Welcome to Politically Speaking.

I'm Bob Montgomery from WSBT 22, filling in for Elizabeth Bennion.

We are in the final weeks of the Indiana legislative session, with the legislature coming to a close very shortly.

Still left to pass, though, is the one constitutional mandate and that's a budget for the next two years.

Joining us today to discuss the Indiana legislature and the budget process, as well as other issues, state Senators David Niezgodski, a Democrat, and Mike Bohacek, a Republican.

See we can have Republicans and Democrats sitting down on the same table.

And, you know, the one constitutional mandate is that state budget.

Republicans control both the House and the Senate.

I'll start with you, Senator Bohacek where do we stand?

So the Senate version of the budget was just released this past past Thursday.

So it'll be eligible for second reading amendments on Monday and then we'll finally vote it out on Tuesday.

We know that what we have in place is not really what it's going to be.

You know, I've had some folks call me up and say, hey, look, this is really good budget, really good budget.

It's really good for us.

I said, I don't fall in love with it yet.

It's it's not going to look like this when we're done.

The only thing that will look the same is the amount of money we're putting in the budget, which is about $43, $43 billion over the biennium.

So that will be the same.

But how it splits up, we're still waiting to see.

Do you have a priority?

Is there a one general sector of a priority for you?

Right.

You know, I continue to look at at our mental health issues because that continues to be a problem.

The way this is structured, it doesn't funded sufficiently.

We have Senate Bill one, I believe the fiscal and that was about $130 million to do it.

Right.

And the way the bill is, the way the budget is, that's not that's not there are more locally, the Westville prison in Westville, Indiana, although it's not in my district, it's just a quarter mile out.

So it has certainly has a big impact.

That went over budget because we when we first said it, we set aside about 400, 400 million to rebuild.

It just blew it up to 1.2 billion.

So there is the 800 million that's in the budget.

And then also something more locally this year is for David and myself is they've also increased the funding on the Potato Creek Resort.

So that's up to a hundred million now.

So we will get some of these things, you know, funded.

There's there's many other things in here that, you know, that are very important, but these are just some of the highlights that might tend to hit us here around the area.

Let me ask you, Senator Niezgodski what do you feel about that number?

Obviously, this is not necessarily your number.

This is not the Democratic plan per se, but it appears as though the numbers tell us.

By the numbers, I mean, the number of legislators, Republicans versus Democrats, tell us is probably going to be somewhere what the Republicans want.

Are you satisfied with that number?

And do you think the priorities are in the right spot?

Well, the number is the dollars that we're able to spend.

Look, I believe that we're in a conservative way.

There always should be something that should be held back.

So I do believe in that.

I don't know if we can set all in the same amount.

I think that could be negotiated a little bit.

But in the end, it is something we're going to have to work with.

What I do as a member of the Appropriations Committee, it's not always just trying to rail against that, saying, hey, I don't believe this is right.

We've got to do this differently.

What I do my very best is to try to figure out how we can work with things and how we can do things that are good for back home.

Just like Senator Budget Mike just said, $100 million for Potato Creek State in.

I think that's wonderful.

One of the things I wanted to see in the Senate budget is for retired public employees and retired teachers.

I want to I'd like to see that 13 check.

Now, that didn't happen in the Senate side of the budget, but the House has it in there.

And we are going these last two weeks are going into conference committee, and that's something I think can still be worked.

Other things locally here, I think there's there's some improvements for the South Bend International Airport and that that amounts to about seven and a half million dollars are going to go that direction.

I'm very pleased about that.

Again, going in into the last two weeks, I'm going to do my best to try to see that that stays there.

And we in a professional sports and convention development area, that is a big thing for the South Bend Club.

So and we still we are we still have the elephant in the room, which is state Medicaid.

So we have not touched state Medicaid funding other than to reduce it in 30 years.

So when we look and we are trying to address this is another this has been a budget or it's but a such a priority, which is to try to do something with health, health insurance costs.

You know, we have the highest one of the highest costs for private health insurance, but we also have one of the lowest reimbursement rates for Medicaid.

So when Medicaid's about half our health care spend in the state of Indiana and it's all paid by the state of Indiana, that we are the biggest customer and it looks like we're not a very good one, which I think that there's some correlation between, you know, our commercial insurance subsidizing our under our underfunded state Medicaid.

So you're going to see some activity happening with this kind of these kind of issues in the next couple of days.

