Democrats say local governments to bear costs of GOP Plan\nINDIANAPOLIS -- House Republicans advanced their version of a two-year state budget to the full chamber Tuesday, where it could win passage next week and be sent to the GOP-controlled Senate.\nRepublicans on the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee endorsed the proposal on a party-line vote, and it will be eligible for amendments on the House floor Thursday. Republicans have a 52-48 majority in the House.\nThe plan includes some new state and local dollars for schools, but some districts with declining enrollments would get less money than they are receiving now because of proposed changes to the state's school funding formula.\nIt would spend about the same amount Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels would in his budget plan -- $24.3 billion over two years. But it does not include his proposal to increase income taxes for one year on people who make more than $100,000.\nDaniels has said his plan, including the tax increase, would erase the state's $645 million budget deficit by the end of the next fiscal year in June 2006. House Republicans say their plan would eliminate it by the end of the two-year budget cycle in June 2007 but would not raise state taxes.\n"We must live within our income," said Ways and Means Chairman Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale.\nThe plan would steer nearly $24 million in new money to public colleges and universities to help pay for growing enrollments, but that is only one-fourth of what the state's Higher Education Commission recommended.\nHouse Democrats say the plan would shift many costs onto local governments and cause them to raise property taxes by more than $300 million.
Senate backs panel extending seat belt requirements\nINDIANAPOLIS -- A Senate committee advanced a bill Tuesday that would require drivers and all passengers to wear seat belts in trucks, SUVs and cars.\nAfter hearing emotional testimony from family members of those killed in crashes, the Senate's public policy committee voted 10-0 to endorse the bill. It now moves to the full Senate, which approved similar legislation last year before it was blocked in a House committee.\nThe bill requires people in front and back seats to buckle up in all vehicles with seat belts, with exceptions for trucks used on farms. People who cannot wear seat belts for medical reasons are also exempt.\nThe bill is being dubbed "Megan's Bill" after 24-year-old Megan Minix of Kokomo, who died last year when the pickup truck she was riding in flipped over. She wasn't wearing a seat belt because she felt safer in the truck, her father said, even though she always wore one in her car.\n"I wonder how different our lives would be if Megan would have had her seat belt on," a tearful Darrell Minix told the committee. "She was my little girl."\nBill sponsor Sen. Tom Wyss, (R-Fort Wayne) said the bill likely would meet opposition as it moves to the House.\n"It's not without controversy," he told senators. "You're going to hear from constituents talking about their freedom and liberty."\nBut Wyss said legislators should focus on public safety, not personal rights.\n"We're talking about human life and human injury," Wyss said.
Attorneys say abduction suspect won't be prosecuted\nLAFAYETTE -- A man whom authorities accused of abducting an 8-year-old girl from her babysitter's house and taking her to Mexico probably will not be prosecuted, attorneys said.\nAuthorities said Carlos Ramirez Gonzales, 27, kidnapped Jacquelin Ortiz July 4. The girl's disappearance triggered an Amber Alert, and she was found two days later just across the border from Laredo, Texas.\nMexican authorities released Gonzales, a former boyfriend of the girl's mother, Sofia Ortiz, finding that he had committed no crime in Mexico. Police said he is still somewhere in Mexico.\nTippecanoe County deputy prosecutor Laura Zeman said authorities have been told they must provide Gonzales' exact location, plus about $10,000 in fees for Mexican police to arrest him.\nGonzales' father, who authorities said provided his son with a car during the abduction, was sentenced Monday in a Tippecanoe County court to more than a year in jail and likely will be deported to Mexico within a few months, Judge Thomas Busch ruled. Perez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit confinement and false informing.\nPerez' attorney, Wayne Fountain, noted Mexican authorities' lack of cooperation in the case and urged Busch to sentence Perez to the 225 days he already served in jail. federal officials, the girl and her mother returned to Lafayette. Since both were illegal immigrants, they had to be given paroles from the U.S. government.
