This week I felt a little bit of the shame, and the panic, that some feel when subjected to voter ID laws. Mine though was not in relation to a basic right like voting, but related to a legally earned and owed benefit of my employment. I work for a public school system, not a big one but not a super small one. Nonetheless, it is a group of people who for the most part know each other by sight if not by first name, and I have worked there in one capacity or another for nigh unto 24 years, my children received all of their K-12 schooling there and I have paid taxes to support the schools for all of the 30 years that we have lived here. Tiptoe with me through the tangled barbed wire to know more about being a public school employee in the Great State of Indiana.
Indiana, as some have written, is the far right state that no one knows about. With Mike Pence, the ultra conservative (a-hem, Koch-puppet) governor and his super-majority in both legislative houses, public services and especially public education have huge targets on their backs. Regardless of the fact that a free and common education for all Hoosier children is mandated by the state constitution, our governors (yes, it started with the conservative hero, Mitch Daniels) and our lawmakers are determined to do everything possible to throttle and starve public education. Charter schools and the most expansive voucher program in the US, which is now known to be paying for those who wish to have a religious education rather than a common education, continue to erode the financial base for the public schools that serve... the public!
In their efforts to make sure that public schools are fiscally prudent, and in my opinion as a(nother) dig at public school employees, House Enrolled Act 1260 was passed which states in part,
(2) The school corporation shall perform audits once each five (5) years to ensure that covered dependents of school corporation employees are entitled to coverage under the school corporation's employee health coverage program.
Now it doesn't spell out HOW those audits should take place and we do want to make sure that we are following state law, no matter how onerous and odious it might be. But should it be necessary to
A. Hire an outside firm to provide the audit
B. Require married people to provide copies of marriage certificates
C. Require parents to provides birth certificates
to verify eligibility for coverage as a dependent?
Seriously, I don't think I have had to supply my marriage certificate for anything since the day we were married, almost 34 years ago. I was really afraid that I would not be able to find it; would I be able to get a copy from the Racine County Clerk? It doesn't spell out the steps to do so on their web site, like it does for obtaining a birth certificate. Would my insurance for my husband lapse while I was trying to obtain the verification? Why wouldn't our Indiana State Tax return, which we have filed jointly as a married couple since 1986, be adequate verification? Why does my employer require more verification of my marital status than the state and federal revenue departments?
The anxiety was starting to rise as I dug through the chest that contains all of our precious papers: baby books, report cards dating from the 1960s, patterns passed down from great grandma for baby booties and sock monkeys, years worth of Mothers' Day cards, but no marriage certificate. How was I going to prove that I was legally married to the man I had taken for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer - and we have seen all of those conditions and are still here - to my employer?
Finally, a trip to the basement, digging in the drawer of a cheap metal filing cabinet that has seen better days, in an aged manilla filing folder labeled "misc" with the copies of birth certificates that have been accumulated over the years, inside of a white legal size envelope notated: sign in black ink, I found the precious record of our legal contract that will allow my husband to stay on my employer provided health insurance plan. I triumphantly climbed the stairs out of the basement on the way to the ink jet copier/printer, and announced, "Yes, we are still married." A muffled grunt was the response. That's how it is after 33 years of marriage, whether you can find the paperwork to prove it or not.
Sun Sep 07, 2014 at 1:42 PM PT: Thank you to those of you who read, recommended and/or commented. The Daily Kos pool doesn't feel quite so frightening any more. And to my fellow Hoosiers, I feel your pain and am walking for the local campaigns as an attempted remedy.