Polls show vastly different snapshots of Indiana campaigns.

A Medicaid fraud lawsuit.

Plus, Mike Braun wants universal school vouchers and more from the television studios at WFYI.

It's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending September 20th, 2024.

Indiana Week in Review is made possible by the supporters of Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

This week, two recently released political polls show wildly different results for Indiana's statewide campaigns from Democrats, nearly tied in races for governor and attorney general to Republicans with huge leads.

Ball State political science professor Chad Kinsella says political polls can be entertaining and interesting, but he says they represen just a test of a moment in time, kind of like, you know, sticking your finger in the air and kind of you get a sense of where things are in a moment.

Kinsella says polling is getting more difficult.

Pollsters are increasingly divided on how to best poll voters including whether to use online or telephone poles and the balance of landlines versus cell phones.

There's also the challenge of getting people to respond, choosing how many people will yield a good result and what demographics to weigh in the sample.

Everybody' kind of got their secret sauce, and so if you will, and it's so and sometimes the secret sauce is work and sometimes they don't.

Kinsella says Indiana also isn't polled very often, in large part because its political results haven't changed in a while.

How predictive will these polls be?

It's the first question for our Indiana Week in Review panel.

Democrat Ann DeLaney Republican Chris Mitchem.

Leslie Bonilla Muñiz, reporter for the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

And Niki Kelly, editor in chief of the Indiana Capitol Chronicle.

I'm Indiana Public Broadcasting Statehouse Bureau Chief Brandon Smith.

Chris Mitchem what should Hoosier make of these wildly disparate poll results?

Yeah, I'm not going to sit here and say that polls don't matter.

But I will say since 2016 I think people have been a lot more skeptical of who's buying the polls, who's conducting the polls, the questions that are being asked.

So when you take into account these two polls that are being shown, I think you have to lean towards the poll that shows that Braun is up by 11 points simply because the poll or the pollster used their.

Emerson College has a 2.9 out of three star reliability rating off of 539, right?

They are also bought by The Hill, which in this current politica climate is pretty down the down the middle of the road for a news organization.

You look at the other, the other poll bought and paid for by the Wells campaign.

The pollster used on that one has a 1.2 star out of three reliability rating, according to, 539.

And then also, it was i was obviously has probably has a lot more holes, 600 likel voters polled versus a thousand.

So, I don't think these results should shock anybody, though I certainly d think you have to lean towards the sign that shows that Braun is up by 11, which is status quo.

I don't think that should shock anybody.

Yeah, I mean that the The Hill or the Emerson College poll results would roughly mirror what we've seen in Indiana for the last decade.

But you haven't seen you haven't seen extreme candidates like the Republicans have put up this time before.

And you haven't seen the kind of enthusiasm presidentially for the Democratic ticket in Indiana that you've that we've seen now before.

So if that was a text poll I don't know how reliable text polls are.

I don't respond to text surveys.

I don't know about anybody else, but I don't.

So I don't know how reliable that is.

And besides which, they completely under sampled young people, which is interesting because the young people are not going with Braun and Beckwith and Todd Rokita.

So but there are only a snapshot.

I mean, what has to happen now is turnout has to come.

And when you see these ridiculous things by the Republicans, Secretary of state, whatever his name is saying 90% of Hoosiers are registered.

I don't know what he's smoking, but it's definitely on the controlled substance list.

We don' we turn out at the bottom ten.

Of so registered versus voting is.

Very 90% of the vote of Hoosiers registered either okay.

We don't we do.

It's a numb I mean it's just a if you have math calculator.

Yeah but you have duplicates on there that haven't been purged for years.

So that about their.

Election process, we don't need more election security.

We need better, we need better opportunities to vote.

And we need to have Republicans stop putting obstacles in the way of people voting.

I do want to ask one thing about, I think, the Emerson College poll that maybe would surprise me if this is the result.

And again, poll are not necessarily predictive.

It is, as Chad Kinsella talked about and as you just mentioned, there are snapshots Donald Trump winning b I think it was 17 in the poll.

He won by 16 in 2020 down from 19 in 2016.

Would you be a little surprised if his support doesn't erode at all on his third time running?

I would I think it'll drop down a little.

maybe 2 or 3%.

