The property tax reform bill overhaul, A bill changing the Healthy Indiana plan advanced to the floor, plus a birth control bill that leaves out some birth control.

And more from the television studios at Why It's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending February 14th, 2025.

Indiana Weekend Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality of life.

This week, this session's major property tax reform legislation underwent a complete overhaul in a Senate committee.

The measure originally rolled every homeowner's tax bill back to 2021 levels.

It's now more narrowly focused on older Hoosiers and disabled veterans, while also limiting how much local governments can collect in property taxes each year.

Under the bill, homeowners who are disabled veterans or aged 65 or older would get a $20,000 deduction on their property taxes, up from 14,000.

The legislation creates a first time homebuyer tax credit for households that are in $75,000 or less.

The measure also significantly changes how local governments can increase the amount of property taxes they collect each year.

Known as the levy, that includes requiring local officials to vote publicly on any levy increases and requiring ballot referendums.

If local governments want to increase property taxes above the maximum limit.

The bill's author, Republican Senator Travis Haldeman, says total savings for taxpayers is $1.4 billion over the next three years.

In a statement, governor Mike Braun praised some of the bill's changes, but said there still needs to be broad and immediate reductions in Hoosiers tax bills.

Is this a good look at what the final bill will be?

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

Democrat Ann DeLaney Republican Mike OBrien Oseye Boyd, editor-in-chief of Mirror Indy and Niki Kelly, editor-in-chief of the Indiana Capital Chronicle I'm Indiana Public Broadcasting Statehouse Bureau Chief Brandon Smith Mike, does this feel close to the final product?

I think if you are concerned about immediate hits on revenue, if you if you're if you the the Braun, you know, response that there needs to be immediate relief.

That's where the that's where the money is.

Like the actual money is not the growth.

or limiting the growth to make sure this doesn't happen.

You know, that these big increases don't happen again.

you know, narrowly kind of provide relief for disabled Hoosiers, first time homebuyers.

I think that's a great, great idea.

The first time putting in $2,500 credit on there, for first time homebuyers, a 25 a.

25 year credit for five years.

Five years.

That's great help.

And that's right.

But we were talking about this maybe a month ago, and my opinion was always, if we're going to target it, it's got to be a part of the target.

It's got to be young people, people under 40 or people under 35 who have the least amount of wealth.

And we're all scratching our heads on why they're not buying houses, like we did when we were kids.

Know.

So so I think that long ago, I.

Think this is a good I think this is a good, a good, good first start.

I think a lot of this is going to depend, you know, April is going to be interesting.

A lot of us going depend on the revenue forecast in April.

On April 15th, which will kind of help guide lawmakers to that final version of the budget in the final version of property tax relief.

because you're going to have immediate relief.

You need revenue.

The other questions about potential revenue raising measures that they've started kind of floating in the first half on, maybe, you know, some of the syntaxes and cigarets and things like this.

what does the future look like for that?

But but it's and then we have and then what's going to happen last year was going to happen again.

Everyone's gonna get a property tax bill.

Well, when you're talking about more immediate relief, you kind of can't be talking about doing it through the property tax system because everybody's going to be getting their bills before lawmakers adjourn for the session.

So at the most, they'd maybe be able to to affect, like the second bill you get in November this year.

But even then, they're they're reluctant to do that.

So if there's any immediate relief like Mike Brown is talking about, doesn't it kind of have to be through state coffers and not local coffers?

Absolutely.

And that's what they're not going to do.

You remember when we originally came down with a three pronged approach to revenue?

Mitch Daniels said this was going to fix the problem forever.

The one, two and 3% constitutional amendment.

The problem was fixed.

Okay.

It's all on their watch and it's a failure.

It's a fail.

It's not a failure.

There's a failure when property taxes go up 92%, 92% in ten years, okay.

It's a failure.

And cutting the income tax for corporations to come.

To the value of homes.

For the problem and even, even for first time home builders buyers.

Excuse me.

They're going to take that $2,500 to the closing.

The problem is they need money for down payments.

This does nothing for that.

Nothing.

It is.

It is like a tinkers to Evers to chance on that.

If you're going to provide real relief, you help them with the down payment on this number one.

And number two this obviously we can't rebuild.

This is a work.

That we're doing down.

Payment.

This is what I'm saying.

You say, and you're right that we have to help young people buy houses.

The problem is the down payment on the houses.

That's the problem.

