State budget a primary concern at Third House meeting
Local legislators Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, State Rep. Doug Miller, R-Elkhart, Rep. Joanna King, R-Middlebury, and State Rep. Dave Abbott, R-Rome City, attended one of the chamber's three scheduled Third House meetings this legislative session.
Third House meetings are an opportunity for community members to visit with elected officials representing them at the Indiana General Assembly, learn which bills legislators are working on, and discuss concerns or interests with leaders.
Residents who attended Friday's Third House were most concerned about tax cuts and services and supports that could be lost in the shuffle.
'We as citizens of the United States have to step up and figure out how we can be more responsible and expect less from the government and expect more from ourselves,' Miller said.
Goshen High School student Isaac Moore called the situation with the Department of Education an 'inevitable dismantling,' and asked about the state's plan to ensure schools like his are adequately funded for diverse learning needs currently supported by Title I.
'I don't know what's going to happen out in D.C. I have no control over what happens in D.C. What I do hope is that locally we have a little bit more autonomy to make decisions that are best for our kids,' King said. 'I don't know that many decisions that are made at the federal level, I don't know that those decisions can't be made — and be made better — here at the state level.'
King said she hopes that if the Department of Education is shuttered, the money will still be sent to the states to figure out what to do with it like they do in other areas with federal funding such as medicaid.
Moore asked if they had a plan for if the money wasn't sent to the states. King said when she was a school board member at Middlebury Community Schools, it wasn't a lot.
Both Goshen Community Schools Superintendent Jim DuBois and Concord Community Schools Superintendent Dan Funston were in attendance at the meeting.
'It is significant for Goshen,' DuBois said, and Funston said it was 4% of Concord's budget.
In addition, Funston shared his district's budget, explaining that 114% of Concord's operating budget funded by property taxes goes to property casualty insurance, transportation and utilities. He said since 2020, property casualty insurance premiums have increased 22%, transportation costs are up 64% — in large part because the cost of a bus has doubled — and utility costs have gone up 32%.
Former educator Tom Holtzinger said he's concerned about Medicaid funding.
'I feel like we're balancing the budget on the backs of the poor again,' he said.
Doriot explained that Medicaid is the fastest growing portion of the state's budget.
'I believe it may be pushing 18% if this keeps on, very quickly, and there's only one place we have big enough to get that money and that's the schools,' Doriot said. 'The schools are 50%, higher ed's another 10 to 12%, and we have to rein it in and get it back to where it is.
'We've been looking at waste and all that but that peak drive from COVID … COVID's over and people are able to get back out and there are some very able-bodied that have figured out a way to say on it and we've got to work through that and I'm sorry but there are going to be cuts on it. We can't increase without a massive tax increase and very few people in this room like those words—tax increase— we're going to do our best, but it's going to get streamlined.'
Aaron Stickel accused legislators of 'streamlining at the cost of people's health care.'
'You're proposing to cut 250,000 people in Indiana alone,' he said.
King said during COVID, people weren't denied Medicaid and since then, those people have continued to use it.
'We have people that desperately need it and I want to make sure that we have the funds to help those that do need that help,' King said. 'One of the things that we're going to have to do is go back to the drawing board and say 'What are the guardrails to make sure that the people that are getting this service are meeting so that we can have people that are able-bodied, that could be working, that should be working, that are using this system, gaming this system, are not doing that anymore?''
King said since 2020, Medicaid has almost doubled.
'It's about responsible governance,' King said. 'It's going to be painful for some people, but I would argue that the people that it's probably going to be painful for are those that have been gaming the system.
'I'm all ears,' she continued. 'If you have any ideas on how to solve this challenge, I am all ears. We are right in that process, but we have to figure out a way to get to a healthier place.'
One commenter proposed that people aren't able to go back to work and earn a wage that would allow them to leave Medicaid and asked what legislators could do ensure people could make enough money to finance their own health insurance.
Abbott said every business owner he's spoken to said they couldn't find employees to fill positions. Caleb Miller, president of Viewrail, said that's not the case for him. All 375 of his employees make at minimum $25 per hour and Miller said his company also does workforce training.
'I think a lot of this does come down to an ability to offer living wages,' Miller said. 'People aren't going to come back if they aren't going to get a living wage.'
Stickel asked why legislators are talking about tax cuts at all if Medicaid and education are underfunded.