But, you know that was about what I expected.

He had a pretty high approval rating in the in it as well.

You know, I I'm not a poll expert.

I know that some people say that the Emerson poll, which is what they call a panel poll, you have to opt in.

You really want to voluntarily, right.

You know, as some people say, is not the best methodology.

But, you know, I mean, Destiny's poll while, you know, also we only used the base numbers, but also was a push poll.

I mean, they kept it was may, you know, they would add positive things about destiny and then negative things about Rickey Dent.

So then I'd ask again, yeah.

The three rounds.

I'm just the way you take a poll, you want to see what messages work.

but yeah, from a campaign, that' absolutely what you would expect from the campaign is, I talked to chat about it.

And, you know, he said from a campaign standpoint, of course, you both take this poll and then publish the results because it's as much about fundraisin as it is anything else.

Right.

You're trying to say, hey, look, you should give me money because this might be an actual race.

Does the Emerson poll coming out on the heel of that undercut that message?

I mean, I think so.

It's kind of a reality check.

Some might think, I think something else, too, is that the Wells campaign was very excited about, independent voters.

They said tha after their messaging efforts, the independents were going for for Destiny.

But, I mean, the Emerson College poll had a lot more independents, and it seemed like most of the difference.

And, you know the Republican candidate says, you know, some support wa was independents going for them.

So, yeah.

And there's also a question like, you can test a message, but then it's can you get it out to other.

People to that point?

We had a fundraiser for Destiny last night with over 100 people there.

So they're still there.

And that's after that poll came out.

So we have enthusiasm and we have people opening their checkbooks.

Time now for viewer feedback.

Each week we put an unscientific online poll question.

I stress unscientific here, folks.

This week's question who wil win Indiana's race for governor?

Republican Mike Braun, Democrat Jennifer McCormic or Libertarian Donald Rainwater.

Last week's question is the issue of abortion access settled in Indiana?

Just 12% of you say yes, 88% say no.

If you'd like to take part in the poll.

Go to fedora org slash eyewear and look for the poll.

Well, two former state official filed a whistleblower lawsuit.

The alleges several Indiana hospital systems and managed care entities have committed millions of dollars of Medicaid fraud.

The plaintiff filed the lawsuit in early 2021, when they obtained access to analysis from Indiana's Fraud and Abuse Detection System contractor Indiana Public Broadcasting's Abigail Rubin reports.

The case was sealed until earlier this year.

The lawsuit alleges fou companies in charge of managing Indiana Medicaid knowingl and improperly misused millions in Medicaid funds to pay claims that violate billing requirements.

It also says six hospita systems obtain millions in funds by submitting thousands of false claims to Medicaid.

The complaint was filed on behalf of the state and the federal government by the former deputy of Progra Integrity for Indiana Medicaid and the former Chief Deputy and general counsel in the offic of the Indiana State Treasurer.

The lawsuit said the managed care entity, defendants and hospital defendants were aware of their obligation to prevent or deny claims that violate basic hospital billing rules.

It also says this misconduct contributed to last year's $1 billion budget shortfall.

Ann Delaney, just how troubling are these allegations?

Extremely troubling.

I mean, what you basically wha what looks like could happened as you put the the fact in charge of the handcuffs here.

You bring in an outside, person from a firm that represents hospitals, and you put him in charge o Medicare, Medicaid.

Excuse me?

And then you have all of these things that aren't as, enforced as they had been previously.

I mean, you had Mike pence expand Medicaid, and then he leaves and you bring in part of the 20 years of Republican control where scandals do fomen after that long party control.

And what you have is a refusal or, if it was if there was lobbying not to enforce those, it was successful.

And the consequences are significant.

And now they want to they want a balanced the fact that they have, overlooked this kind of frau for years on the backs of people that are most vulnerabl and most in need of health care.

Of course, it's concerning.

And, you know, I don't know whether it's 700 million more or less.

But whatever number it is, it's significant.

Okay.

This you know, this comes we were learning about this lawsuit after we learned about the $1 billion forecasting error.

That's put us in a bit of a hole in the Medicaid budget.

But the actual lawsuit was filed two years before that.