And number two on this, Mitch, Mike Braun's proposal was ridiculous from the beginning, and everybody knew it.

And does this the final version?

Who knows?

But it's not going to provide any meaningful property tax relief.

It's going to say we did something.

On Mike Brown.

I'm interested in his political strategy here because he could have said, you know, something, the effect of, yeah, there's you know, while it's not what I originally wanted, so far so many great changes.

But he and he does acknowledge that.

But he's still planting his flag of we need to do something for most homeowners.

A little, his lieutenant governor pushed back a lot stronger, I think.

What was the phrase squish, squish, squish, Republican squish.

anyway, so I mean, obviously it doesn't bring a lot of property tax relief.

It's about a third compared to bronze in the first year.

Yeah.

and it's it's not even an apples to apples because they added farmers in.

So some of that isn't even homeowner property tax relief.

And obviously farmers need some help too.

But I do agree with Mike a little bit.

I don't know that it failed.

It's operating the way the system was designed to operate, but people don't like the fact that the values went up.

And like it's a little bit of a roller.

We're going to go up for a little number and we'll come back down.

But people don't like the, you know, the but that is how it is designed to operate, except for the income tax.

Part of that.

Well, I was going to say in the past, it is designed to work that way.

And what because every we're talking about property tax reform and property tax overhaul, what every other year, every couple of years like it never seem to stop because people are always unhappy when they get their bill.

but at some point you have to pay property taxes.

Like, what are we what are we going to do without them?

So the conversation always seems to be on reform and overhaul, but when do we actually just accept we have to pay property taxes at some point?

Yeah.

All right.

A committee approved the Senate GOP plan to overhaul Indiana's Medicaid expansion program this week.

Indiana Public Broadcasting's Abigail Ruhman reports.

The Senate committee removed the lifetime eligibility limit from the bill.

The bill still makes major changes to the Healthy Indiana Plan, or Hip, including reintroducing Indiana's previously halted work requirements and an enrollment cap.

Senator Chris Garten says the committee amended the language to offer the Family and Social Services Administration some flexibility on the enrollment cap.

We're stating our legislative intent of wanting a cap of 500,000, but we're also recognizing that the federal government may say differently or may rule differently.

And so we're giving the Secretary that flexibility with that provision.

Garten says the bill addresses the growth of Medicaid in the state budget.

However, the state's general fund doesn't pay for Hip.

90% of Hip is funded by the federal government, and the rest is covered by a combination of a fee Indiana hospitals pay and cigaret taxes.

Ann DeLaney, is the legislature going to be able to address in any significant way the state's portion of Medicaid costs this session?

Well, we don't know what the state's portion of Medicaid costs are going to be.

I mean, the state gets something like $22 billion from the federal government for Medicaid, and we don't know what that chaos in Washington is going to is going to do.

And if they all of a sudden decide that they're not going to pay, you know, 90% of hip, they're only going to pay 75% of hip, or they're going to pay less than 75% of of regular Medicaid.

We don't know what that's going to do to the budget, but we're talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars.

I mean, this stuff is it's again, it's just so they can say they've done something.

We've went through this work requirement.

You put a whole lot layer of bureaucracy on there, and it doesn't result in any savings of any substance.

I probably isn't even a wash in terms of cost.

So the lifetime cap being gone.

But if we're talking about capping the number of people on that, we're going to just put them back into the emergency room situation and we know how that works.

So the answer is, if it's any meaningful, the answer's no.

And brings up a really good point about that.

I don't think we've.

Ever disagreed.

That we haven't, but we haven't really heard a lot of talk about so far at the state House, at least out in the open, which is we have no idea what's coming down the pike from the federal level.

And how difficult does that make things for policymakers at this level?

It could make it really easy.

If the number drops to 75%, it's going to get really simple.

We're not providing Medicaid expansion in Indiana anymore.

Yeah.

You know, and so we've focused a lot on cost savings in the hip, which of course the answer is it's the hospital assessment fee, 90% for the other 10% is some combination of the hospital assessment fee plus cigarets plus to fill in whatever's left of the cigaret tax.

All of these questions are in play right now.

And but we talk a lot about costs.

And if you listen to what Houston and Mitchell, speaker Houston and and Senate Appropriations chair Ryan Mitchell are saying they're focused on enrollment.

And because they think the speaker has said, look, I can't square in my mind why economically, the country is doing well and Indiana is doing well.

