Welcome to Indiana Lawmakers 2025 Halftime Special.

We won't be breaking down stats.

We won't be dissecting slow motion replays.

And we won't be rocking out to Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, or even a respectable high school marching band.

Hi, I'm Jon Schwantes, and what we will do over the next half hour or so is kick around the insights and predictions of two of our state's most astute political analysts.

Together, we'll take stock of the legislative sessions first eight weeks and set the stage for the high stakes debates that lie ahead.

Indiana Lawmakers is produced by 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 of life.

Indiana Lawmakers from the statehouse to your house.

Joining me, Indiana Lawmakers analyst Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of the newsletter Indiana Legislative Insight, part of Hannah News Service.

And Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis and a frequent commentator on political behavior, state and local government, and public administration.

And I always think of you, too.

Is Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce our own people?

I want to ask you to sing.

We think of ourselves like that, too.

I want to ask you which is which.

But, this is our halftime report theme.

We have the football we the prop department.

We spent extra this week, and I'm ready to now say, are you ready to tee up this discussion?

Absolutely.

All right.

Can I throw this?

I'll set.

Let's just do that then.

Thanks for doing this.

we had something unusual, you know, this week.

It's a it's a week off.

That hasn't happened in a long time.

This sort of very bifurcated session.

what's it doing to the rhythm?

and this, this it's halftime.

What?

geographically, you know, we're we're at the halfway point of the session where things they have to pass their chambers of origin and go across the rotunda.

But in terms of the actual timing of the session, we're basically only about a quarter of the way through things.

John, we've we are looking at a really back loaded session this year because of of the economy, because of events in Washington.

because we've got all kinds of concerns about what the budget may end up looking like.

We have so much uncertainty this time around that I think we're really looking at moving everything back into the middle of April, late April, much more so than than we usually do.

There are a lot of other pieces of legislation that are still floating around that have a fiscal impact, and we won't be able to to see if we can afford those kinds of things until we figure out where we are in the middle of.

And you're right, it's kind of always that way in a budget year because people wait for the update.

More so this year because of the uncertainty.

We've we've got tariffs.

We've we've got all the the director's going to talk about some of those things that well Agreed that that we've probably seen the tip of the proverbial iceberg so far.

Oh, absolutely.

And Ed's right.

I mean, I think one of the challenges is you've seen legislation come and go, you've seen things die, some things pass over, but the real questions are financial.

And we won't know that until the end of April.

And there's also and I know you've talked about this, but the, kicking the can effect, if you will, or punting perhaps that works here, where the federal government may take money from state.

They may not give the same kind of money and the support that we've had.

So now the is looking at less federal funding, even though the states are already working on cutting back money.

and then that's going to impact local government.

So it just feels.

Like as the you talk about punting and I guess it's appropriate.

Now, we do have a former Colts punter in the General Assembly with Hunter Smith, representing Carmel.

But, yeah, as the feds are looking at pushing more down the hill to the states in terms of fiscal responsibility, guess what?

Lawmakers, state lawmakers are doing precisely the same thing in terms of pushing that burden.

It seems down to locals.

Well, since you're right, this is more than any session I remember tied up.

So, you know, tightly with what's happening in Washington in so many ways.

So maybe and I do want to get to some winners and losers.

And I know that's what you live for.

But first, let me just offer some context or see if I could get you to provide some context and framing for what, whether it's the first quarter or the first half.

Well, we'll debate that later.

I think by most measures, what we're seeing in Washington on Capitol Hill and the relationship between the legislative branch and the executive branch is unprecedented.

certainly in my memory, so that we can, I think, safely call that historic.

Is this first half of our session historic, or is this another humdrum honor that people will forget, ever happened?

Every session is different.

And you you alluded to the rhythm of the session, and we have some unique things going on right now, too.

And every session has tensions between the House and the Senate, between Democrats and Republicans, between legislators and lobbyists, between the governor and the legislature here.