So, I mean, do you start to look at the growth of the Medicaid budget number and things like and go, oh, maybe it doesn't need to be going that fast, and this might be one of the reasons why.

One of the reasons, yeah, I'm not sure how, you know, the numbers rolling over year by year.

The fact that this was filed in 2021, I'm not sure you know how long those numbers would last.

I do think they would certainly add up to the point where you could have a a big contribution to $1 billion deficit, but it's really almost too muc of a coincidence at this point, because I know FSA recently came out with a lot of their, kind of their cost saving maneuver that they're going to try to do, which tallied u to around 300 to $400 million, which still leaves you about $700 million short of the billion dollar mark.

So then you get this that says there might be around $700 million that it it was, you know, short.

700 million as of 2021 when this was filed.

Yeah, sure.

Is also not an annual no.

Right.

It would be.

It would be a cumulative, but it.

Was a cumulative as of 2021.

Cumulative as of 2025 2021.

That's the point.

20.

2020.

Okay.

however this might check out.

First of all, it is still an allegation.

The lawsuit is ongoing, and we don't know that this is actually what happened.

But let's say tha these whistleblowers are right and that the government is owed lots and lots of money.

It's still not an answer to Indiana's budget problem in the short term, right?

I mean facets take a really long time, but the allegations are stunning.

So it would be a big deal if they find that it's true, at least to some degree, because it's of course, as we mentioned, it's an estimate.

It could be lower.

it could be higher.

But I don't know.

There's a lot of lawmakers out there that, have a transparency government taxpayer, you know, responsibility sort of just to most of what they do.

Some of them have been pretty tough on agencies.

So maybe this is an opportunity for them to slip up.

They have to come out in November, with their estimate of what went wrong with these with these calculations.

But the other question I've got is it's been pending under seal for three years, while the governments decide with what what to do with it.

Why isn't Todd Rokita filing and joining that lawsuit?

I mean, why is he spending his time doing the kind of politica shenanigans that he engages in?

Why isn't he trying to regroup that money for taxpayers?

He has opted not.

To do that.

Not to.

I do think it's pretty, at least from people I've talked to.

It's pretty normal for them to let the outside litigants handle that.

If they're going to push it, why not let someone else pay?

The way you know, that's true for the money.

And I do want to point out, just to be fair, that one of the whistleblowers, this is his second whistleblower complaint, which I find interesting.

The former one was against his boss at the time, and that one was dismissed.

So again, these are allegations and we need to let the case.

We have a wrongful termination suit that that they settled.

So he I mean he for $90,000.

It's not chump change.

All right.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun released an education plan this week that includes ke policy proposals and addresses.

Hot button conservative talking points.

Indiana Public Broadcasting's Kirsten Adair reports.

Braun wants to expand school vouchers, improve school safety, boost and boos teacher pay, among other things.

Indiana's voucher program is currently capped for families with incomes higher than $220,000.

Braun's plan proposes a universal school choice, which would remove the income cap altogether.

The plan also emphasizes raising teacher salaries and creating a separate office for school safety.

Braun plans to continue other education initiatives, like improvin literacy and rewarding schools whose students graduate with readiness seals.

He also wants to furthe limit cell phone use in schools and ensure parents have acces to their children's curriculum, and that schools are alerting parents when students request to use a different name or pronouns.

The plan also mentions developing safeguards against critical race theory, investigatin the impact of school lockdowns and mask mandates, and preventing transgender girls from participating in girls sports.

Leslie is fully expanding Indiana's voucher program at this point, all but assured.

I mean, I think first of all, we're almost there after, you know, the General Assembly expanded eligibility for the voucher program.

We had school choice advocates tell us that it means 96.5% of Indiana families of school age children are eligible.

That leaves out such a small percentage of people.

And it's people.

It's families that are making, you know, more than $200,000 a year.

so I thin that there are probably people out there saying, why not close the gap?

It's like 3% of the families.

and I do thin that there's appetite for this.

We saw, Senator Ryan Mishler last session, he opened discussion on a bill that he didn't move he wanted feedback on, but it, you know, would have, kind of melded some of the various voucher programs that we have and completely gotten rid of the cap, along with some other things.

So I think that he's probabl going to see about introducing something to that end and maybe others will join.