We are working over the weekend to try to figure out what we're going to do.

We'll talk about the real world impact of that.

If you do fully fund the issue of Medicaid, what does the average person see, especially that person who is on Medicaid?

Well, here's a benefit.

Here's where.

It's interesting.

First, we have to see how underfunded we are.

So what I'm proposing is that we we take a national average.

We could take a regional average, whatever we want to do and say, okay, where does Indiana line up?

Are we you know, are we truly at the bottom?

Are we somewhere in the middle?

Let's see where we're at and then let's see what we need to do to be able to get us where we need to be and that needs to be addressed because it's making our health care system other hospitals untenable.

For let me give you an example.

So down in Plymouth, Indiana, you know, labor delivery, OBGYN services are very, very expensive and they're a loser for the hospitals.

We no longer have an OBGYN there.

Now, about 75% of their people are Medicaid, so they just can't afford to keep the OBGYN when the OBGYN there.

So they're coming up here now.

So in essence, that creates a hardship for the people who don't have the means necessarily to travel long distances to get the same.

And really, this is not a Democrat issue or Republican issue.

If we're going to try to straighten out and we're talking about policies of caps, sort of hospital title for actually puts caps on on how much insurance companies can charge on your personal health insurance, which is kind of an odd position as Republicans, as free market politicians.

We don't want to tell business what they can and can't charge.

But in this case, we're going to seriously consider doing it.

But in my opinion, you can't balance the equation unless you fix both sides.

And I think we need to admit that we've got a medicare problem in the state of Indiana.

We need to fund it.

And I think overall, that's going to improve our our health outcomes.

We know we've got a health issue that's going to improve our health outcomes for the folks that are on Medicaid, because we'll have a better availability.

There'll be more doctors because people can afford to actually become a medicaid provider.

Does that also touch into the issue of mental health care.

I was just going to go there.

Because I'm not suggesting that this is a hard and fast rule, but sometimes the people who perhaps have the most mental health concerns are the lower end of the spectrum.

I'm not suggesting that lower income people have mental health concerns than a greater proportion than others, but they have less of an ability to get the care that they need to handle that.

Senator Crider has worked diligently and I give him so much credit and I it's a I was seriously something's our honor just to have to be a part of being a coauthor on a bill like Senate Bill one.

The funding has begun.

It is it's been placed in the Senate budget.

But between the House and the Senate, I'm not sure if they're looking at the 988 fee or cigarette tax.

The bottom line is there's it does look like there's going to be funding that's going to be put there.

However, they agree and i think we're going to do a lot of good.

You know, someone has raised the question with me, but will we truly be able to help people?

You know, we're going to have this situation you at.

Some people will just never come forward.

But, yes, I think we're going to be able to help people because there are going to be so many people that and it was even COVID that really brought that out.

It brought it more to light.

And we know there's an urgency there.

And with a public health funding, the very same thing with Senator Charbonneau carrying that bill.

So, you know, I think we're doing some very good things in the legislature in terms of these these two items.

Well, and I and I think we are all kind of starting to get that maybe as a society, we're starting to realize that mental health is just, if not more important than physical health, because they do intertwine so much so and just the lack of providers even on private pay insurance, the availability of a psychiatrist is almost impossible.

I mean, you know, people are waiting months and if you're in a crisis situation, you don't have months to wait.

Absolutely.

Which becomes even.

Worse.

Why do you think that is?

This is a little bit away from the state budget talk, but why do you think Indiana has such a shortage of mental health providers?

And do you think it partially is because of some of the lack of reimbursement funding that sometimes that they can get or not get?

I, I do I'm not a health care expert, but I do sit on health my first year on health.

But I've been on insurance for several years.

I mean, obviously, if your talent is going to go where there's there's, you know, enhanced revenue.

If I'm a psychiatrist, do I want to, you know, go to a state where I know, you know, half the folks are on Medicaid because that's that's our number.

We know that half of our kids or half our half our families of four live at about 87% of the participation rate of national income means.

So do I want to come here and know that I'm going to take a pretty significant haircut on every patient I treat?

Or should I just go across the border or I know the revenue is a lot more stable and I could be more prosperous, and I think that's what's happening.

Feel like this issue will address that?

Do you feel like there's enough money potentially going into the Medicaid system that it could potentially actually make a difference?

I think it can make a difference.

