Welcome to politically speaking.

I'm Elizabeth Benyon, chancellor's professor of political science and director of community engagement and the American Democracy Project at Indiana University, South Bend.

As we head into the fifth week of the Indiana legislative session, lawmakers are hard at work on the budget that will determine spending and funding for the next two years.

Here to talk about the budget and other proposals making headlines statewide are Brandon Smith, statehouse bureau chief for Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Nicki Kelley, editor in chief of Indiana Capital Chronicle.

And Kayla Dwyer, a statehouse reporter for the Indianapolis Star.

Thank you all for being here.

I want to start with the budget.

Nicki, what does the state budget look like this year, or are we expecting an overall increase, decrease or, respecting that total number to stay about the same?

There will be a slight increase.

I think the big key thing in this year's budget discussion is the last couple of budget cycles, there's been a lot of federal money that flowed into the state from Covid, or just additional tax revenue due to people getting Covid payments and being able to spend.

And so we had a lot of extra money that we could spend on sort of one time projects, programs or a building or things like that.

And we're definitely back to normal this year, and we're going to see some, I would say modest revenue growth in the first year.

The second year has hardly anywhere revenue growth.

So they're definitely having to tighten up on the budget and, pull back a little on growth.

So it'll still grow a little, but not like it has the last couple budgets.

Now we're going down.

What about those overall revenue and cost projections in particular how does the Medicaid shortfall and the projected increase in Medicaid spending affect what lawmakers will be able to fund in this two year cycle?

It impacts it significantly because particularly in the second year of the budget, when you're, seeing very little new revenue growth expected, the amount that Medicaid is supposed to grow in that second year eats up that entire increase in the second year of the budget cycle.

You know, it's state Senator Ryan Mishler, who's the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the kind of fiscal architect for the Senate Republicans put it this way, which was in the past, Indiana has built its state budget on how much more do we want to give to K-12 education.

We start there and then figure everything else out after that.

And he said, increasingly and really now for maybe the first time, Indiana has to build its budget by figuring out how much it has to give to Medicaid and then building everything else out from there.

Now they are trying to rein in Medicaid costs.

That's an ongoing discussion this legislative session.

So that will ultimately ultimately impact what the final budget looks like.

But the trick is going to be, you know, the the next projections will get from the states.

Revenue analysts will be in April just before they pass the final budget.

And I'm not sure if any potential changes to Medicaid that lawmakers are discussing can really be part of those projections that lawmakers have to work off of in order to build the budget.

So I think that's going to be a real trick is if they are hoping to rein in those costs, how much more would they be able to build that into the revenue expectations they have when they finalize the budget, because that budgeting process might happen before any of those changes would be finalized?

Well, certainly before they'd be finalized, because that would absolutely have to take at least a period of months to give folks time to adjust to the changes.

But even then, like, it's distinctly possible that they'll be finalizing the bills that would, enact those changes to Medicaid at the same time that they are finalizing the budget bill.

So, I mean, literally, from a logistical point of view, it's a very, very difficult session to write a budget.

Okay.

I we sometimes hear about this $1 billion Medicaid mistake.

What is the background here for folks who may not be familiar?

Sure.

So and in fact, the word mistake is even, contentious word at times because was it a mistake?

Was it an issue of under forecasting?

Is that itself a mistake or a function of a system that where utilization of these programs has massively increased and which then the state did, simply didn't account for enough of that.

So there's a lot of mincing of words when it comes to that.

The basic background is, especially during the pandemic, in the years right after word, there was a significant uptick in how much certain Medicaid service Medicaid funded services were used, particularly waiver services.

And, but also the shortfall comes from not properly anticipating that increase in need.

So whether you want to call it a mistake or not, properly, adjusting for unprecedented times is, I think, in the eye of the beholder.

But as a result, you know, the shortfall itself hasn't really they've shrunk it in terms of padding with, reserves.

But the forecast, based on the way needs have continued to grow, even with the padding that's already been done.

The shortfall itself isn't that much smaller.

And in future years.

So we're really setting ourselves up for a pretty huge conversation with multiple avenues.

One avenue for this is how do we prevent, how do we shore up, you know, public health systems to prevent people from meeting Medicaid services, not just public health, but also incomes?

And, you know, all these external factors that affect that push people on the Medicaid.

The other avenue, which is kind of the avenue that Republicans seem to be starting to take, at least in the short term, is, kind of getting, you know, shrinking, the population on Medicaid immediately or, you know, limiting who can be on the healthy Indiana plan.

A lot of Republicans are convinced that there are people currently using these services who don't need to be.

So they're trying to root out things like that, root out waste and fraud.

