Indiana Lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality Hi, I'm Jon Schwantes.

Usually sessions of the General Assembly provide answers.

The one that just ended, though, created lots of questions, some of which might not be answered for years, if not decades.

That doesn't mean, though, that we can't start asking them.

Joining me to discuss the 2025 session are the legislatures caucus leaders?

House Speaker Todd Houston, a Fishers Republican.

House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta, a Fort Wayne Democrat.

Senate President Pro Tem Rodrik Bray of Martinsville and Senate Minority Leader Shelley Yoder a Bloomington Democrat.

Thank you all for being here.

I know you're still resting, catching up on your sleep, but important and appreciated that you're here.

There are a lot of questions coming out of this session.

A lot of unknowns, it seems to me.

We don't know how aggressive schools will be in asking voters for additional support through referenda.

We don't know how local governments will respond to reduce property tax.

Will they cut services?

Will they take advantage of their new taxing authority in terms of a local income tax?

We don't know whether federal funding will stay at its current levels or not.

What coming out of this session, and I'm going to ask each of you, this is the biggest question on your mind.

We'll start with you, Todd Houston.

Well, I think, you know, we we came in.

We want to grow on our success.

We continue to you know, Indiana has been a beacon of success in the Midwest.

We wanted to grow on that success on just, you know, the biggest questions.

Do we get that accomplished?

I think we did.

And I think, you know, continue to grow, based on the work that we did over the last four months.

And, but that would probably be, you know, our big, focus has been making sure Indiana is a leader in the Midwest, leader nationally in growth and economic development, creating opportunities for families and businesses all across our state.

And I think we accomplished at this session.

Didn't hear a question in there.

Is there what's left, though, is unanswered in your mind?

Well, in the what if?

You know, I think the what if is you know, are we going to continue to grow at the pace that we've grown in the past?

I think we've set the table to do that.

Hopefully we continue.

It.

Let's just go right down the line.

Well, first of all, I agree completely with the speaker on that.

The question that I have to answer your question is simply this is, is the economy really that the $2 billion, cut that we saw with the most recent forecast in April?

Is that really the case, or is the economy going to rebound?

when that forecast came out, there was a lot of uncertainty, which I think it was part of what created that, that, kind of challenging forecast.

But, I'm more optimistic than that.

I think that the economy, especially Indiana's economy, has been healthy for a long time.

I think it's robust and will be able to, move forward.

And so the challenges that that forecast sort of implied were on the way.

I think that the state of Indiana probably has the opportunity to to rebound very quickly from that.

And by the end of this coming biennium, I think we'll be able to see lots of progress, lots of growth like we've seen over the last couple of years, and find opportunities for the state to investigate.

The question to your question, though, if I may.

Couldn't get worse.

I mean, I just saw a piece that, they said there's a 60% chance we will, fall into recession.

And yeah, of course it can get worse.

And that's why we were responsible with the budget that we passed.

When we put together a budget that's going to be able to accomplish things that the bare necessities that the state needs to be able to provide.

But we also left, strong surpluses of over 10% year over each year, first year and second year, plus a structure surplus so that we can adjust if the economy does continue to be challenged.

You dip into the reserves, but but still leave a healthy Kelly out of your question.

I would start off by just pushing back a little bit.

Why are we prioritizing at the end of this year, corporate handouts and giving writing checks to millionaire families?

I mean, that's the question I am hearing.

And we're talking about about universal vouchers.

Universal.

There's no cap.

On, you know, to.

Income.

For failing to say that Indiana is leading in the Midwest.

And why are we hearing from reports from prosperity, Indiana, that one in every three Hoosiers are earning less than $15 an hour?

Why do we not lead the Midwest when it comes to providing help with childcare expenses to our working families?

I think when we have an opportunity at the session to prioritize those that rely on us the most are kids working in middle class families, our aging parents and instead we focus on culture wars, corporate handouts, and control obsessed power grabs.