And I don't know that we've we've seen a penalty called yet, but there's at least a part of the man who carries through on a thing, at least a party for outgoing going through with, some of the relationships between the Senate and the governor right now.

the governor's right hand, think tank, who, who's your hope?

Who's your hope, dawg?

Which which helped him kind of flesh out his policy positions and helped him staff the transition team and and worked through the transition that came out last week with a, slew of digital ads that kind of castigated a bunch of different senators, specifically targeting of those senators to Biden by name and face and whatever for failing to, follow the governor's agenda with respect to property taxes.

And he's indicated that he really is going to push for this.

He talked early on about a potential veto, about a potential special session, instead of kind of deferring on that and say, oh, well, if he doesn't get we'll get that tax reform he wants anyway.

And this is somebody who was in the General Assembly himself, and a lot of people thought would make him even more adept at.

Yes.

Well, you but I but all right.

Insidious caveat here.

He spent the last four years I'm sorry last six years in Washington.

And he he saw how things work there and that the status quo in his mind didn't work, and that he needs to challenge the system and be almost like President Trump, a disrupter.

Well, and he has always, portrayed himself as the CEO because he did in the corporate world, he did, turn a business into a regional business, into a national business.

It's been very profitable.

I think he likes making decisions.

He likes the buck to stop there, if you will.

What is it?

A fair comparison law to say that his pension or, tendency toward calling the shots himself, and he has issued and probably an unprecedented number of executive orders for this early in his, somewhat more substantial certainly than others, some more performative.

But is it fair to compare him to what's happening on the national level with Donald Trump?

I he is, and as Ed said, they both see themselves as disruptors.

And there have been a number of things they've done when you consider the fact they've been in office.

And I know Donald Trump served in a previous administration, but essentially two months we've seen a radical departure from both the previous administrations in terms of how they approach things.

And then also, I think just the expansion or at least the empowerment of executive power.

And and for Mike Braun, I think that's where I refused to call something historic until it's done and we can really look back and measure it.

But I he sees himself as much more like the coach calling the plays here.

And this is where it's going to be different with Eric Holcomb.

You saw tension in that relationship with the General Assembly.

This to me is the beginning of is there dissension on the field, or are there people disagreeing with what he's trying to do?

And it's clear in terms of the property tax issue, at the end of the day, really at the end of the session, right.

How does that work its way out?

For me, that's gonna be the measure of if this is historic or if this is just another humdrum session.

Well, clearly.

He set the stage with property taxes.

He did the same thing with health care costs, and he's made that a primary pillar of his campaign.

And a lot of the the executive orders that were issued in those early weeks were sort of aimed at, you know, hospitals that he thinks over charge or increasing transparency.

And again, a lot of it will take legislation.

But he's certainly working at the margins.

And then the DTI, measure, which essentially did what Donald Trump did at the federal level, although I guess we could say Donald Trump was following Mike Braun's lead because Mike Brown did it a week before Donald Trump did it, by virtue of being in office sooner.

but there wasn't a lot of pushback.

and in fairness, what can we read into that, at least on some of those issues, we're starting to see, is, as Laura points out, some on the property tax issue, sure, pushback, but also alignment on a number of issues, such as the health care reform and bringing down the cost of health care.

And in fairness to the governor, yes.

You know, Hoosier Hope did go out and tag some of those senators for opposing him on his version of property tax relief.

But at the same time, later on, in the same week, that Hoosier Hope team went out with digital ads that praised senators for supporting Governor Braun's agenda because they had been with him on some of these other issues, on health care and and on Dei and other things that he's been pushing as well, outside of just that one property tax reform thing, which is his principle agenda.

And that's why I think it's the focus he's made that it was so important to the campaign.

But you're right, there's a lot of other alignment.

It just seems that this is the thing.

He said he was going to do this legislative session and this is year one of a four year term at this feels like the issue he has to be able to deliver on.

And there's a difference between what the governor's trying to do and what the legislature thinks needs to be done.

The governor is looking for property tax relief for owner occupied residential homes.