So, this will be a very interesting long term discussion for sure.

Major discussion ahead, it sounds like.

And Brandon, another thing that, we've been discussing as a state, certainly, during the gubernatorial race is, of course, the issue of property taxes and what those will look like, how those will affect services that can be provided, including at the local level.

Governor Brian campaigned heavily on property tax cuts.

Where do those proposals stand?

Well, Governor Brown's proposal just got its first hearing yesterday in a Senate committee, yesterday being Tuesday as we take this.

And that plan is bold.

It would certainly change people's property tax bills.

Braun's proposal is to roll back everyone's every homeowner's property tax bill to 2021 levels.

And as people have seen sharp spikes the last couple of years, that would be a significant savings for them.

It would also then cap future increases in the bill at 2 or 3%, depending on a couple of different factors age, that sort of thing.

The problem with that is, while it would save homeowners more than $1 billion, when it happens and and save them going forward by by limiting increases, what it would do is blow a hole in the budgets of counties, cities, towns, townships, and particularly local schools because it's important to note zero property tax revenue goes to the state of Indiana.

It entirely goes to local communities and schools.

So things for like police and fire and libraries and parks and again, schools, school, schools.

I don't anticipate that Governor Braun's proposal will be the one that we end up with at the end of the legislative session.

It seems more likely because, especially as a legislative leaders who are also looking at, property tax reform, concurrently with the campaigns, they kind of downplayed how significant some of these reforms might be this session, because the problem is, you know, Nicki likes to use the analogy of the balloon two, which is when you squeeze one part of the balloon, it pops out somewhere else.

It doesn't.

Just.

So reducing property tax bills for homeowners doesn't just hurt local governments and schools.

What local governments and schools will try to do to reclaim some of that funding is push the burden onto the other categories of property tax payer, which is businesses and farmers.

And now Governor Braun has said they don't need help the way that homeowners need help.

Farmers for sure disagree with that.

Because they're looking at their own set of reform about how their land is assessed because they say it's hurting them to a degree where they are paying way higher property taxes than what they are able to sell, and commodities that they're growing.

So that's its own separate side of the discussion.

There's conversations going on about maybe we do reforms targeted at vulnerable populations.

So people, fixed income seniors, veterans, that sort of thing.

This conversation is going to take us all the way to the end of the session.

It could be one of the last things they vote on because it's it's really, really complicated and really, really contentious.

But Mike Braun has planted a flag.

I don't know that they'll all be saluting that flag by the time we get to the end of session.

And, Nick, certainly farmers and business owners don't seem like groups that the Republicans in the legislature want to upset or alienate.

No, I mean, obviously, though, they're always going to I think, place homeowners a bit higher than that because those are the the biggest part of their constituency.

Another angle to the property tax discussion is if you take this revenue away, is local governments.

And Governor Braun and his administration have said this is, well, their other options.

They can get their money elsewhere.

And mainly they're talking about a local income tax and all entity.

Well, not schools.

Schools are in a different category.

But, you know, cities and towns and counties can use a local income tax to raise revenue, but a lot of them don't, or they have not gone to the you know, that the top of the cap that they're allowed to go to.

So there's billions out there in untapped income tax.

And so I think they would prefer that local governments actually take those hard votes and increase taxes that way.

Then through a more complicated, circuitous property tax system that not everyone understand.

And it's also it's also important to note, though, the the counterbalance to that is if the goal of this process is to provide Hoosiers with tax relief, if you're saying, well, we'll lower your property tax bills on the left, but locals need to raise your income tax on the right, there's a whole lot of Hoosiers who won't really see any relief from that, because whether I'm paying it out of my left pocket or my right pocket, I'm still paying it.

But there may be some shifting of political blame.

Exactly.

And, you know, I think they understand that the locals aren't going to raise it totally, that they will probably have to figure out how to work within the system with some, you know, some minor adjustments.

I like Brandon, don't think the plan as is, is going to get through.

I think it's a little too bold and and takes too much money from local government.

I think in the third year it's like $1.6 billion.

It's a lot of money.

And even if you can find, you know, an occasional example of excess spending, you have a lot more examples of cities and towns who are just struggling to keep pace with inflation.

And let's not forget, just like you and I go to the grocery store and, you know, so did every school who has to buy food to feed the kids or, you know, things like that.

And so, I think yesterday Mike Braun, he was very strong about, you know, you have to prove to me that you cannot deal without this money.

And I think cities and towns are going to have to really go on the offensive.

Well, and you saw even in committee yesterday when they were hearing Governor Braun's proposal, the, bipartisan group of mayors came to the state House to testify.