'We all want less taxes personally, but it's your responsibility to make the hard decisions,' Stickel said. 'Why are we talking about tax cuts if we're talking about this critical infrastructure — our kids, people that need health care — those things are underfunded.'
Abbott noted that it's not about income taxes — which are lowering slightly — but property taxes and it's because residential property taxes pick up such a high amount of that cost.
'People are getting priced out of their homes,' he said. 'The cuts, at least as far as property taxes, are trying to balance it so it's fair. You have businesses, you have caps, you have TIF districts, a lot of those things play into how we generate our revenue for the local communities. We're not targeting the state so much as we're targeting the local.'
Miller reminded those in attendance that the federal deficit is $37 trillion.
'We're all in the same ship and that ship is causing a myriad of problems for states and local government,' he said. 'We have now a very active leadership that's doing a lot of things and we're all very, very nervous about that. And for us at the state level that's been a trickle-down effect. We are sandwiched between the federal government and what they're pushing down the pipeline and have traditionally and programs they've put in place.'
Miller said the extra COVID money from the federal government allowed for many opportunities and when the money was gone, the state legislature has been expected to maintain those opportunities without it.
'It's straining us and it's strangling states,' he said. 'Our budget is hugely impacted and it affects every Hoosier.'
Clerk-Treasurer Richard Aguirre argued that the state proposing local tax cuts was no different than the federal government cutting state funding.
'As much as I've heard legislators for decades when I was a reporter complain about the federal government taking away the state's ability to do things, I'd ask you to continue to consider that issue and when you're doing things like requiring local police to enforce immigration law,' he said. 'When you're limiting our income, the state is not cutting its state taxes and then having to deal with that impact.
'I've told all of you: the greatest gift you could give local government is just leave us alone for one session.'
HEART OF THE HOOSIER
King also presented Vince Turner with the Heart of the Hoosier Award, saying she'd been waiting to present it since a teen at the Statehouse told her that he wanted to be 'just like Vince Turner.'
'I realized Vince has impacted many lives,' she said.
The award comes from King's office and is given to people in the community she represents who have impacted the area.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
3 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
A Kennedy toils in Mississippi, tracing his grandfather's path
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Kennedy nodded to the history. 'I know a bit about my grandfather's visit to the Delta back in the '60s, and how it changed and outraged him to see this in the richest country in the world,' he said. 'I'm proud that my family has spent a lot of their years in office advocating for these people.' Advertisement Kennedy is on a mission to continue the legacy of an American political family that has in recent years lost some of its liberal luster. It angers him that his uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, is a key figure in an administration that is overturning core values of his family. Advertisement The health secretary has defended work requirements for Medicaid recipients, 'which do not work,' the younger Kennedy said. 'The only thing they succeed at is kicking people off Medicaid who need it.' On the elder Kennedy's efforts to ban food dyes, his nephew dismissively replied, 'It's not the dyes that are making people obese.' Still, he shares with his uncle the belief that Democrats are increasingly captive to an urban elite. 'I think the Democratic Party has lost touch with this reality,' he said, staring out at the Delta landscape. Joe Kennedy III and his wife, Lauren Anne Birchfield, arrived at the JFK Library, Sunday, May 4, 2025, in Boston. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Kennedy's response is not to run for president as his grandfather did and his uncle might, or at least not yet. Instead he has formed the Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that seeks to develop a network of grassroots resistance in four deep-red states -- Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and West Virginia -- that have received little attention from left-leaning organizations. Without any meaningful opposition, Kennedy said, those states have become havens for right-wing initiatives, ranging from the evisceration of the Clean Air Act in West Virginia to legislation in Mississippi that banned abortions after 15 weeks and led to the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 'The only way to change the power structures in those states is to organize people,' Kennedy said. 