He wants to make sure that they're not paying any kind of an increased burden.

But the problem for legislators who see themselves as the adults in the room, we've been through this umpteen times.

You know, we we went through the Daniels, you know, one, two, three plan.

And we changed this to a constitutional amendment.

They're concerned about the impact on local governments.

And they also understand that, you know, we can't necessarily offer relief to residential property taxpayers without shifting the burden to business, property taxpayers, ag land, property taxpayers.

The governor says, no, we need to have local government units and school districts tighten their belt and live within the restraints of inflation.

And there's a big divergence there.

You know, there's there's a lot of daylight between what the governor's looking for and what the Senate's looking for, but they all seem to think that they can get to some sweet spot.

Well, you know, and I should say from, from day one, as soon as the election, the ballots were counted, he was getting pushback from Democrats in the General Assembly.

But of course, in Congress, Democrats have a greater voice because they can deny, the chambers a quorum, and they can keep business to a certain extent from being conducted.

I guess, by definition, the opposition to the extent there it's going to be, there almost has to come.

The substantive opposition has to come from Republicans.

It absolutely does.

And that is where we're seeing some of the, I think, more substantial opposition.

you also see and this one, the things I enjoy about watching your state legislature, but the subtle opposition between the House approach versus the Senate approach, what the Senate sees as values and priorities versus what the House does, and you see it reflected in property tax, you see it in the budget every time we have a budgeting session.

but those little subtleties and they are supermajority, they're run by the same political party.

but those differences I think are where you really see those nuances kind of teased out.

And that's going to be the primary conflict within the legislature, because you don't have a strong minority party given the composition right now.

Let's go ahead.

Everybody's feeling the pressure from from their local government officials and their school superintendents to whether they're Republicans or Democrats, and that's having an impact on things.

Well, let's let's dig into that, because again, in a certain to a certain extent, it's folly to talk about projecting what the budget will look like, because we know it'll be about 46, $47 billion, give or take a billion.

Right.

but until, as you both pointed out, until we see the updated forecast in April, we really don't know.

But that's not to say we can't talk about money and property taxes, which certainly are key if not to state coffers.

They are key for reasons you mentioned a moment ago, Ed, to local coffers.

And that is the point.

I mean, it, we should delve into that just a little bit further.

The governor had an idea, the Senate bill, one, you know, usually SB one means that's a priority.

It's going to go.

But it before it came out of that chamber, it was watered down.

So there is still some relief for older homeowners for first time homeowners targeted relief.

Targeted relief.

That's a good way to put it.

But not everybody gets that sort of let's roll back to pre-COVID levels 2021 and there sort of a phase out.

And that's what what he's concerned about is this simply a matter of math is there's no, chest flexing or muscle flexing here, is there?

This, between some of the notion of legislative, autonomy or prerogative versus, choice, the new kid on the block that they, they control the purse strings?

Or is this simply, hey, I got the local saying that they're going to get really hammered under this this year, and and that's that's what's happening, you know, are you going to be able to fill potholes?

Are you going to be able to to pick up the trash?

And are you going to be able to, you know, pay teachers the the increased salary that we're talking about, potentially paying them under some other legislation.

And it's it's going to be a real tough sell to local governments to say you've got to cut your budgets.

You know, they feel that they've cut their budgets enough.

Recently, the governor says, hey, look, you know, they've they've been increasing their budgets at a greater rate.

And then you have the locals coming back and saying, well, yeah, but we also had 22% inflation over the past ten years that we've had to cope with.

So there's a real balancing act and it's going to be a tough one.

And we should point out that the Senate's version has left the Senate.

The watered down version, if you will, still deprives locals of a significant amount of funding.

Not as much as the governor's plan, but I think the numbers I saw still upwards in terms of local government, upwards of $1 billion over the biennium, and that's the watered down version.

Is that palatable?

And when all is said and done, or is or do well, we hear the, the locals become even more vocal and more strident in talking to their lawmakers and saying this may be a concession, but it isn't enough.