That's what we have seen at the end of this session, and we can spin it to say it was responsible, but responsible.

How?

Because I am hearing from working class families all across Indiana who are panicked, who are not benefiting from the chaos that they're feeling.

And we had a real opportunity and we did not rise to the occasion.

And we will give these gentlemen a chance to respond.

But before they'll do a point to any big question on your mind as we leave this session.

Well, you know, I think we came into session.

People would say, well, we don't have the money that we maybe had in prior sessions, with federal dollars not being there.

And then, of course, as you mentioned, the the forecast came out mid April with the, fiasco that's happening in Washington DC.

You know, it wasn't very good.

so then it really became, as most budgets are about priorities.

So what are our priorities?

you asked about, the biggest questions going forward.

I've already seen.

And with Fort Wayne Community Schools that they've already, started with layoffs, with some administrative staff.

And, the fear there with, with, the budget and with foreign community schools, again, less than 2% increase, over each year isn't very good.

barely keeping up with inflation that.

Yeah, there is a potential for more cut, cut back cuts.

and not only Fort Wayne community Schools, but other school districts.

So that to me is going to be the biggest question is, how how our local governments, and not just what we think of, you know, local governments and the things that they have to do to provide services, police, fire and everything else but school districts around the state, how are they going to be able to handle, the new the cuts that we've seen or the lack of increase in the with the budget funding and of course, a property tax issue, I'm guessing you gentlemen are going to want to weigh in on their their questions.

Let's start with you, Tony.

Look, I mean, first of all, we funded fully funded Medicaid the most, making sure we provide health care to the most needy families.

We fully funded, DCFs, those children being served by the department of Child Services, Department of Corrections, law enforcement.

You know, again, put more money in the budget in the, in, K-12 funding.

so, so respect.

I just totally disagree.

About the writing.

You borrow, Shelly Yoda's phrase writing checks to millionaires.

Well, that's ridiculous.

I mean, the first, the first of all, we fund students.

We we don't fund school systems.

Second of all, we don't just, just differentiate between income in a whole host of things, like, do we provide law enforcement?

We pay people's roads.

So, so look, we provide an education to students.

That's what we do.

and we fund students and, and where they get their schooling is up to them.

and by the way, it's been historically successful, like academic results have been successful.

So, so we'll we'll defend that all day long.

And and then, you know, we continue to make investments in things like housing, issue we've heard a lot about across the state is how do we provide more housing opportunities for families.

You know, we're growing state all these things that, that, have been said before, I mean, or, you know, people must love it because they're leaving states that offer everything that was just mentioned before to come to states like Indiana, where we're the fastest growing state in the Midwest by population.

So I'll defend our track record.

I'll defend everything we've done.

I think we continue to build on that this year.

I went back actually on the.

You put back, I'm going to give Rod Bray a chance to push back on your pushback.

We are successful in every measure because one year ago and I know that we're going to hear oh, but our reading scores are higher.

Those measures that we did a year ago haven't even been able to take hold.

But last year we were talking about our reading.

Test scores are at an all time low that this year alone we were talking about math.

So how can you say that our our outcomes are outperforming when it comes to investing in the majority of schools where Hoosier families send their kids when our teachers and our students are crying out and our test scores are showing that, I would say that.

You know, well, we I think.

Have a.

Conversation, I think nationally and reading.

And we did have our highest graduation, and graduation rates.

But I would say that's because our teachers are working hard.

Whether they're doing a fantastic job.

The facts are seven things.

And if you look at the most recent, Nape score, which is adjusted for demographics, we're fifth in the nation.

We should all be.

Very standardized test with absolute apples.

Yeah, well.

Seventh every they do it every two years.

7000 students around Indiana were tested in that regard.

And when they adjust that for demographic challenges across the nation, we're number five.

We should be very proud.

So no apologies for the notion of writing checks.

Absolutely.

Then why are we actually prioritizing who's doing that work and saying to our teachers, thank you.