In, which is notable too, because it's not Senate Republicans who have been pushing for expansion of the voucher program over the years nearly as much as the House.

Yeah, I think the, the the small section that's left on vouchers will probably be a very minor change.

And but the bigger discussion will be if we move away from vouchers altogether and to these scholarship accounts where anyone can use them for anything, not just a private school, but for tutors for, you know, to homeschool your own kid, you know, you would get that sort of lump of money and decide how to educate your child that way.

I think that's the next big discussion.

To to that point.

I mean, is that a better system?

No, it's not a better system because it's going to undercut public education.

It's going to undercut public education funding in places wher there aren't options like that.

Okay.

And, you know, this program, the only thing that's in his program is teacher, salaries.

That's worth discussing.

The rest of them are either already done or about to be done.

And he doesn't do anything about third grade reading failures.

He doesn't do anything about the percentage going down of college graduates.

All the thing that any economist you talk to will tell you.

That is the key to future good job growth is education, education, an educated workforce and college graduates and we are failing on both of those fronts.

And he doesn't even talk about that.

I want to ask about something that and just kind of briefly mentioned, which is the idea of the more money you put into the voucher program, the less for public schools.

And that starting to become a problem for rural school districts, who don't have a lot of voucher options essentially in those communities.

And it was something that reared its head in the last budget discussion, where Senate Republicans on the last day of the well, what turned out to be the last day of the session, took a look at the school runs and went, whoa, we're getting our schools are getting way less money than we thought they were going to get because of how much we're increasing the overall education budget.

Does that become any bigger or are we just full steam ahead on on school choice?

I do think we are full, full steam ahead on school choice.

Almost strictly from a political standpoint.

You know, it' you can't say we don't have you.

We can't say we have universal school choice unless we do blow it open.

So from a strictly political standpoint, I think that's something that's desired by a lot of Republicans.

But I do think that scare at the end of session, last session or at the at the end of last session was a wake up call.

I don't think that will happen again.

I think there'll be a lot more skeptical with, if we do blow this up, you know making sure that rural schools are accounted for granted, they might not be accounted for as much as some people want, but without drastic that cut was I think that was a, a wakeup call.

And I will say about the broad plan, which had definitely had a lot more details in the McCormick campaign.

But there are things in there outside of school vouchers that are really notable.

I particularly have some experience in the schoo safety field in the state House, and being able to consolidate all of those things.

Regarding the school safety plans and the grants and really kind of put all of those under one house so that you can have one source to really, you know, if there are urgent school safety needs to go to, that's something that, you know, might not be talked about as much, bu I think is a really good which.

Also be as importan as third graders reading either.

Well, but it also gets to the idea of letting locals decide what's going to make their particular school a little safer, rather having to tailor i to this particular grant program at that particular grant program and stuff like that.

Right.

Yeah, there's 2 or 3 agencies that are all kind of have bits and pieces of th school safety thing right now.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormic says Indiana has lost a balance between Hoosier citizen and utility companies profits.

McCormick unveiled a utility affordability plan this week that she say can help restore that balance.

McCormick says part of her plan is appointing commissioners to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission that are more ratepayer friendly.

They feel like the IU RC is a rubber stamp, and there's very little voice that is even considered and and the local impact on business.

McCormick also wants to restore a program developed under former Governor Mitch Daniels called Energizing Indiana.

It required utility companies to make investments in energy efficiency, including rebates and home energy audits.

It was more of an education piece on, you know, how to get those costs down and also usage.

McCormick's proposals also include banning utility companies from using ratepayer dollars for lobbying, advertising and political contributions.

Niki Kelly has the balance between ratepayers and utility companies profits been lost?

I think it's a good question.

I mean, the fact is that the number of large scale rate cases that we've seen that customers are having to bear is pretty dramatic.

And very with not a ton o pushback from the Iowa.

Right.

And that and that's the second part, which is and just think people feel like the the utility wants x, they file for y, and then they get C it out like that.

They're playing the game and that's working.

And that there's not really a lot of opportunity to actually see if every single one of these rate cases are needed.

But and they're there, like I said, that they're not just like a couple pennies here and there.

