Mid-Session Report

The Legislature is officially at its halfway point. The Statehouse halls will be much quieter for the next week as legislators head home and hardworking legislative staff (and lobbyists!) take a breather. Many of the session’s predominant and priority issues remain yet unsolved. And while the legislative process is a methodic and deliberate one, the uncertainty drives the anxiety that comes with a pending business decision that could make or break you - which is why your team at Torchbearer Public Affairs is here to help.

Bills that failed to pass out of their originating chamber (i.e. House bills out of the House and Senate bills out of the Senate) are now considered “dead.” After the first round of legislative deadlines, here are the stats:

Note: these numbers do not account for resolutions.

What’s dead?

Some contentious items died (for now). After Speaker Todd Huston stated that he was fine with Indiana election policies as they stand, a number of controversial election bills quietly died this week. Bills seeking to halve the amount of time that Hoosiers may early vote and bring closed primaries to Indiana both died during the last days of the first half. The closed primary bills were filed after a number of Hoosiers changed their previous partisan leanings during the spring primary in order to cast votes in the six-way Republican gubernatorial primary. While a bill seeking to bring an end to nonpartisan school board races died in the House, a less robust Senate version narrowly passed 26-20 earlier in the week.

Local control continues to dominate the conversation at the Statehouse, with municipal officials flexing on property tax, siting policy for energy projects, funding for roads, and other local revenue issues. Growing contention with siting legislation that did not get a vote in committee continued to cause collateral damage with other bills, possibly including Rep. Ed Soliday’s (R-Valparaiso) HB 1579, a follow up to 2022 legislation dealing with Carbon Capture Storage and Sequestration. The chairman’s bill died without being called for vote on the House floor this week and the Senate’s version (which narrowly passed 28-21 earlier this session) will face further scrutiny in the House.

Speaking of local control – the House bill criminalizing homelessness and preventing “camping” on municipally owned land will not advance after it failed to be called down for a vote on Thursday, the last day for bills to pass out of their original chamber. HB 1662 earned the ire of a number of entities, with a well attended hearing in the Statehouse’s smallest committee room. While the bill passed committee on a party line vote, it received a significant amount of concern from the public, and the bill was ultimately shelved. Only time will tell whether it will remain dead until the gavel falls on Indiana’s 2025 Legislative Session.

There are always a few surprises on deadline days but one of them truly surprised folks in the hallways – SB 317, a bill that provides basic consumer protections in relation to medical debt, suddenly died on the Senate Floor after receiving a unanimous vote in the Senate Health and Provider Services Committee just last week. Perhaps SB 317 was also collateral damage due to an unrelated bill? We may never know.

What’s still alive?

Property tax reform continues to suck all the oxygen out of the room at the Statehouse despite a wealth of pushback on all sides of the issue, with local school officials, local fiscal leaders, and even emergency services leaders calling for reined in fiscal impacts back home. With SB 1 standing to impact cities like Indianapolis to the tune of $130 million, conversations will continue, with the bill now handed over to Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Jeff Thompson (R-Lizton) for further action in the House. After issuing tepid support of the bill as it passed committee,

Governor Braun shifted his views, even threatening a veto, which is pretty much ineffectual given a healthy supermajority in both chambers.

SB 2, the much discussed healthcare and Medicaid reform bill passed the Senate earlier this week. While the author of the bill, Sen. Ryan Mishler (R-Bremen), says his goal is to “right size” Medicaid, many conversations continue to indicate the intersection of healthcare, work requirements, and the growing uncertainty about the leveraging of federal funding spells disaster for Hoosiers. With more revenue updates still to come in the next months, this conversation will continue to evolve.

Weighty topics remain…unsettled.

Unsettled? Yes, but that’s not a bad thing. It is not abnormal for complex issues to be up for discussion and change well into the final moments of the legislative session. The budget will no doubt be one of them. HB 1001 passed out of House Ways and Means Committee on partisan with two amendments (Amendment #11 and Amendment #12) first thing Monday morning. The bill was then amended on the floor (Amendment #19) on Wednesday and passed the House 66-28 on partisan lines the next day after an extended debate much in part due to continuing drama over school funding. The bill will now restart the process in the Senate, with fiscal leader Sen. Ryan Mishler (R-Bremen), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee in charge of conversations in the Senate. This will all remain fluid and come down to the conference committee process, where fiscal leaders will be the end all decisionmakers on details governing the state’s only required bill that must be passed this year: our state’s biennial budget.

While discussions continue, this coming week will be a critical rest period for legislators, staff, and stakeholders alike – we will stay on top of these issues as we do every week, even though you will not see a Statehouse report again until the first week of March.