I know we can say, well, we raised your salary to $45,000, but I know, many, many families can't make ends meet with $45,000 a year salary.

And we can do better.

We can actually appreciate and prioritize the profession and do better by our kids.

Phil.

Gia Quinto, you talked about priorities, and it is tough when a week before the end of the session, you know, you're going down a certain path and then, oh, by the way, tap on the shoulder.

You have $2 billion less than you thought you did.

So it does call for prioritization.

And it's easy to criticize priorities that the supermajorities picked.

What where would you have wielded the knife?

Well, for example, and I think this is something that we all supported with regards to, health care and the amount of money that, that we put into the health care system a couple of years ago.

you know, when we continually talk about public health.

Public health.

Yeah.

Well, Indiana has been just ranked, and there's no or no doubting that where our rankings were.

Indiana has always been with regards to, the health care and well-being of our citizens, very poor and, so and we, we as House Democrats have been talking about that for years.

And so, for the General Assembly to finally step and do 200 some odd million dollars, that was just, was, was terrific.

And we're starting to see really good results.

but then just sort of say, well, now we can't we're going to, we're going to stop that and lower it to 6 million, whatever the number, it was going to go from 200 for the biennium to 80, 40, 40 each year.

Yeah, exactly.

and and so it's really just kind of taking a step backwards and it is really takes a long time to recover from that as well.

And let's and by the way, health, good health care is good economic development.

And it's really good for our citizens.

And it's something that we really should continue to do.

We're taking a.

Attack on public.

Health.

I mean, we did fund it 225 million into in the 23 budget.

Part of that was so they can get infrastructure built up and get that program built up.

And now we had to cut some in this budget because we had a $2 billion that we had to find somewhere.

And so you just don't have the luxury of funding at the same level.

But at the same time, if you look at the money spent by all 92 counties which embraced and adopted this public health program, in 2024, they have 45% of the dollars that they got unspent because they just weren't able to spend it at that point.

And so would we have liked to have given more than 40 million, $40 million each year?

Maybe so.

But, at that at the same time, because they didn't use nearly all the funds that they received, this is not really considered a cut.

They will be able to continue to do some really positive things for the public health of the state of Indiana.

And when the budget comes around in two more years, we'll take another look at that.

But, you know, when you when you fully fund education at 2% and 2% like we did, that's half the budget.

And we didn't cut into that at all.

To find that $2 billion, you're going to have to make some other challenging decisions.

And that was part of it.

And also note that, you know, counties can, you know, the money goes to counties.

Counties are administering the programs.

Counties can prioritize it if they find the need.

If that's an issue for them, they can find the resources to.

But it's rightfully noted.

We are funny, the exact same level that we spent the prior year.

They can't do anything they want with the money because of legislation.

Among the various things you pass, there has to be to documented residents of the US for the first time.

Sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

It did very quickly to Fort Wayne County schools was 1.9 or 1.2.

So we did not receive 2%, each year.

Could have done it back in the day when we were in the majority.

it was we were doing 4 or 5% each year, but we also weren't spending up to $900 million over the biennium on to send, kids to private education.

You need to talk to real quick about with regard to, the property tax piece and whether local governments really got it, what kind of cut they got.

First of all, it didn't get a cut.

Overall, they're expanding each year.

So if anybody talks about a cut, that's a Washington, D.C. cut, meaning they didn't get as much as they anticipated.

The other thing that I think is important for all of us to understand is how local government funding compares to the state funding after this last budget, local government in the first year is going to they're going to their revenue is going to increase by 1.6%.

State of Indiana's revenue is going to increase by 0.8 percent.

So we're half of that.

And two in the second year of the of the biennium budget, the state of Indiana's budget will increase in revenue by 0.1%.

Local governments will increase by 5.1%.

So much larger.

So it can't all have to.

We all live.

Within our means.

But local governments know no.

And so those are the LSA numbers.

So we all have to live within our means.

But the state of Indiana gave itself a much bigger haircut than it did local government.