I hear from physicians, I hear from dental the dental industry that many of the patients they take that it's not they're willing to take these patients.

There's there's less of them.

They will do that.

These days.

But nevertheless, they're willing to take these patients.

But that sometimes will be the ones that appointments get canceled the most, and then they're left with a gap.

So that makes them have to charge more for their private, you know, their regular cases.

And, you know, it is something that I think it will help a lot.

So in our Medicaid forecast this year, it's 7.5 billion.

That's a $2 billion over the biennial.

So $1,000,000,000 a year increase over over previous years.

And I think what you're seeing and I don't know if Indiana's if it's just exclusive to India or not, because it was experiencing the same thing.

And they may be I don't know.

But we're starting to see the growth in Medicaid participation and Medicaid costs that are starting to really creep.

And at one point right now, it's 17% of the budget.

It's number two after education.

So at what time does that start to really, really start to shift as they're crowding out other things that we need to do?

Because, I mean, it's like anything else you've got we've got a responsibility to a to a segment of the population.

We've got to make sure that they're taken care of.

We've got to make sure that it's funded.

So what do you do?

And you brought up cigarette taxes and then the 988 fee or how what mechanism do we do to raise the revenue?

And that's where it becomes really kind of complicated.

I want to talk about education because obviously that's a driver in every state's budget.

But you you talked about some things that might get short shrift if you want to use that term.

So what if we do A at the state of Indiana does have a significant increase in its funding of Medicaid and also education, etc.?

What's the loser who's who's losing out on the other end of.

What I was going to say, I understand that there is even though there will be an increase in public education, I think that amounts to over the biennium about $2.5 billion.

The total funding that goes to is towards education is approximately 50% of the budget.

That's going to go down 2% because of dealing with the Medicaid.

But nevertheless, there's a lot of good things, at least on the Senate side of the budget, that still there will be an increase.

And I mean, we know that we've got it paying for the textbooks.

Now, that was included in the foundation, a line item of the of the school funding program.

But now it's going to be a separate line item.

And so that's going to come out.

It's not going to actually come out of the dollars given to the schools.

It's going to be a separate line item.

Well, and another good thing, I.

Think the concern was that I know I had one, too, is that, you know, that money needs to be, you know, needs to be restricted because otherwise it could find its way into the schools general fund and it's not restricted.

And now we can have a situation where school says we can't buy books.

Sure.

The other question, the other curiosity, too, is we've got schools that have millions of dollars sitting in their education funds.

What happens to that money is it?

One question begets another one.

But I know in the Senate version of the budget, I know there's a lot of concerns about voucher expansion.

So it was good.

Essentially, take the take the income limit up to almost a quarter of $1,000,000 a year in family income for a family of four.

And would you still qualify for a voucher that was a $400 million ask?

Does that seem excessive?

Well, the Senate took it out.

So I think you know, you kind of know our opinion on it.

So that's good to see that.

Let me ask you a question related to we talked about the shortage in health care providers for mental health.

The state of Indiana has a crisis like everybody else, if you want to call it a crisis and a teacher shortage.

And there are a number of teachers who went down to the state house just a few days ago to to rally for that issue.

Do you believe with essentially a 2% cut, if you want to call it that, in the education budget that this will address what seems to be a growing issue not only with teachers, but the paraprofessionals going into the classroom, the teachers aides and all the support staff as well.

Is this going to have an impact?

I mean.

Really quick, though, because it's although they're getting 48% of the budget, it's they're actually, you know, the K-12 is actually sitting right about a $2 billion.

So, yes.

So don't yeah, we're not cutting their money.

Sure.

It's just a smaller piece of the pie.

This patient of the bigger pie.

Right.

So just the dollars are going up.

So I think this has been a long term problem that we have just begun to focus on.

The governor has taken a much stronger initiative on this, so we have begun to address it.

I also believe it's a lot more when you get into the classrooms, just having teachers, being able to have supplies, not to have to provide their own supplies.

And in when we were talking a little bit earlier before we began here, when you talk about with pensions, you know, if you want to keep them for a long time, you have to provide a good paying job and you have to give them a retirement benefit.

I've always believed in that.

Do you feel as though the state of Indiana is in a good place, educationally speaking compared to our neighbors?

Obviously, if I'm a businessperson on the East Coast and I'm looking to expand my operations and I'm thinking the Midwest is a good central location that I could distribute my products.

Google in Indiana, education.

I need a good workforce.

