The League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County has invited state legislators representing any parts of Monroe, Brown, and Johnson counties to provide the public with an online legislative update.

The event, co-sponsored by the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters of Brown County, and the League of Women Voters of Johnson County, will be 9:30-11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 27, on Zoom.

State legislators will report on their work and priorities for the current session of the Indiana General Assembly. They will first give brief updates on the workings of the Indiana legislative session to date and will then take questions from attendees.

To sign up for the Zoom meeting, go to https://lwv-bmc.org/legis-updates.

This is the first of three planned legislative updates sponsored by the Leagues and the Chamber on Zoom. Subsequent updates are set for Feb. 17 and March 2. All legislative updates are free and open to the public. Community Access Television Services through the Monroe County Public Library has been invited to record the events, with the video available on the CATS website shortly after each update.
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​The work of the Indiana General Assembly can be followed on its website, http://iga.in.gov, which provides a wealth of information and offers the possibility to track the progress of individual bills.

At the helm of a city with an unhoused population mired in mental health and substance abuse issues, Kerry Thomson asked a panel of state lawmakers last week what they will do about the statewide crisis.

“It cannot be addressed just at the local level,” the Bloomington mayor's written query stated.

There was discussion of the challenges, but no answers offered when Thomson suggested the state lead the way toward healthcare and recovery instead of the criminal justice system for vulnerable people not receiving care.
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Last year, state lawmakers passed bills to boost funding for mental health services across the state. One increases funding to local mental health centers and another directs $100 million to mental health services.

More than 100 people were assembled at The Mill at midday on Friday for the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce Legislative Preview.

This year’s session of the Indiana legislature started on Jan. 8 and will wrap up by mid-March.
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Friday’s crowd got to hear four Indiana state legislators answer a question posed by Bloomington’s new mayor Kerry Thomson—about mental health.

​Thomson’s question, which she had written out on one of the cards distributed for that purpose, was read aloud by the Bloomington Chamber’s CEO, Eric Spoonmore:

The City of Bloomington’s Board of Public Works has approved a resolution seeking to prevent camping and other obstructions in streets, sidewalks and roads.

The board’s three members unanimously passed the resolution Tuesday, paving the way for the city council to modify the city code to include such language.

Adam Wason, the city’s public works director, said there have been instances of people blocking the sidewalks with their belongings.
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“There was no way that the public right-of-way at that point in time was ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant,” Wason said. “There was no way it was passable by somebody simply walking by.”

At a forum for mayoral candidates hosted on Monday night by the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, not a lot of new, additional daylight emerged between the three candidates as far as their known policy positions.

But a sharp difference in perspective emerged in response to a couple of the questions—one involving public safety and another involving the working relationship between city and county governments.
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Moderating the forum was Paul Helmke, who was a three-term mayor of Fort Wayne, and is a professor of practice at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.