Highlights of the House Republicans’ state budget proposal unveiled Friday include 2 percent per year increases in K-12 education funding; hundreds of millions of new dollars for the Department of Child Services and Department of Correction; and no new tax cuts.
House Republican budget architect Rep. Jeff Thompson (R-Lizton) said the key word for the budget is opportunity.
“Opportunity for our state to continue to boom,” Thompson said.
K-12 schools will receive $560 million more in tuition support funding in the House GOP budget proposal — with a significant portion of that estimated to be for the elimination of income limits on the state’s private school voucher program.
Thompson said those increases are enough for schools in a tight budget year.
“You can manage, like the governor plans to manage, by looking at how do we spend our money the most efficiently,” Thompson said.
Thompson said there’s a lot of alignment with Gov. Mike Braun’s budget proposal. That includes $100 million per year funding for the local public health program — a reduction from the $150 million this year — and Medicaid funding that does not eliminate existing waitlists.
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The House GOP budget, like Braun’s, also cuts most state agencies' funding by 5 percent — but Thompson said that shouldn’t mean fewer services for Hoosiers.
“I mean, the way this administration’s operating, we’ll do a whole lot more with a whole lot less,” Thompson said. “That’s their mindset and I love that mindset.”
The House Republican budget proposal does not include Braun’s proposal to eliminate the tax on tips or create sales tax holidays. But it does increase funding for the Department of Child Services and the Department of Correction, to meet growing needs.
Funding for Indiana’s higher education institutions doesn’t increase or decrease in the House GOP plan, though Thompson said it would fund maintenance for existing facilities at public colleges and universities.
“It becomes debt if you don’t take care of your current facilities, and we put a lot of dollars into taking care of those facilities,” Thompson said.
The House GOP budget does increase funding in other areas of education. Career Scholarship Accounts — meant for work-based learning — and Education Scholarship Accounts, for students with special needs, both go from their current funding of $10 million per year to $15 million per year. And school safety grants would increase by $2.5 million per year.
Several House Republican bills also get funded in the caucus’s proposal. That includes $59.1 million for a new Public Prosecution Fund for county prosecutor from HB 1006, $25 million per year for the housing infrastructure loan fund in HB 1005, and $2.5 million to help reduce the state’s rape kit testing backlog in HB 1413.
There is new money in the budget for the Child Care Development Fund — $155 million — but that’s only enough to ensure children already in that program will remain. It does not eliminate the existing waitlist.
The House Republican proposal will officially be added into the budget bill, HB 1001, on Monday.
Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5 .