I need to have a good place for my own workforce that I might bring with me to have their kids educated.

Are you happy with what he might find in his Google search?

It depends on what you're looking at.

You know, if you're looking for a school of choice, we have, you know, educational options.

You know, be it, you know, a charter school option, traditional K-12, or for your employees that are, you know, in that income bracket where they would qualify for vouchers.

Yeah, that's that's a that's a that's a pretty exciting space to be.

Do I think that we could do better?

Absolutely.

I think we could do significantly better with special ed.

I think there's things we could do that could be better.

I think anybody could be better.

But I think it all depends on what you're actually looking for.

A lot of that is also preschool as well.

So there's a there's a big push for universal preschool across the country and in various states.

I would love to seen an increase in the Senate budget and that I know that we have some in the House, I think through conference committee.

I hope we can work on that and get some bigger numbers there.

I mean, we all see just what good the pre-K does where you have proof there's consistent and we do need to do better with that.

As far as some of the other things we can do, I long to help with teachers.

There are so many different boards and commissions throughout the state of Indiana that deal with these things, put more teachers on those commissions.

You know, they know the things they need.

So what we did do with pre-K there was we did keep the same funding levels, 2023, but we we changed the eligibility because the eligibility used to be up to 127% of poverty.

Now it's up to 150% of poverty.

So we get some more folks, you know, actually, you're engaging in pre-K. Oh, I know.

When the projects first started, I was a little bit disappointed in the lack of uptake because I don't and I'd have to double check, but I don't I wouldn't be surprised to see that we're not even spending all the money down as it is.

Do either of you anticipate that at some point down the road that universal pre-kindergarten and will be across the board through every public school system regardless of income?

From my perspective, I would say yes, I wish we were moving quicker at that.

And I think we've got to we've got to work and fight more diligently to make sure that does that does that take place just like all day kindergarten.

Preschool is so vital.

I mean, I had my grandchildren actually are attending preschool.

They started when they were three years old.

And it's a it's a private preschool, but it's available.

We're taking advantage of it.

And, you know, you see the results.

But and, you know, if you if you if you think about it, I mean, in the end, up until a few years ago, didn't even require kindergarten.

So you remember those days, which was kind of I know when I first moved here, when I first moved in Indiana, I was kind of surprised that you know kindergarten was not a requirement.

So I would I don't like seen an income limitation on our at our pre-K program.

You know, a family that's living at 150% of poverty or 200% of poverty.

It does it make that much difference is to, you know, an extra $10,000 in spendable income?

Does that really make a difference in to, you know, your desire and need for pre-K, in my opinion?

No.

You know, we have it would be nice if we would follow the same income limits that we do for of the voucher program.

So what's the high limit?

You can still qualify for full voucher.

I think that's over $100,000.

Wouldn't it make sense if we said, okay, well, if we're to put an income cap on it, let's line up the income gap with our our private school voucher program just to have some sense to it, as opposed to sometimes we just do it like this.

Sure.

There has been also a lot of discussion over the last couple of years, in fact, about the issue of teacher salaries in the state of Indiana.

And and of course, really all across the country, we've seen some significant strikes and teachers are getting significant pay raises in some districts.

And the state has put some money towards the issue of teacher salary.

Is it enough to get more qualified people to get into the teaching field to begin with?

Because a lot of you talk to the schools around the country, the universities around the country, and say we just don't have as many kids applying to get into this.

I would say I would say that it's not enough unless we continue to do it.

You can't you know, we did do some good here a couple of years ago.

But if you don't continue that well, you can't wait another five or ten years and say, we're going to look at that again because we've got to continue with those increases everyone's calling for.

The teachers take care of our children all day, you know, five days a week, and they deserve better for what they're doing.

If they're going to train our children for the futures they're going to be looking at tomorrow.

But we get in the same situation, you know how much and from where.

So, you know, we've had to set some floors on teacher salaries.

I think it's $40,000 now because the state we don't we don't set teacher pay.

The districts do.

So we stay out of those those pay negotiations.

You know that's philosophical.

Whether you agree with that or don't agree with that, that's you know, the reality is, is this is how it is and how it's done.

So we've had to last year or the year before the last budget, we said that 45% of state foundation funding must go to teacher pay.

So now that we raise it to 62%, but they can now impute benefits as part of that as well.

So we're having to set some floors, so some discount.