Well, as you look at again, cuts had to be made.

If you look at this though, and you can, you know, cuts are in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

But you look at things like public health, and even if it was just reducing it to the level that essentially was tapped by by counties, but you look at other, programs, there was some eligibility tweaks with child care that might reduce the number of people, eligible low income individuals.

You look at some of the things that were zeroed out altogether.

The Women's Commission, Native Americans Commission Is there a message to be gleaned from the.

Well, let me let me ask them first.

I'm going to take us I want to respond to this because.

It's not a ventriloquist act, though.

I want to give him a chance to, But I don't want to brush over the response that we had to thousands of families in Indiana scrambling to not be able to afford childcare.

And we were promised by the new administration that that was going to be a priority, that we would end and address the childcare waitlist with the vouchers.

And the answer that we got was, we're just going to reduce eligibility so less families will be able to actually access the vouchers.

Well, yeah, that will reduce the waitlist, but it actually will will remove the opportunity for more families to afford childcare.

So that's one thing.

But the other question that you asked about, some of the zeroing out from the Women's Commission to public radio, I mean, public broadcasting, what we saw in this session at the end was we now closed rural schools, and we're going to probably continue to see that we closed one rural school.

We are seeing more and more rural hospitals having to close 15 labor and delivery units closed.

We are going to see no access to information for our rural communities, which comes from public broadcasting, and that those are those are not just quality of life, that is necessity of life, whether having access to information, access to health care and access to education.

Let me well said.

But I want to I want to get yoder's.

Passion for rural.

I do, I do, I do I ask the question to you gentlemen?

So, what can people infer?

Is there any message here What can voters conclude?

Or can they draw any conclusions?

You know, it's.

Just a.

Tough priorities.

I mean, you know, we walked in, we known we needed wouldn't we with a budget anyway, we knew before the revenue forecast change we knew we had to for war ties, K-12 education, DCFs, Medicaid and Doc.

Most of those are some of the most disenfranchized in our society.

And so, you know, that's where our priority was, that did not leave a lot of extra money for anything else.

And so we had to make difficult and tough decisions.

I appreciate the leadership of Chairman Thompson and Senator Mishler as they did that.

and again, you know, I think it's just like every Hoosier family in this state is you don't have to tighten their belts.

It's okay if government has to do it both of the state and local level.

So not philosophy driven, not message driven, just born dollars and cents driven is what it comes down to.

I mean, you know, does.

That mean then, Senator, that these organizations that have taken cuts higher Ed, for instance, took an earlier 5% cut, now a 5% cut both in operating and in ongoing maintenance?

and these other organizations that were zeroed out, does this mean that perhaps when times are better, they can see funding restored?

Well, you know, we do a budget every two years, right?

We're going to come back in 27, look at it again.

And that's going to be based on the, the amount of revenue that it looks like we'll get over the next two years.

So yeah, every time we every time we do that, we try to look at the right investment for the state of Indiana.

But, you know, challenges, are out there.

This April forecast was a huge challenge because it showed a decrease in revenue of $2 billion.

And we had to we had to do what was fiscally responsible.

Sometimes that means very challenging decisions.

But the speaker very accurately said, we invested in things that are going to help the most.

Disenfranchized with regard to, DCFs and the Department of Corrections and those those programs took up all the excess excess money that we had.

And so that's what the budget.

And you did at the end of the day, revenue from cigaret tax, 800 million for Medicaid cuts.

I think the economic development Commission, which certainly is in the lower right.

Across the board, across the board, including the General Assembly, the Senate and the House, there was a 5% haircut that every agency got.

Some people got more than that.

We got 100%.

Some people did.

Yeah.

But, but the bottom line, you have to at the end of the day, you have to make sure that you get a budget that's fair and balanced.

It has a still a structural surplus that gives us a little bit of cushion and reserve in case the day gets continues to get worse.

And that's what we did.

Was we made messaging over money because some of these lines were near nothing, but it sends a message and so the message of sending we're actually not going to prioritize, social emotional learning in our schools.