And the mayor of Terre Haute, Brandon Saxton, talked about the fact that their general fund, which is that's where the the property tax dollars go for the city of Terre, it goes into their general fund, 82% of their general fund are police and fire salaries.

And that's really what their message, their biggest message to lawmakers is, is if you cut our budget this much, what you're cutting is public safety.

And that certainly is a powerful counterpoint.

So this will be very interesting to watch.

Another big set of bills proposed have to do with election reforms.

Kayla, one of these will reduce or would reduce the early voting period from 20 days to 14 days.

What are the key arguments for this change?

And do you expect it to affect, voter turnout if it goes into place?

Well, Indiana does have one of the longer early voting periods to begin with.

And so I think some of the arguments for doing this are, you know, there's plenty of states around us that have shorter periods and don't have any smaller voter turnout.

I need to check that data, to be honest.

Other arguments have been, well, you know, the turnout in our first 14 days isn't as high as the turnout in the second 14 days.

So why don't we just make it 14 days?

The author, Senator Gary Byrne, has also argued that, there are counties for whom 20 staffing, vote centers for 28 days is burdensome.

The arguments on the other side, of course, I mean, you know, some powerful testimony about this being one of the only things Indiana does well in terms of access to voting.

So why are we trying to, you know, shorten that.

Certainly.

It's just one more way that we're reducing options for voters.

Yeah.

Brandon, we haven't really heard a push for other, mechanisms to become more, available.

Such as no excuse, absentee voting in lieu of the long in-person voting options.

You don't really see a big movement there doing.

No Republicans pretty consistently over the last several years have only passed legislation that restricts methods of voting, nothing to expand access to voting.

I mean, just categorically nothing.

They, one exception was they slightly pushed back the deadline at which you could return your Mail-In ballot from noon on Election Day to 6 p.m. on Election Day.

And literally over the last, I'd say, five years.

That's the only piece of legislation that I can recall that would actually take any step to expand access to voting rather than shrink it further.

And I just want to note that for years.

So in 2020 when we had Covid, they got rid of the the excuses you would need to do a Mail-In ballot.

And and I remember us talking to lawmakers in 21 and 22.

You know, why can't we, you know, allow no excuse for mail in voting.

And they said repeatedly they have a full month to vote with early voting.

And so now I find it interesting that they're now going to take some of that time away.

Right.

I mean, it is an interesting one because a lot of the research on it doesn't show a huge increase in voter turnout from that 20 days.

And we know there is, the issue of extra staffing, extra cost, but we aren't seeing anything on the flip side to open up that access.

Speaking of restrictions, I know another proposed change will be to no longer allow college students to use their state, institution.

I vote, student IDs to vote.

Have we seen any cases of these student IDs being used to, allow somebody who isn't eligible or doesn't live in the state, to vote?

No.

Absolutely none.

None whatsoever.

There is no argument in favor of this bill other than we don't like students voting.

The fundamentally there's also and you saw this on the debate yesterday, the Senate passed the bill.

And again yesterday, referring to Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill over to the House yesterday.

And you saw from lawmakers speaking on the floor.

And this is troubling because you think state lawmakers should know how elections work in the state.

You saw a fundamental misunderstanding of how these student IDs are used for voting.

This idea, one lawmaker got up and said, oh, well, you know, we have, students who are international students who can get student IDs and they aren't allowed to vote.

No, they aren't allowed to vote because you cannot use your student ID to register to vote.

The only thing that a student ID can be used for, and has been used for, for 20 years in Indiana, is to prove you are who you are at the polling place.

Because it's not just any student ID, for instance, somebody brought up in the debate or the bill in favor of the bill, somehow that Ivy Tech's student IDs aren't allowed to be used at polling places because they don't have an expiration date.

And the law very clearly states you have to have your name, a photo and an expiration date so that you, you know, the similar, restrictions on other types of ID you can use to vote.

All it's doing is saying, oh, that person who's registered to vote here, it's me.

And somehow that's again, Republicans have done nothing for the last five years with the very limited exceptions I already said, but restrict ways to vote as opposed to expanding ways to vote no.

And I think the argument has been that it will increase, security that all of these things are designed to either be more efficient, cheaper, or increase security without taking away access.

Do we hear these same kind of arguments this year?

They have vaguely said that these college student IDs aren't.

They're vaguely alluding to the fact that they're not as secure as, you know, a driver's license or a state issued ID, but they don't have any examples of that.

I mean, not a one.

You know, so it.

Yes.

Student IDs are not specifically designed for that.

But if they meet the state requirements, you know, I don't I don't know why exactly I don't understand.

They're not doing a good job explaining why suddenly this needs to change.