Whether it's palatable, it's certainly not preferable.

And I do think the testimony that many mayors provided to the state House, talking about how the expenses as that, that the expenses for local government have increased and some of the demands that are being placed on them.

I thought that testimony was very powerful.

I believe it had an effect.

And that's why you saw some of those things scaled down.

But the reality is they're probably going to receive a cut.

And that's the the beauty.

But the complexity of federalism, if the federal government is cutting and that's going to have an impact on state governments and at the state governments are cutting, and then it's going to have an impact on local government.

At the end of the day, if we're cutting, cutting, cutting, that just means we are going to have less and fewer taxes or fewer services.

And that's the relationship that you can't avoid in public service.

And that's such an issue now because even before the Trump administration began, some of its, cutting, we saw concerns about Medicaid being such a rapidly increasing part of the state's budget and the commitment there probably, what, twice as many Hoosiers on Medicaid now as there were before Covid.

Now, part of that's by design.

You want to expand the program and have more Hoosiers insured, but you do have more Hoosiers insured.

and if in fact, there is this real ripple effect and if because that's that's primarily funded right now by the it's a joint state federal program.

Yes.

But the bulk of the funding, certainly in the wake of Covid, has come from the feds.

And if that's cut, everything goes out the window.

Right.

And we're still looking at a federal court ruling that's going to tell us whether we can impose, work requirements on Medicaid recipients.

We're looking at the whole question of how much they have to work.

They have to volunteer, or if we're going to cut $880 million from from programs within the jurisdiction of the the U.S. House Committee on on Commerce, you know, where outside of Medicare and Medicaid, can you cut?

Well, you basically can't.

So they're saying you can look at fraud waste, and abuse.

While Congressman Stutzman yesterday, who has experience in the Indiana legislature, was on CNN talking about some of that, but also saying, hey, look, you know, I've got a huge number of constituents in my district that depend upon this.

And if you look at the the district by district mapping of Medicaid in Indiana, you realize you're talking about a lot of people.

And that's what the current federal funding, never mind if there are significant cuts in federal and and you're going to have to make up for that somewhere else.

You know, you've got hospital systems that say, okay, well, 60% of our patients are Medicare Medicaid patients, but only 30% of our income is from Medicaid.

You know, there's a big disconnect there that needs to be addressed.

And a lot of these seem like big numbers, and they maybe make people's eyes glaze over.

But when you talk about individual and Hoosiers that receive these benefits right now, I think we have upwards of 700,000 Hoosiers on the healthy Indiana plan.

and there's a legislation that seems to have support, both in both chambers that would reduce that and cap it to 500,000.

So that's 100,000 Hoosiers just gone.

Gone.

Yeah.

That's significant.

It is significant.

And I think it's really easy in the amorphous way to say, oh, you know, nobody really enjoys paying taxes.

Nobody wants to spend more.

And you love the idea of like getting a coupon or getting a rebate or something like that.

But there is the cost of it.

And maybe the tricky thing in public service and government is that we don't all pay the same, and we don't all get the same.

But you are talking about essentially 20,000 Hoosiers who are reliant on this health care program that would no longer have access to it, and they might not have access to any other kind of health insurance.

We know health, matters and every other ripple effect of a life.

So there are the concerns of if it if not here, where else?

what else is being cut?

Where else are we going to see some of these shortcomings?

Where else are the challenges coming?

Right.

So then the hospitals become the primary physicians for the people that are dumped from Medicaid rolls will still be required to offer emergency care.

And at the same time, the governor and legislative leaders are saying to the nonprofit hospitals, hey, you guys have to cut back.

You know, we're going to do all kinds of things to you because, you know, we think you guys are making too much money as it is.

And it's going to be a different environment for them, you know, in the next several months, much less, you know, down the road a year or so.

You know, one more wrinkle before we move off the topic of of less funding for the locals because the property tax, that's that's certainly one component of it.