We are not going to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion in the state of Indiana.

As a matter of fact, we're the first state to do what Washington has said to do Indiana first state to actually abolish it throughout the state.

And I also want to add the decision to zero out the Commission on Women.

I think all of those send a very clear message on what we value in Indiana, and we certainly don't value those things.

I'm going to ask you if it's a message, but feel free to go into what's going to come back to haunt in your estimation of these cuts and the priority decisions.

Well, one thing stand out is, that folks wishing they had a mulligan.

Well, look, it was, a banner year again for private schools.

Awesome year for charter schools.

you know, because they get to now share in property tax revenue when it, when a referendum.

But on the ballot and passed so did.

Well I think they increase the $1,400 of student dollars per student for charter schools.

So they did very well.

And it's always interesting to me that, that we like to talk about being efficient, but, you know, we've had, voucher schools, charter schools, virtual check.

We got so many different school systems going on right now that we're spending a lot of money on.

And, that's why I've always said, I think our priorities are what you mentioned about 93, 94, 95% of our students that go to public schools are just not seeing the funding, that they should be seeing.

And I would I would disagree, though also that we really, I don't believe are seeing or getting the results that we should be, frankly, from the charter schools in this state.

You know, right now, vouchers go to only, schools that have fewer than less than 10% of students go to the schools.

And that's proponents of of the vouchers say we're talking about a relatively small number.

But what prevents this from going to 90% flipping and saying 100% of students want vouchers?

I mean, there's no nothing to block.

That because, you know, and I mean, I would just note, I mean, I think, you know, we're going to spend the same amount of money probably anyway.

It's just I mean, I think that the we're the focus of this conversation is do you invest in systems, you invest in students in systems you invest in families.

And and where does a family get to choose where they think is the best place for their child to be educated?

I mean.

Let's be clear, though, no circuit breakers on the demolition of public schools as we know them.

If in fact, 100% of students wanted to go to voucher is that you're saying that's fine?

I don't I don't think that's ever going to be possible.

It probably is appropriate that, you know, you're a former school board member.

A school board member is, you know, our our, you know, the public schools of public charter schools, they get local property tax dollars, private schools, voucher schools don't.

So that's a big advantage for those.

And I support all schools and support all great schools.

And you know, again, I would just note that the the academic success that we're seeing is is terrific.

And and for all those people pushing back against it I just continue to ask, are you are you worried about where the money's going or you're worried about the outcomes?

I feel like it's more about.

The first and accountability, and we simply don't have that with our private school education.

what what we're hearing is we are basing decision making on that's never going to happen.

And what we are hearing again and again is what we thought would never happen is happening.

And I think Hoosiers deserve to have some accountability and transparency on how their taxpayer dollars are being spent.

I'm going to leave budget cuts.

but I don't want to leave education altogether.

In the 11th hour, a lot of decisions were made and a lot of things were introduced, reforms that weren't vetted through the traditional hearing process, including the governance of our state universities, particularly IU, will undergo some changes now that the governor will appoint all nine trustees, as opposed to having three of them elected.

Phil Jackson two.

How troubling is, is the prima facie changes or the manner in which they took place?

Yeah.

You know, putting it in the budget.

So there was no, vetting, if you will, going through committee or anything like that.

I think the system I've never heard any complaints about the current system that we have should have just left it alone.

you know, the governor has a majority of appointments, you know?

Anyway, and so I do think I like the idea, the three appointments that come from the alumni to keep, maybe, you know, you put someone on there that is going to ask some more difficult questions than maybe an appointee of the governor.

and so, I think it's worked very well.

I don't think there's any reason to change it.

not really sure what brought.

What, brought about the change.

I guess we'll never know since there was no, public testimony on that.

So, it's going to cause some, some, I think, hard feelings among IU alumni.

There's quite a few of them around the state.

