages must meet or exceed the national average because talented teachers make all the difference in a child’s education.

2. ensuring public schools are a 100% free to children and their parents. Many working families struggle to pay the $300 or $400 book and technology fees and this is compounded for families that have more than one child.

3. Ensure every child has access to a social worker. School is a safe haven for many children and many cases of neglect and abuse were caught through the vigilance of school staff. Social workers can increase this shield of protection and also catch and mitigate other problems, such as mental illness, at an early stage in life.

4. Ensuring every school is staffed with an appropriately vetted and trained School Resource Officer and that every school has sufficient safe guards in place to protect children and staff from violence.

5. Extending free public education to include two years of community college or trade school. This will ease the financial burden on many parents who would otherwise be expected to take or cosign loans for their child’s higher education by effectively paying for the entirety of an associate degree and consequently covering half the cost of a bachelor’s degree.

Law and Order

I have had pleasure and privilege of working with some fine law enforcement officers from the Bedford Police Department, Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department, Mitchell Police Department, Oolitic Police Department and the Indiana State Police; overall, they have thoroughly impressed me with their professionalism.

With a Master of Arts in Criminal Justice and graduate certificate a criminology, I’m intimately interested in improving our ability to reduce crime and enhance public safety.

While politicians like to talk about being tough on crime, they often fail to address the reality that our jails and prisons are at capacity and that housing criminals is expensive to the taxpayer.

One Possible Solution:

Expand the Pre-Trial Diversion Program.

To reduce the burden on the criminal justice system, I would like to give greater opportunity for those facing drug-related charges regarding possession and petty dealing to pursue recovery. For simple possession and or petty dealing, it’s in society’s interest—both in terms of cost and public safety– to help these individuals recover. I will support enhanced penalties for true drug dealers and traffickers. By giving prosecutors and courts a greater tool set on how to deal with simple possession and petty dealing, there is opportunity to encourage those facing charges to share actionable intelligence with law enforcement. This would allow law enforcement to concentrate more on and target the source of these drugs without burdening the system on the end-user—the addict–who is very much a victim as well.

Any diversion program I support will require criminal charges be filed if substance use endangers a child, lends itself to violence, or resulted in an OWI.

I will also seek legislation that would prevent police or prosecutors from choosing not to report or charge a confidential informant in relation to an offense in which child neglect/abuse occurred.

I will also advocate for police training to include a social work component and evidence based approaches in interview/interrogation methodology. 

A strong social-work component given at the Indiana Police Academy will help police better serve those with mental illness and to help connect disadvantaged citizens to resources as both such groups contribute to a large share of police responses.

Additionally, I would like to see the Indiana Police Academy do away with teaching the REID method of interview and interrogation. There is now a substantial body of research to show that many of the so-called indicators of deception that are taught by this method are unreliable and lack scientific validity. This can result in an innocent person being treated harshly and potentially create barriers to law enforcement pursuing other suspects or hypotheses regarding the crime. As a graduate student that studied social psychology and criminal justice, I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the literature on detecting deception and investigative interviewing: REID is out-dated. The FBI knows it and the CIA knows it. There are better methods that are both more reliable–evidence based–and more humane. Many of these methods have been adopted by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group but they are just as applicable to the patrol officer and county detective.

Integrity in Government

Government is the source of law and justice and therefore there must be absolute integrity within the civil service. Hoosiers deserve nothing less! Government is a top-down bureaucracy. We cannot expect field-staff to operate with integrity if the mechanisms are not in place to hold the management of our civil service accountable to the highest degree. As a state representative, I will introduce legislation to strengthen or replace the current whistleblower statutes (specifically IC 4-15-10-14 and IC-44.2-1-1).

This legislation will make it:

1. a felony for any supervisor to retaliate against a state employee who reports or presents evidence of a violation of law or policy to a supervisor, an internal affairs investigator, the inspector general, an agency’s legal department, an agency’s human resources personel, the State Personnel Department, any State of Federal agency with jurisdiction to investigate the complaint, The State Employee Appeals Commission, or an administrative law judge.

2. defines retaliation as demotion, termination of employment, involuntary transfer, disciplinary action, withholding salary or benefits, increased workload, and increased scrutiny.

3. make it clear that any supervisor cannot use as a defense the claim that they were told to do so by a superior.

4. nor can they can they claim immunity on the basis that they were counseled to do so by any other agent of the state.

5. would obligate the State terminate the employment of any supervisor or state agent if a preponderance of the evidence supports that retaliation occurred and refer the matter to the Inspector General and or county prosecutor for consideration of criminal charges.

6. would obligate the Inspector General conduct the investigation when a violation is alleged against an executive level manager of a State agency.

7. would require the inspector general investigate criminal conspiracy when a violating supervisor alleges they were encouraged by a superior, other supervisors, human resources, or any other state agent to engage in the retaliatory practice.

Additionally:

I will also introduce legislation that makes it illegal to conspire to terminate or cause undue scrutiny to a State Employee for which there is not a reasonable probable cause complaint that would not otherwise move management to act in a similar fashion regarding a similarly situated employee.

Introduce legislation that will allow State employees to recover legal fees and lost wages through the Civil Service Complaint system and the State Employee Appeals Commission on a successful appeal.

I will explore ways to give the General Assembly a more active role in oversight of the State’s Executive Branch Agencies.

End Prohibition!

For the better part of a century we were misinformed about the dangers of marijuana, which was for a time given the same level of treatment as heroin, methamphetamine and other hard drugs. We now know that the marijuana plant (cannabis sativa) and its extracts and compounds likely pose less risk to public safety than alcohol consumption. This is not to say that there are no risks but that the risks are minimal to the public. The war on cannabis is a failed war and the moral thing to do is end it.

Decriminalizing cannabis is the ethical thing to do but if we do that then why not legalize it and generate revenue from it?

I will endorse or propose legislation that legalizes cannabis use for both medical and recreational adult use. I will ensure responsible oversight by placing the industry under the jurisdiction of the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission to be enforced by the Indiana State Excise Police. I will seek to ensure that the requirements for businesses that choose to pursue opportunity in the industry are not so high as to bar small businesses from entering the market.

Let’s not be the last state to legalize!