But our Medicaid, our Medicaid rolls have exploded in, the last several years.

and Mitchell is focused on the number of people in the program as well.

There is a thought and Sarah Holleman is part of this conversation, too, that there are a lot of people that are not eligible for Medicaid, that are on Medicaid right now because they've sheltered assets or they somehow like backed into the income eligibility requirement.

when.

They don't really need.

It, when they don't really need it, and they're not really qualified for it.

And so the Senate Bill two, in addition to the other things that we talked about, it, it now it pulls in door.

Now it's pulling in other agencies and we're getting them.

We need a more complete picture of the eligibility so that these.

Legitimate concern.

To the point that that Mike just raised about Speaker Houston trying to figure out, well, why are things going so well in the in the national economy, in the state economy, and yet so many more people are on Medicaid.

Some of it is shielding assets.

But isn't this exactly what we just went through with an election in which people said, no, the economy's terrible about all the numbers said, no, it isn't.

It really just come down.

But anyhow.

That isn't it isn't some of it.

It's some of it's inflation, but some of it isn't.

Isn't it just that Indiana's wage growth hasn't just.

Kept kept up?

Yeah, that's definitely what it is.

You have a lot of people who are actually working, who are working, who are on hip.

That is a wage problem.

That's not a situation where you're not you're backing in or you're or you're just ineligible and you shouldn't be on it.

That is a problem where you are working every day and you are still low income.

And you cannot afford it, or your job doesn't offer insurance.

That's another part of it is that some jobs do not offer people insurance.

They don't have enough.

They don't have enough employees.

Or maybe you're self-employed.

So there's a lot of we.

Keep them below a certain level.

They don't have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Going back to kind of the original question we talked about this with health care costs broadly.

But is there only so much lawmakers at the state level can really do to try and bring down how much they are the state is currently spending on Medicaid?

I mean, I think the answer's obviously yes, because when you look at some of the stuff they're looking at, other than the the massive cap that would kick 250,000 people off, you know, that's a huge thing.

But otherwise it's like we're going to confirm eligibility four times a year, basically just drown people in paperwork.

Right.

And hope they don't.

Drown in the government payroll.

Yeah.

Not too bad.

Too bad.

Not taking their.

Word for hire, more people to do or the whole like we can't advertise Medicaid.

I mean, that's that's pretty incredible.

Not only the state can't advertise no one.

I could not go out and purchase a billboard that told people about Medicaid under this bill.

So there's only three leverage the state.

The state has three options available.

You're either eligible and now and then we buy.

Then we buy it, and we're buying services at at a rate.

And those are the only three.

You're they're looking at people that aren't eligible.

You're cutting services or you're lower rates.

Those are the only three levels that are available to you.

All right.

Time now for viewer feedback.

Each week we post an unscientific online poll question.

And this week's question is, should Indiana make significant cuts to the Medicaid program to help bring down costs?

A yes or b no?

Last week, we asked you whether Indiana lawmakers will pass significant property tax reform legislation.

In this session.

23% of you say yes, 77% say no.

If you'd like to take part in the poll, go to WFYI.org/IWIR, and look for the poll.

Well, speaking of Medicaid, Medicaid recipients in Indiana could have more access to birth control under legislation passed by a House committee.

But Indiana Public Broadcasting's Abigail Ruhman reports.

Advocates say an amendment limits people's options to just a few birth control methods.

The original language of the bill required local health departments to provide access to condoms, long acting reversible contraceptives, and over-the-counter birth control.

The revised bill includes specific types of birth control and excludes condoms and long acting reversible contraceptives.

Doctor Amy Caldwell is an Ob-Gyn with the Indiana chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

She says the amendment also focuses on natural family planning methods, which is a disservice to patients.

We do wholeheartedly support access to all contraceptive methods, including natural family planning.

Unfortunately, there are women who cannot use natural family planning.

If you don't have regular periods, it's not an option for you.

Caldwell says that's common among patients.

She says not including long acting reversible options goes against all medical information and guidelines.

Oh, she avoid.

Is the bill too narrow now to be very effective?

Yeah.

I mean, if you're going to have an amendment and you're going to say what types of birth control can now be excluded.

The whole idea is to not get people pregnant or not have people get pregnant.

Not unless they want to.

Yeah.

Unless they want to.

but offer them whatever birth control works for them.

Now you're going to exclude birth control based on I don't know, I'm very confused.