The entire time we've had voter ID, these have been legal, and suddenly they're not good enough.

It makes it seem like targeting a group of people that make it harder for them to vote and certainly plays into, that argument.

So what about closing primaries?

Another big change that people are talking about is that, considering moving from Indiana's modified open primaries, where occasionally someone could be challenging at the polls for not really representing the party they claim to, to be part of.

But overall, it has been a fairly open process.

We don't have official party registration.

The proposal here is to create, official party registration and make it so only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary.

Only registered Republicans in the Republican primary.

What are the main arguments you're hearing for and against this particular proposal?

Kayla, this is a really is about ideological purity in elections.

The Republicans that are proposing this not just here, but in other Republican dominated states, want real Republican to vote in their primaries.

Especially in these one party states where the your candidates that end up winning in the especially statewide, that end up winning in the general elections are really decided in the primaries.

There's a lot of motivation for independent voters, for even Democrat voters in our state, to try to make their voice heard in the Republican primary.

This was a direct campaign to do that in the, in the gubernatorial primary last year, the, a centrist group called Re Indiana put up billboards encouraging Democrats to do that.

They, in fact, took bets on whether legislation would pop up, after which this campaign and, no one that against that.

So, this is very much is about that.

I think the arguments against it are, of course, this shuts out independent voters.

In a state where our voting turnout in primaries is already abysmal.

And also, I have to say, the deadline for registering with the party is way earlier than the deadline to register to vote.

So there are carve outs for young people if you're turning 18 after that deadline.

But, otherwise it could catch a lot of less informed voters unaware.

So, Brandon, we might expect the already incredibly low turnout in primaries to go down if this happens, given that people would have to declare that Partizanship so early and take those additional steps.

Yeah.

One of the things the bill would do, importantly is, it would automatically register, existing voters, by political party if they've ever voted in a primary before in a Partizan primary before.

So if you've ever cast a ballot in Indiana, in a Partizan primary, you were going to be registered with whatever party that you pulled that ballot for.

Automatically.

Now, you can change that, but you can, as Kayla just pointed out, that there, it sets a basically four month window before the primary election where you cannot add a party affiliation or change party affiliation to and again, with.

I mean, I don't think voters are particularly well informed already.

There's going to be a whole lot of people who probably go to the polls, maybe wanting to cast a ballot, in a Partizan primary.

Who won't get that opportunity at least the first time as a result of this legislation?

Again, if you look at the bills that Republicans are pushing, you think that Indiana's biggest problem in elections is that way too many people are voting.

And I think that is not the reality of voting in Indiana, where we consistently rank among the lowest turnouts in the nation.

Nikki, it's interesting both the idea of closing primaries, which, of course, the Supreme Court has said that parties can determine who it is who participates in their, primary elections to select their candidates in the general election.

But this move to close that and narrow who participates and to declare people, as Democrats or Republicans, seems to be moving us in the same direction as this, proposal to move school board elections to be Partizan toward increased, reliance on these party identities.

Instead of, an approach that would try to involve more people, to encourage perhaps folks to think about what issues are happening locally and to listen carefully to candidates instead of thinking about partizanship.

Does it is that sort of what you're thinking about as you look at some of these changes, which seem to be making elections even more about partizanship than they are now mean, and the Partizan school board race, I think lawmakers just look, they know that statistically Indiana is a conservative state.

You can't argue with that.

And there are more Republicans and Democrats.

So they're looking to carve out any advantage they can.

And school boards are an example where, you know, if you're not an incredibly engaged voter, you might not know what parties someone affiliates them with.

And so they pointed out in the hearing that you could still run as an independent.

So you're not automatically made to be a Democrat or a Republican.

But, you know, I don't think there's any way to argue that turnout won't drop, especially if you close the system.

And, and we do have to look at all of these together, you know, and how they would play off each other and.

Yeah, I mean, there's no way to argue that turnout wouldn't drop.

And there are also even people who, due to federal law or state law, can't run as unaffiliated as a Republican or Democrat libertarian.

And so they wouldn't be allowed to run, period, and keep their current jobs.

So, we will see.

I mean, maybe more people would feel like they know how they're voting, but less based on, careful attention to those local school issues and more on party ID so this will be very interesting.

There's so much more to discuss.

I hope you'll come back because we are actually at the end of our time for this week, and it has been a busy session.

There is so much more going on.

Thanks for helping to break it all down for us today.

I want to thank our guests, Brandon Smith, Nikki Kelly, and Kayla Dwyer for being here today.

I'm Elizabeth Benyon, reminding you that it takes all of us to make democracy work.

We'll see you next time.

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

Thank you.