So some at this table, or on this couch, in addition, of course, to IU and the selection process for trustees, it changes faculty governance at IU makes it, makes it a recommendation, not a binding type of thing in terms of faculty input.

And, changes the tenure process a little bit in terms of productivity reviews and so forth, as to why so important that this needed to come into to.

Be more critical.

first of all, when, you know, when we're asking them to do more or less, we need to give them the tools to be able to do it.

I don't think asking for ten year review, I don't think asking for people to to to justify, every five years, John, every five years, what they're doing.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

I also think ask making sure that the programs are being reviewed.

We have programs that currently don't even have students have graduated in that major for multiple years.

They're continuing being offered.

So we need to give the flexibility, to to the universities be able to address that last question.

We're at a time who whose idea was this?

so I think it's a culmination of lots of people who care about higher education in the state of Indiana want to make sure.

And we've heard reporting that the president of IU currently pushing pushes.

It was it was I mean, every everybody in this panel right now or IU graduates, a lot of people care about the higher education system in the state of Indiana with regard to that education, there are 790,000 IU alumni in the world.

Under 20,000 of them were voting in this election.

So it's not an election that was considered effective or a cross-section of IU alumni and, no other university in the state of Indiana selects any, any trustees that way.

And so this was a way to try and.

Right.

I've seen some municipal, primary elections.

Where in Indiana, where turnout is 5%.

So be careful going down more of a. power of of power grab.

Just control of this power grab.

That's really what this is about.

If it wasn't, we would have had this conversation earlier and not slipped in literally in the darkness of night in that budget.

All right.

Thank you guys.

Thank you very much I appreciate it.

Lots of energy at this table.

obviously.

Thank you for being here.

again, my guests have been House Speaker Todd Houston, a Fishers Republican.

House minority leader, Phil GiaQuinta, a Fort Wayne Democrat.

Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray of Martinsville and Senate Minority Leader Shelly Yoder, a Bloomington Democrat.

Time now for our weekly conversation with Indiana lawmakers analyst Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of the newsletter Indiana Legislative Insight, part of Hanna News Service.

Let's hear your assessment, Ed.

Crazy session.

Where do we start, John?

I think that this was very interesting because for once, we didn't see leadership really dictate the outcomes.

And I talked about this really early on in the session, the phenomenon that we were seeing where the leaders were kind of letting things come through organically.

We saw that with the health care legislation.

We saw that with transportation funding.

We saw that with a few other things this year, too.

And that was was a big difference from the past.

And I think kind of a rewarding thing to see after a while.

Although there were abortion bills introduced but not heard.

I mean, that just committee chairs discretion.

I guess there.

Were some of those social conservative and what Democrats would, would call wedge issues that did come up, bringing in some of the DC agenda here.

But unlike the last few sessions, you know, we didn't see 12 hour committee hearings.

We didn't see some of these issues essentially suck all the oxygen out of the chamber and leave little time and, and, cause a partisan divide like we did in the last couple of years.

You know, one thing I couldn't help but notice when I looked at the cuts you had Indiana Economic Development Commission, which had been a favorite project of the previous governor, I should say, you had public health funding.

You had the next level trails.

project and funding several hundred million dollars, once again, near and dear to Eric Holcomb's heart, fellow Republican.

How much of this was a repudiation of his legacy or some attempt to dismantle or draw a distinction between the two?

Well, there's there's a new sheriff in town, Jon.

And I think, when Senator Braun was running for governor, he indicated that he had some real issues with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, and he had some other priorities.

And I think you're seeing some of those things laid out right now, and you're seeing some of that in legislation and more of it in executive orders.

Ed, thanks for your insight today and throughout the session.

Thank you.

Jon.

Well, that concludes another edition.

And another season of Indiana lawmakers, the state's longest running public affairs show.

I'm Jon Schwantes, and on behalf of analyst Ed Feigenbaum and a lot of extremely talented and dedicated professionals, WFYI Public Media, I thank you for joining us, and I invite you to visit wfyi.org for more state House news.

Until next year, take care.

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