I'm very confused at what the point of all this is to change that, to add that amendment.

I'm very confused.

And then to talk about the natural plan and the natural planning process, which does it really work?

Most of the time?

I don't think so.

So we're trying to avoid unplanned pregnancies, but then we're going to talk about things that actually don't work and contribute to unplanned pregnancies.

And then we're going to talk about people not being on Medicaid, reducing babies on Medicaid.

So it just I'm just very confused because it doesn't really make sense to me if we want to actually, reduce the amount of unplanned pregnancies, which how do you really do that, anyway?

You can't control people's behavior.

Yeah.

I mean, to a certain extent you can't.

But providing more of these options, yes, at less or no cost would be one way to do it.

But it just goes back to the conversation we just had.

You want to affect Medicaid costs, bring down the number of unplanned pregnancies.

Why?

I mean, I know the answer to this question, Nikki, but why is this?

Why did this one get so complicated?

Yeah, I mean, I get the IUD, like, I'm not saying I agree with it.

I at least can physically understand the argument they're making.

I have no idea why condoms were taken out.

The only deal.

Venereal disease?

Yeah, the only one from a man.

They're extremely effective when used properly.

And and I'm just like, I don't know, there was.

But that's also part of it was properly education.

There's you have to take birth control.

You have to make sure you take it properly for it to work.

There's a lot of yeah, there's a lot of things that have to happen to make sure that you don't have an unplanned pregnancy.

It is probably the most effective in the sense of it lasts multiple years.

You don't have to do anything.

Yeah, yeah.

And yet that one's out because of only I can presume because no one would say it straight out religious because of religious concerns and whether it kind of.

Yeah.

Is there any way we've seen now the, the long acting reversible contraceptives become an issue last session and now again this session, is that just the way I mean, is that just the future of Indiana for the foreseeable future?

Well, as long as you have people who want to cram their religious beliefs down other people's throats.

Yeah, that's the answer.

And you get these people who think that their way is the only way.

I mean, it is ideological and it is religious.

And we are supposed to be a multifaceted, state where different views are tolerated.

They don't want to tolerate different views.

They want their views to be adopted by everybody.

And that's the Republican controlled crazies in the legislature.

The the bill was recommitted to the Ways and Means Committee.

Ways and Means has its last scheduled meeting in the first half before the deadline on Monday, and it's not on the calendar.

So it seems like the bill itself is probably dead this session.

It could always be revived, the language could always be revived later in session, but it doesn't seem like it will advance if this is something that some I mean, this was a Republican authored bill.

Let's let's, you know, say that too.

If this is something that some Republicans feel like will help the state in the long run, is the cost, the Medicaid cost argument, maybe their best path forward on trying to get something more comprehensive eventually, through.

There's too much being baked into whether or not we're talking about a woman's body.

There's too many.

There's too much baked into it.

for all the birth control, I'm for everyone understanding how a woman's body actually works and how they're all different, especially in the context of a health care plan that taxpayers are paying for.

Hoosiers would be forced to register with a major political party to be allowed to participate in Partizan primary elections under a bill on the Senate floor.

Indiana would join ten other states with what are called fully closed primaries.

The bill would automatically assign party registration to everyone who's voted in a Partizan primary election before, and if a voter wants to cast a ballot in a Partizan primary going forward, they must register with that party affiliation at least four months before the election.

Republican Senator Mike Gaskill is the bill's author.

What I don't think is is.

Right is.

For, people who are not a member of a political party or don't affiliate with the political party to be able to choose that party's candidates.

Common cause.

Indiana's Julia Vaughn says there's no evidence so-called cross party voters are impacting outcomes.

We already have.

abysmal voter turnout at primaries, and this will simply make it worse.

The Senate Elections Committee voted along party lines to approve the bill.

Nikki Kelly last summer, a centrist.

Her last year, a centrist group, urged Democrats to vote in the GOP primary for governor, including billboards around the in the area.

Was this bill inevitable after that?

Yeah, it's certainly brought far more attention to it.

And there was at least one incident, I think, down in southern Indiana where someone was, you know, challenged as voting someone they thought was a Democrat.

And so it got pretty ugly down there.

But it's not like this is new.

I mean, we all remember Rush Limbaugh was Operation Chaos, right?

Like we didn't close the primaries then.

the fact is, is that in some communities, your only chance to have a say is in the primary, right?