So some districts are doing the right thing, but it's still a it's still difficult because, David, you know, you had the same surveys that I mail out to taxpayers and we see the same thing, pay teachers more.

and cut my taxes and make the roads better and lower gas prices.

And my property taxes are too much.

You know, you can't cut and grow at the same time.

Right?

Absolutely.

So I wanted to ask you something that is not specifically related to this.

There is a constitutional amendment that's being proposed, at least that says J.R. one, which deals with the issue of bail in criminal cases.

Is this something that is tackleable in the near future and is it needed?

Is it warranted?

I think I think there are areas where it probably could do good, but I think it also has the possibility of hurt a lot of people that it they're not really trying to make that happen, but they're going to be they're going to fall through the cracks and it's going to I think it's going to harm them.

You know, I'm actually on the resolution.

I'm a coauthor on the resolution.

I set up criminal law and corrections.

So we've seen I've seen some in I'm not I'm not an attorney.

So to be able to witness some of these things happen, you know, seven years to sit on this committee, you start to see some repetitiveness and, oh, I trust my judiciary, you know, my you know, my judges to make the right decisions.

And if somebody is a danger and we think that they're going to and they feel very confident going going to re-offend and re-offend in a significantly violent way, I would much rather allow that judge to make that decision.

You know, our judges, for the most part, are elected.

So if you if something is going to be heavy handed, there's always the opportunity to appeal.

There's other opportunities via an election to be able to do some things.

But I do trust by my judges to do the right thing.

But obviously you feel as though this is something that needs to go beyond just a quote unquote standard law and be codified into the Constitution to make it more difficult to change in the future correct?

Why is that are you are you concerned that it could change.

It to me, it's if you were to just have it as a public law, you would be having.

But the at least in my opinion, you would be having this being used.

Maybe this session we like it, then we have a switch in politics and then this policy changes and we continue to keep messing with the policy.

Well, you know, we want to add this classification because there are actual crimes that you have to commit.

Well, maybe we want to get rid of this one, add this one and it becomes this convoluted mess where, you know, in the state legislature, we're really good at changing things after we change them and not waiting until the end.

We see that it all state legislatures, but at least this way, to me, it's going to give it the consistency to make sure that it's not going to be subject to the winds of political change.

We have a just to go ahead.

I was I was just going to say, I also believe in our judicial system and I believe judges are making the right decisions.

But I think it's like everything else you can have overload of cases.

We're seeing that with everything.

And I it just scares me that if not, a decision will be made to make the incorrect decision.

But it's still some people are have so much time and I and that's the part that really worries me.

Sure.

We have just a couple of minutes left.

And I wanted to ask you, as we're really coming down to the close, is there any chance we're not going to get this done in time?

When I say this, the budget, the thing that you're constitutionally mandated to do, do you feel as though we're on track to get this finished in time so we don't have to have a special session?

We will we will get done, too.

I think there's big differences between the Senate and the House right now, but they are differences that normally they work out even if it goes to midnight hour.

So we have been told to prepare to stay to the very end.

So ultimately, as the process goes through, what is going to be your big priority and I'll have you speak for the entire Democratic Party, if you don't mind.

And what is going to be your line in the sand, sort of, so to speak.

I was going to say, you know, there's a few more things like I'm going to be looking for that I think are going to be very important to fully fund Senate Bill one, to fully fund Senate Bill four.

For me, pensions are always been one of the most important things.

I stand by.

So the 13th check, I want to see that and I'd love to see COLAs all along the way.

But it's been so many years.

We need that 13th check.

Per the retirement funds.

It's just a few seconds left.

You know, there's so much in here that's important.

You had to pick out one or two things to say.

This is a line in the sand that if you cross this, I'm not going to I'm not going to vote for the budget, which will never happen anyway.

My line in the sand is has got to be fully funded.

We've got to maintain some stable reserves.

And as long as we do that, then I'm going to feel very comfortable.

So the way it looks out just on the top line, it says, here's what we're spending, here's what we have, here's we're going to save and save for a rainy day, then I'm good.

We'll let you get back, both of you, to the sausage making process.

We appreciate you giving us a little peek behind the curtain.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

That's all the time we have for the episode of Politically Speaking.

I want to thank our guests, State Senator David Niezgodski and State Senator Mike Bohacek.

We appreciate you joining us.

I'm Bob Montgomery.

For all of us here at PBS Michiana - WNIT thanks for watching.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.