Indiana Democrats End Their Walkout

Republican Speaker of the House Brian Bosma has announced that he expects the legislators to return by 5 p.m. Monday. Apparently, democrats in Urbana voted to end the walkout this morning.

Some details can be found here .

Our friend Abdul Shabazz has more details:

• Right-to-work legislation is off the table, preserving collective bargaining rights;

• The permanent ban on public employee bargaining is off the table in the House;

• Enabling legislation for private takeover of public schools is off the table in the House;

• Private school vouchers will be limited to 7,500 students in the first year and 15,000 in the second year, rather than the largest voucher program in the nation the Republicans originally wanted;

• Rather than an outright ban of Project Labor Agreements as Republicans wanted, PLAs still can be included with projects passed by public referendum; and

• The threshold for applying the common construction wage to projects would be $250,000 for 2012 and $350,000 for 2013, rather than the job-killing $1 million threshold the Republicans wanted.
 

Mr. Shabazz has called this a pyrrhic victory for the democrats. In his words:


" The language regarding project labor agreements has been on the table for the last few weeks.  The only real change is the timeline and when it goes into effect.  The dollar amounts are phased in over two years as opposed to being implemented in just one year. In addition, the bills regarding public employee bargaining and the “takeover” over public schools are off the table in the House.  It says nothing about whether the bills can come up in the Senate.   And the voucher legislation was already set long before the Democrats came back."

Perhaps  the democrats  were looking for a way to save face.  Or perhaps they received a lot of very vocal criticism last week during the redistricting public hearings.