GOSHEN —  With a week now past since multitudes descended on Indianapolis for the Super Bowl, local legislators are once again finding their bearings and ready to jump back into the current legislative agenda.

In order to shed a little light on that agenda here at home, State Sen. Carlin Yoder and State Reps. Wes Culver, David Wolkins and Timothy Wesco made a brief stop in Goshen Saturday morning to give their insights into the current legislative session during the Goshen Chamber of Commerce’s “Third House” session.

State Rep. Wes Culver

In speaking first Saturday morning, Rep. Culver deviated from his usual rundown of the top bills on his radar to instead make the comment that if there’s one misconception that he feels needs to be cleared up regarding the current state of politics in Indiana, it’s that bipartisanship is just a myth.

“We passed 108 bills out of the House, and since we left here two weeks ago, we went back and passed 71 of those bills,” Culver said. “Often we hear in the newspapers how partisan it is in politics. But out of those 108 bills, I counted five that were partisan, and the other 103 were bipartisan, with nearly 90 of them having 90 percent of the vote to pass them. I think that’s a very important point I want to make today, because the focus often is on the negative, or what there’s opposition on.”

State Sen. Carlin Yoder

Sen. Yoder echoed Culver’s concern during the meeting as well, taking time during his presentation to agree that bipartisanship is alive and well down at the state.

“We have 379 bills introduced in the Senate. One hundred and seventy-eight of those got a hearing. Out of those, 149 passed out of committee. And so out of 149, 140 we passed through the Senate and went to the House for consideration,” Yoder said. “Ninety-eight percent of those 140 bills received bipartisan support in the first half. Of those, 59 percent actually passed unanimously. So to kind of echo Wes’s point, there is a lot of bipartisan work that goes on. You tend to hear about the ones that aren’t bipartisan, and that’s how politics works.”

As for the bills he currently has on his radar, Yoder pointed to ongoing work with the Indiana Department of Child Services as his area of focus at this point in the legislative session.

“I’ve been working on the whole DCS issue. It’s something I feel very passionate about,” Yoder said. “I just think there are some issues there. I’m continuing to try and work through some of these issues and trying to come up with some solutions for making DCS more of an open organization, one that listens to the concerns of its constituents and so on. In the end, we’ve got to come up with a system that works best for our kids out there.”

State Rep. David Wolkins

During his brief address, Rep. Wolkins touched on several bills he’s currently involved with that he feels may make some waves in the coming weeks, perhaps the most controversial of which is Senate Bill 132, or the “Avon Water Rights” bill.

“The main thing it does is it will undue a Supreme Court ruling that they made in the last two months,” Wolkins said of the bill. “Both sides are very, very passionate about this. Cities and towns on one side, the rest of the world on the other side. The supporters of the bill say it basically changes water rights in the state of Indiana that have been in place since about 1905.”

According to Wolkins, the bills seeks to overturn the Supreme Court ruling basically designating an aquifer as a water course that can be regulated by cities and towns, which has some people concerned that such legislation will lead to more governmental control of their water usage.

“It’s quite controversial,” Wolkins said. “Cities and towns and counties are quite concerned about it, and so are a lot of other people.”

State Rep. Timothy Wesco

Rounding out the presentations Saturday was Rep. Wesco, who gave his own impressions about the first half of the current legislative session, noting as its highlight the recent passage of the extremely controversial Right to Work legislation recently signed into law in Indiana.

“This last week has been very slow, but the weeks prior to that were definitely very exciting and very busy,” Wesco said. “I’m sure you’ve heard the biggest news that Right to Work is law in Indiana, so that’s moved forward, and we’ve already seen some positive developments across the state. We’re bringing jobs to Indiana, so that’s kind of exciting to see that already start to have an affect in Indiana.”

About Third House

Hosted by the Goshen Chamber of Commerce, Third House meetings feature local lawmakers discussing a range of legislative topics. The meetings are open to the public.