They're large increases that we're seeing again and again and again.

that struck me about this proposals from Jennifer McCormick because so many of the proposals would rely on legislators doing things that I don't think a Republican legislature is going to do.

But this is one where she doesn't go to the legislature for appointing the IU.

RC it's an entirely administrative action on her part.

Is that make it maybe the most achievable of any of the proposals that she's put forward across all sorts of of policies.

I mean, I think so, I think that, you know, who's on the commission It's the governor's prerogative.

If she gets in that position, then by all means.

I also think that the, you know, Mitch Daniels throwback, program, if that's something that she runs through an executive agency, that's also pretty possible.

but I do think that there is some a discussion worth having about one of the other points that she brings up about, you know, whether utilities can charg taxpayers basically for lobbying for political contributions, for advertisements.

You can argue that some of these things do serve, you know, ratepayers interests, you know, getting legislation that benefits the utility, that theoretically benefits the ratepayers.

But there's also you can totally argue that they are often fighting their ratepayers interests in the kinds of things that they're that they're aiming for.

So I if, you know, there's, government accountability, oriented lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

And that also might be something worth looking at for them.

You might have interest.

Is there any legislative scrutiny of these utility companies and those to Niki's point, that the the seemingly endless number of large rate cases in recent years, does it seem like there's any reaction from Republican lawmakers?

I mean, I've I've said for a long time, I think that these large scal utility companies are going down a similar pat that you see Indiana hospitals currently battling, which is for years.

They're saying, hey, we need this to support this infrastructure, and we're going through the energy transition, and we need you to continue giving us all of these incentives and different benefits.

So, you know, trust us, we can give you good, you know, solid energy.

And then I think after a while and we're already starting to kind of starting to see it with, you know, energy costs being so high on both gubernatorial campaigns right now is like, we kind of need to start running this in potentially before they start getting to the point where, you know, they may not they may be as heavy handed with utility companies as they are with hospitals.

so.

Is there a growing appetite, do you think, at the state House for a little more scrutinized of these?

I don't know if it's growing at the statehouse.

I think it's growing at the ratepayer level.

you know, and they've taken some steps to make it, you know, excess capacity, for example.

I mean, we've got to start thinking about what we can do instead of trying to protect the industries that are trying to protect coal among them.

I mean, everybody's going away from coal.

Get over it and, and start talkin about how cheap natural gas is.

And to start, you know, looking at alternative ways instead of fighting the alternative ways, which is wha the legislature has been doing.

All right.

Finally, Purdue Universit celebrated the 100th anniversary of its memorial union this week, and as part of that celebration, it opened a time capsule placed in the building walls.

100 years ago.

It contained a list of people who fought and died in World War One.

The university's catalog and newspapers, with account of the development of the Union and a list of workers on the site, now mention if you were putting together a time capsule of Indiana right now, what would you put it?

Now see, the first thing I thought of on behalf of my good frien and was a school voucher, but, I would put it I would put a thimble of water from Tippecanoe County.

And just in case it all does go to parade.

Yeah, it all does go away on for the sake of economic development.

what would you put it?

This was also the anniversary of the Birch by, speaking series.

And and the the title of that, address was the one that got away, which was about the Electoral college that he tried to abolish in the 70s.

I'd put his bio in there.

First by by a birch, by bio birch.

So that fit on the.

Caitlin Clark jersey for.

Capturing this moment.

And that's.

Good.

That's absolutely it.

Do you have anything for the time capsule?

I think I have a lame one, but I was thinking like a chunk of I-69 since they've been trying to do that.

I really like that.

A chunk.

Of ice.

You could also put a list of all the things at Purdue that aren't named for Mitch Daniels, and it would b it wouldn't take up much room.

I would also say, wait for the time 2024 year in review to come out for 202 and put that in there, because we've had quite the year.

Yes, it has been quite the year.

And that's Indiana Week in Review for this week.

Our panel is Democrat Ann DeLaney Republican Chris Mitchem, Leslie Bonilla Muñiz o the Indiana Capital Chronicle, and Niki Kelly of the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

You can find Indiana Wee In Reviews podcast and episodes of wfyi.org/iwir, or on the PBS app Im Brandon Smith of Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Join us next time because a lo can happen in an Indiana Week.