But also if you look at schools, traditional local public schools, there's another dynamic at play here.

And you look at charter schools, which are public schools but are operated outside the district process with their own independent boards and so forth.

You know, they have not been, with some pilot programs and exceptions, able to share in the bounty, for instance, of, successful referenda.

or they haven't received directly property tax revenue the way that traditional public schools has have and there is legislation that would change that.

And the money, it's not as if the pie, the funding pie grows.

It's just in fact, that state is saying we'll save money because we won't fund charters in the way we did.

They'll they'll be funded through property taxes, which means if the pie isn't getting bigger, that means the traditional public school slice is smaller.

But but it does get bigger if the districts go in and seek referenda.

But now with the legislature only do now in certain times.

They can't don't have as many, much latitude about when they can do that.

And at the same time, the legislature is about to tell them with, with the support of the governor, that if you do pass a referendum, then you need to share some of that with the charter schools.

So yes, there would be more revenue, but they wouldn't get all of that revenue.

Well, and then the other and this is an impact that people sort of already, you know, baked into the to the budgetary cake.

And that is universal vouchers.

I think everybody agreed that was that was a governor priority.

It was both, supermajority caucuses.

and we were almost there already.

So, you know, essentially you could earn as a family upwards of $200,000 and still qualify.

Now, this would take all the those caps off.

So it was an impact, but not as much.

But, still, Democrats point to that and say there's an example of where the priorities are are not quite aligned.

Right.

Is that does that resonate, you think, with voters.

You know, if it did, I think they would have made different decisions in November, quite frankly.

we.

Have the people are fonder of the argument.

You should be able to go to school.

You know, the argument that zip code shouldn't determine.

You know, we've heard legislators on the show talk about the money follows the student, and in this case, with the expansion of we you're right.

We have near universal, vouchers.

And now they're universal.

We don't know exactly how many people are going to take advantage of that system.

Obviously, people who may not necessarily need to.

But I think when we're talking about all these issues, the voters did make their selections.

So clearly this must align with what people want.

Or maybe there's a cognitive dissonance in terms of what they thought versus what they're getting.

But this ideologically follows exactly in line with what the election results were, what the campaigns were.

So I think for people to look and say, okay, is this is this what I wanted?

Oh, I didn't really think about this.

Or maybe yes, this is an affirmation.

This is what I think we should be doing in this state.

That's the best part about the state legislative session.

Elections matter.

They have consequences and elections are constant.

It does seem that Indiana is still hell bent on being having the most aggressive voucher program in the country.

We had it for a long time.

Tennessee and some other states were trying to compete, but that's what the people seem to want.

If you look at the polls and you go back to, you know, when you were hosting the show, even careful when you say how many years.

Yeah, but little kid, ten years now, 15 years ago, certainly, you know, public attitudes have changed on a few issues almost entirely.

One of those was same sex marriage, and another one is family being able to choose the school that they wanted to go to.

And those are probably the two biggest issues.

And then maybe to a lesser extent, abortion and, cannabis use, but certainly, you know, same sex marriage and, family choice for schools have been the two big ones.

Certainly seems that that's certainly the direction it's headed.

And to that point, when you aren't giving the public schools enough funding, but then you're offering this voucher option, it does make it more appealing for family members to say, okay, I want to put my child in a successful school where I know they're going to to be effective and learning.

You is not a constant either.

I often point out that, you know, people, supporters of vouchers have said, you know, don't worry, this only affects it.

Used to be they'd say 3% or 5%.

Now they say it's only 10%.

90% of students still go to traditional schools.

Well, if the vouchers catch on, arguably you could see a scenario where that 90% goes down, down and down certain areas are moving in that direction.

That which which, there was a bill that where if there were districts, Indianapolis Public Schools was in this Gary and a few others that were more rural would have lost their ability to function.

They would have been dissolved if more than 50% of the students eligible in their jurisdiction had gone elsewhere.

That had a lot of people sweating.

Not going to happen, though.

