FEBRUARY 28, 2025

Earlier this week, Aim released two special episodes of Market Street to Main Street, our legislative podcast series. The first episode, The Mechanics of Property Taxes, explains how taxes are calculated, distributed, and impacted by tax caps. The second episode, Dispelling the Myths of Municipal Budget Management and Property Taxes, clarifies misconceptions about municipal budgets and financial reserves.

We’ve talked a lot this session about the big impact SB1 could have and the risk it poses to funding essential services like public safety and infrastructure. Now’s the time to step up! Check out aimindiana.org/property-taxes for key resources and take action to help shape a workable solution for all. Aim is working with Senate and House leadership, Governor Braun, and his legislative team to develop a solution that is both workable and balanced, but we can’t do it alone. Let’s work together to keep our communities strong and well-funded!

The Big Issues

MEDICAID REFORM

  • Medicaid reform and cost controls have been a major priority from the Statehouse leadership, especially after a significant forecasting error during the last budget caused a cost overrun of more than $1B in the Medicaid program, causing the state to dip into their Medicaid reserve.
  • SB 2, authored by Sen. Ryan Mishler (R-Mishawaka), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, aims to cap total enrollment in the Healthy Indiana Plan to control costs and place new constraints on the ability of hospitals and other healthcare providers to automatically enroll patients in the Medicaid program without sufficient review.
  • HB 1003, authored by Rep. Brad Barrett (R-Richmond), also attempts to add more resources and requirements around tracking and preventing Medicaid fraud.
  • SB 2 was a topic of lots of discussion in the first half of the session and remains a caucus priority in the second half. It passed the Senate with a vote of 40-9.

HEALTH CARE COSTS

  • Indiana has some of the highest health care costs in the nation when measured as the nominal prices charged by our hospitals to our self-insured businesses. Large employers in Indiana have made this issue a top priority for the General Assembly for the past five years at least.
  • HB 1003, authored by Rep. Brad Barrett (R-Richmond), attempts to control health care costs through a number of different mechanisms, including requiring parity in reimbursement for certain pharmaceuticals, ensuring parity of reimbursement for services regardless of whether it is performed in an outpatient clinic or at a hospital, changing the rules around prior authorization, and increasing transparency requirements around hospital price reporting.
  • HB 1003 continues a years-long effort to improve the cost of healthcare in Indiana, a very complex and multivariate issue. It passed the House with a vote of 66-32.

SCHOOL CHOICE

  • In both the Governor’s and the House’s version of HB 1001, Indiana’s biennial budget, the school voucher program, called the Choice Scholarship Program, is made universally available, removing all income limits or other paths to eligibility. It remains capped at 90% of the students funding in the school funding formula.
  • SB 518, authored by Sen. Linda Rogers (R-Granger), would require school districts to share their operating and debt service property tax levies with charter schools in their jurisdictions in addition to the requirements that currently exist for sharing referendum dollars.
  • Expanding school choice programs has been a priority of statehouse leadership for decades and these proposals attempt to push these programs forward. SB 518 passed the Senate with a vote of 28-21 and will be heard in the House Ways and Means Committee next Wednesday during the same hearing as SB 1.

ELECTION REFORM

  • SB 287 would require candidates for school board to go through the same primary process and appear on the ballot with their party affiliation listed.
  • SB 355 would move all town elections to the presidential election cycle with larger towns having the option to opt out of the requirement and remain on the municipal election cycle.
  • Several different bills, including SB 1, move all referenda votes to general election cycles on even numbered years.
  • Reforming elections to place more on the general election ballots and formalizing more of the election infrastructure as explicitly partisan appears to be a hot topic for many legislators. However, these concepts also face significant opposition. Proposals on partisan school boards and changing municipal elections were also proposed in the House but both bills failed to move forward.
  • There was also significant opposition in the Senate, with SB 287 passing 26-20 and SB 355 passing 29-20.

ENERGY AND WATER RESOURCES

  • HB 1007, authored by Rep. Ed Soliday (R-Valparaiso), would create new tools for both utilities and the IURC to make sure that electric generation capacity keeps up with consumer and industrial demand as well as providing new incentives and cost recovery structures to be among the first states in the nation to roll out small modular reactors (SMR), a new nuclear energy technology.
  • SB 4, authored by Sen. Eric Koch (R-Bedford), would put the IURC in charge of permitting large water withdrawals between watersheds and ensure regional water management is prioritized.
  • Both of these bills are focused on ensuring Indiana continues to have the water and electrical infrastructure available for both residents and industrial and economic development that is currently coming online, especially with the large investments in data centers, advanced manufacturing, and new electrical technology that are going on in communities around the state.

MARKET STREET TO MAIN STREET LEGISLATIVE PODCAST

Listen to more about this week on the eighth episode of the 2025 Market Street to Main Street Podcast Series, Aim’s legislative episodes of the Hometown Innovations Podcast and a supplement to this e-newsletter. In this episode, Jennifer and Amy take a few minutes to discuss the halftime break and property tax podcast episodes.

To listen to Market Street to Main Street, please visit The Terminal post and click the “play button” on the audio player. Or you can subscribe to Aim Hometown Innovations Podcast on Podbean, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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