And so, you know, either because they're not even they don't even have a competitor or it's just not feasible to beat them due to the gerrymander.

Political makeup for counties.

It's not gerrymandering.

No.

But I mean, and and there are some cases where you could look at, you know, if I'm generally vote in one primary, I could look at my primary belt and go, there's not a single contested race there.

Oh maybe I'll vote in the other one.

That's something that Hoosiers for a long time seemed to really like about their primary system.

Do you see this this maybe this session or in the future changing.

No.

We live in a democracy.

That's the whole idea is I can vote for whoever I want to vote for that we don't.

It's not about party alignment.

It's about I have the right to vote.

And, and that's what we're getting down to, is it?

You have to be aligned with a party.

What about people who are independents who don't align with the party?

to your point, what about if you don't have anyone to vote for, but you still want to exercise your right to vote?

That's not in your party.

So, yeah, it's about democracy to me versus just, voting for a particular party.

And that's really going to be a sad day when we have to vote for a particular party.

Speaker Todd Houston was asked about sort of a rash of election bills that had been moved out of the Senate Elections Committee so far this session and are currently kind of sitting on the floor.

and he said, that he likes Indiana election laws the way they are now and isn't at this point really inclined to change them.

So I don't know what this bill's future is this session, but do you see this idea gaining momentum?

I hope not, I, I do, I have had the thought, especially in the last, you know, ten years.

We kind of become hyper partizan that people do need to pick a party.

we're not Partizan enough in America, actually, is what I think.

I think because because people in the middle or or people who sit on the fringes of both parties have left the parties and don't participate in the party system.

So I disagree with I share a little bit.

As an old party guy myself, I agree in the general.

Certainly go vote for everyone to split your ticket, do whatever you want.

but in the way we select those candidates is a party process, and it is in every state in the country, both both independents and Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, I'm not for closing it, though.

I'm not for closing it for months in advance before I'm up for, you know, that's why when I go poll Republican ballots, I just like public statement.

Yeah.

But I'm making when I when I pull that when I pull that ballot, that is no that is known information by the parties that I've picked that ballot.

I think that's enough.

But I, I do reserve the right for any reason.

To I do.

Change my mind.

I will say, I will say I don't think you'll find a lot of people who agree with you that America isn't Partizan enough, but I know I, I want to become more bitterly.

Partizan because not enough people are participating enough that as a.

State, we've decided that for a number of our candidates, we pick a primary, we pick them by primary, not by convention or by caucus, but by primary.

And that's the primary that the that the everybody in the state, all the taxpayers in the state pay for.

And to say that you can't do this on a, on a in an election that's paid for by taxpayer money, just strikes me as completely undemocratic.

Well.

Finally, one of our favorite bills here at Indiana we can review this session prohibits controlling the whether that's discharging a chemical or apparatus into the atmosphere to affect the intensity of sunlight, temperature or weather.

And it makes that crime a class B misdemeanor.

Now, Mike O'Brien, should someone who creates a hurricane in Indiana get more than six months in a local jail?

What was that?

That was the theory on on from Biden that he destroyed North Carolina so the government could seize the lithium mines or something.

It's like an X-Men movie playing out in that's real life here.

Possession.

I mean, someone that powerful would probably just win the presidency forever, right?

Someone that should just be done.

That maybe, I don't know.

I listen, I mean, I mean, the idea of, like, you know, cloud seeding has been around for a long time.

I remember in the Beijing Olympics we were talking about China doing that to help that process work better.

But again, I go back to class B misdemeanor.

What if you caused like death?

But there could be like.

If you.

I guess that's often.

What if you cause pollution and that influences the climate.

Is that illegal.

Is that illegal.

I don't know.

The in.

The I think whoever authored the the two authors of this bill have been watching too much sci fi fantasy stuff.

Frankly, I think they think there may be aliens out there that are doing these kinds of things.

All right.

That's what they.

Think.

They're done.

My God.

I think there's Democrats out there.

Yeah, well, we're we're responsible for everything.

That's Indiana Week in Review for this week.

Our panel is Democrat Ann DeLaney Republican Mike OBrien Oseye Boyd of Mirror Indy and Niki Kelly of the Indiana Capital Chronicle You can find Indiana Weekend Reviews, podcast and episodes at WFYI.org/twitter or on the PBS app.

I'm Brandon Smith of Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Have a happy Valentine's Day and join us next time, because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.

I.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality of life.