This session, or at least unless I told you that, that was Representative Jake Teske as Bill, a representative from South Bend, and I suggested back when we first talked about that, that that was a vehicle to get people to the negotiating table.

And I think one of the the, the potential areas of fallout from that was more sharing of that revenue from referenda with, with charter schools.

Well, that's one thing that didn't, emerge by the halfway point or the one quarter point.

I'm going to always throw in your asterisk and your caveat, and, and there were other bills certainly that, again, will say use the terminology have died.

But again, at the bottom of the screen, here's some flashing alert.

You know, it's the General Assembly.

Things always have a way of coming back like Lazarus and being resurrected.

But let's look at some of the things that appear not to be going anywhere.

There were more stringent restrictions on abortion and medical, medication that would, in terms of prescribing it or, stripping out a state that didn't go anywhere.

there were, relaxation on the prohibition against marijuana, legalization of either medical marijuana didn't go anywhere.

let's see, what else did I. Gaming.

Okay.

Yeah.

Gaming.

There was this was going to be a big year in terms of gaming.

I know you have a gaming newsletter, so what was about what did you think was happening?

And give us a quick overview of where we're ending up now with some of these bills.

Well, there are a couple of those that are still alive and there are the charity gaming.

Right.

That's right.

Which, which would allow slot like electronic pull tab games for certain organizations, you know, targeted basically for the veterans services organizations.

And then as well there's still a bill that that's out there that's a kind of spin off of a bill that didn't make it.

You know, there was a move to transfer a license from the poorest performing casino in in Ohio County, the state's smallest county, up to Allen County in New Haven, the state second largest county, I think.

And instead of doing that, the legislature said, well, let's go study the best three locations for a casino and New Haven, which was one prospect.

Probably not in the short term.

Yeah.

And another thing that appears, again, with that caveat not to be happening, some of the changes in our election law, there was shortening of the period where people could vote early, a move to do that, a move toward closed elections where you essentially would have had to declare by what, December 31st before the primary, which party you were going to vote in at the primary.

And that was your only choice or only option.

other things about change.

There is a there was a bill and two bills actually one in the House and Senate to make, school board races partisan So that's still life.

But the other things, the changes in the election schedule went away is that, that that could have been an interesting proposition if those had been enacted, those.

Would have been major.

And I think sometimes we don't pay attention to election law.

I mean, I know we do, but sometimes people don't, because even when we say things are effective July 1st, 2025, this is a non election year.

So it really wouldn't impact us until the next election cycle.

I, I thought it most interesting was the suggestion to change us to a closed primary system.

That seems very evidently a response to this last election cycle and the concern of crossover voting.

But because that legislation died and you heard Todd Houston talk about this as speaker, saying, I think our election system is good.

We are recognized across the country.

Why would we want to necessarily make these changes?

much like the partisan school boards?

and actually, quite frankly, cannabis and some other things like legislative attrition matters, dead for now.

Not forever.

Will it be reintroduced, I would imagine.

Sure about those.

And then going back and asking you about the impact of this on voter participation, you know, we have we have some of the questions, some answer in terms.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of lawmakers were concerned about that.

And by the way, we got to end here.

But don't ever say that nobody cares about election law or reads about it because you're sitting next to the guy who wrote the federal Election handbook.

It's a bestseller, was, at least in his house.

Both of you.

Thank you.

We covered a lot of territory.

And, thank goodness we can get you back and maybe cover all the things we didn't talk about as they become clear in our in our always cloudy crystal ball.

But thank you very much.

I've been pleased to be joined by Ed Feigenbaum, our regular commentator and certainly a fan of News Service, and Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of Political Science, University of Indianapolis.

I thank you both.

Thank you.

Jon.

As the American dream of home ownership collapsed under higher mortgage rates, rising property taxes, and a shortage of available properties.

We'll deconstruct the issue on the next Indiana Lawmakers.

Well, that concludes another edition of Indiana Lawmakers.

Until next week.

Take care.