Issues — John Bartlett for State Rep

The issues that face Hoosiers, and America as a whole, are complex and they are all interconnected. The challenge is to find and cure the root causes and not just treat the symptoms.

Economic Decay

The past 20 years (during which Indiana Republicans have controlled state government, much of that time with a SUPERMAJORITY) have seen rural areas in decline. Rural Indiana has sadly lagged behind in economic growth. This is entirely due to the Republican legislative SUPERMAJORITY making rural and small town Indiana unattractive to businesses locating here. We need to fix what they have done to start rebuilding.

Property Taxes

“WHY DID MY PROPERTY TAXES GO UP SO MUCH THIS YEAR?”

This is probably the most common question I get while campaigning, and no one understands. Basically:

Property tax assessment rules are set by the legislature.
The Republican SUPERMAJORITY set the current rules in 2016 to be based on a complex market value formula.
The lowered interest rates of the pandemic caused property values to soar which is causing your market value to soar and your taxes to go up.

What can be done about rising property tax assessments?

Republicans take credit for passing relief for seniors and disabled vets which in actuality did very little for very few.
Democrats have proposed revising the formulas and giving temporary relief with a $56K homestead exemption for ALL homeowners which has been buried in committee by the Republicans.

State Income Taxes

Several proposals were made in the 2024 primary to eliminate the state income tax. While this sounds great, the state still needs money to do its work, and that revenue will be replaced, most likely with a regressive sales tax on services, food, and medicines.

Economic Development

Businesses have left Indiana’s rural areas over the past 20 years. This is largely due to the Indiana Republican policies, most of the time with a SUPERMAJORITY, which have made rural Indiana unattractive to business. To remedy this, we need to fix our education system, fix our health care system, ensure our transportation infrastructure is never again neglected, and build our broadband internet with fiber optic solutions in our rural areas.

Education

Education in Indiana has deteriorated greatly over the past 20 years. We are at the bottom of many categories which negatively affects our ability to compete in the world for jobs. It is a major reason we cannot attract businesses to locate here. We need to fund our public education system better, and stop taking money out to give to private interests that provide subpar education in the form of private and charter schools.

Indiana must do the following to strengthen our education system:

Stop funding private schools through vouchers and stop the flow of money to the charter school scams.

Stop the emphasis of “teaching to the test” and return to real education based on reasoning and problem solving.
Raise teacher salaries to be able to attract trained educators back to the field and end the teacher shortage.
Return to high school graduation requirements which meet minimum college admissions standards including world history, fine arts, and world languages.
Stop the attack on college professors for teaching critical thinking skills to students because they might be in contrast with a student’s faith.

Agriculture

Farming has always been a very difficult profession. Farmers work long, hard hours for pay that is dependent on many conditions outside their control. Farming today faces numerous additional challenges from the corporatization of agriculture markets. Corporations have consolidated markets into just a few hands and are pricing out their smaller competition. This monopolization has resulted in higher costs and lower incomes as there is no competition in agriculture selling and purchasing markets. We need to protect the family farms by limiting the expansion of corporate agriculture.

Rural Health Care

Indiana is among the states with the highest health care costs and the lowest in health care quality. This is due to the rural health care system having been taken over by corporations which control a monopoly in our communities. They are driving profits and closing facilities which don’t meet expectations. Health care is a right, and we should rein in these practices which are endangering the health of our communities.

Medicaid, Nursing Homes, & a Proposed Land Grab?

Indiana’s Medicaid system is in serious trouble following a budgetary shortfall of A BILLION DOLLARS. The main problem is due to the corporate takeover of nursing homes, cost of care has exploded due to the drive to maximize profit over providing the right to dignified health care in people’s final years. To remedy this situation, the Republican SUPERMAJORITY including MY OPPONENT is suggesting that we should make it easier for nursing homes to take land from their patients by eliminating a legal protection.

Watch this video with Rep Prescott and Sen Holdman at a town hall in March of this year discussing their plans for the 2025 legislative session: https://youtu.be/n1I0aXJ1Vfw

What this proposal will do to the family farms and people’s estates is flabbergasting to me. I will be very vocal in my opposition to this when introduced.

Proposed Amendment to Eliminate Bail

Not many people are aware of a bill proposing a State Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the possibility of bail for violent crimes and crimes deemed a “substantial risk to persons and the community.” That phrase will require new laws defining what determines what “substantial risks” are. Who knows how petty a crime can be before it is deemed a risk? And our county jails are already full of people waiting for adjudication. Eliminating bail will require a huge expense in increasing the size and operating expenses of all 92 of our county jails or further handing over our penal system to corporations. Where does that money come from?

READ MORE: https://www.bartlettforindiana.org/blog/2024-proposed-amendment-to-eliminate-bail

Environment

Wind and solar power have been installed in much of District 33 and plans are underway to expand what we already have. Windmills bring badly needed income to rural areas and provide additional electricity to our power grids. Energy costs are going to continue to rise as fossil fuels become scarcer. We need to balance the plans for additional installations with environmental and safety studies to ensure the least impact to our communities.

Cannabis

District 33 shares almost 35 miles of border with a state where cannabis is legal to purchase. Thirty-three states now have legal sales of cannabis products. This means that our district is located where it is very easy for people to drive just a few miles to legally buy cannabis products, and they do even though it is illegal here. I do not personally use cannabis products, but there are many reasons we should consider making it legal here. We could have businesses collecting revenue and collecting taxes from its sale which could be used to reduce tax burden elsewhere such as the elimination of the personal property tax (for example, the tax that businesses, including family farms, pay on the equipment needed to produce their products). We could regulate the products. We could reduce the strain on our courts and prison systems. In sum, it makes economic sense to consider legalization of cannabis in Indiana.

Daylight Saving Time

We were sold a bag of beans on this notion. The entire country needs to quit changing their clocks twice a year. Since Indiana adopted DST, we have not seen economic improvement. Instead we have seen economic decline, proving there was no real reason to do it in the first place. Our bodies fight the time change twice a year contributing to health issues and workplace problems. We should go off DST and, as the western-most region in the Eastern Time Zone, we should move to Central Time Zone so that our summer days do not last until 10 PM. I believe it is time for the entire nation to drop this concept, but we can make a start by taking Indiana back off of DST.