'That's not a short fix. But what else can you do?' The slow grind of organization-building in hostile territory that Kennedy envisions has been done before, mostly by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, which was formed in 2004, operates in 35 states and has an annual operating budget of more than $186 million. In contrast, the Groundwork Project operates on a relatively modest $2.8 million a year, much of it disbursed as $25,000 annual grants to about 40 local groups that have fought uphill battles in areas like environmental justice and reproductive rights. Advertisement But the famous name helps. During a three-day trip to Mississippi to observe the efforts that Groundwork Project is helping to underwrite, locals sometimes referred to its founder in awed tones as 'a Kennedy.' During one gathering of local officials, at a diner in Yazoo City, Kennedy addressed the subject of health care by invoking his lineage, saying, 'My family has focused on this for a long time.' In the next breath, Kennedy pointedly brought up another relative: 'My uncle is now part of an administration that is cutting Medicaid.' Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy of the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, speculated about the political subtext of Kennedy's criticisms of his uncle. 'It's all but certain that Bobby Jr. is going to run for president as a Republican in 2028,' Kessler said. 'Maybe part of what the younger Kennedy is doing is reclaiming the family legacy as a way to remind people, 'This is who we really are.'' Joseph P. Kennedy III spoke at Atlantic Technical University in Letterkenny, Donegal, Ireland on Oct. 2. Conor Doherty The Oral History of Family Lore Kennedy was not yet born when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's quest for the presidency was cut short by an assassin's bullet in California in June 1968. The 42-year-old candidate left behind his widow, Ethel, and their 11 children, among them Robert Jr. and Joseph, Joe Kennedy III's father, who would go on to serve in Congress from 1987 to 1999. Kennedy said that he has never read a book about his grandfather, since from infancy he marinated in the oral history of family lore. Inculcated in him were RFK adages such as, 'The gross national product can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.' Advertisement His own trajectory followed the meticulously laid Kennedy path of public service merging with political advancement. He spent his childhood in Boston before attending Stanford University and subsequently serving two years in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer. He returned home to Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard Law School and then worked as an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County. It came as little surprise in February 2012 when he announced his desire to fill the congressional seat soon to be vacated by Rep. Barney Frank. Kennedy -- an earnest and energetic 31-year-old scion with a genetically distinctive aquiline nose, a toothy grin and wavy red hair that deviated from the family's physical template -- coasted to victory without serious opposition. The freshman won over many colleagues in the House, several of whom said in interviews that they had been braced for an entitled brat and instead encountered someone who was thoughtful and unpretentious. He set out to lead on mental health issues as his cousin, Patrick Kennedy, had done before retiring from Congress in 2011. But Kennedy said he grew dismayed by the chamber's partisan divisions and inexplicable lethargy, recalling, 'Even in the majority, I couldn't move my own bills.' By Kennedy's fourth term, restlessness had gotten the better of him. In September 2019, he announced his candidacy for the Senate, a body in which three Kennedy legends -- his grandfather; his great-uncle, the former president; and his great-uncle Ted -- had previously served. He garnered the support of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat who was then the minority leader. Advertisement But the 73-year-old Democratic incumbent, Sen. Edward J. Markey, outfoxed his younger opponent by recasting himself as a rabble-rousing progressive in the manner of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who endorsed Markey. Kennedy, whose tendency is to speak in carefully constructed paragraphs, struggled to come up with his own pithy pitch to voters. Markey won the September 2020 primary by 11 points, and Kennedy became the first in his family to be defeated in a senatorial contest. President Donald Trump gloated on Twitter, 'Pelosi strongly backed the loser!' Being spurned and disparaged by liberal activists was unfamiliar terrain for a Kennedy, and he spent the remainder of 2020 contemplating his options. 'Losing sucks,' Kennedy said. 'But I made the decision to try to build something that keeps you engaged and energized. And if something comes up, perhaps you take it, but you're not sitting around waiting for that to happen.' Joe Kennedy delivered his election-night in Watertown on Sept. 1, 2020, in his unsuccessful Senate race against Ed Markey John Tlumacki/Globe Staff 'You Democrats Think We Don't Know How to Work?' Rejected by progressive activists, Kennedy turned to forgotten agrarian lands like the Mississippi Delta, which has only one major city (Jackson), and is therefore difficult to organize. It's 'what I call a hard-to-fight state,' said Charles Taylor, the executive director of Mississippi's NAACP chapter. Similar impediments exist in Oklahoma, where Republican legislators have passed severe restrictions on abortion and on what can be taught in public school classrooms about racism. Alabama, a third Groundwork Project state, benefits from a more urban population than Oklahoma or Mississippi. But Democratic get-out-the-vote organizers have been reluctant to operate in a state where there is no in-person early voting and where absentee ballots must be signed by a notary or two voting-age witnesses. Advertisement West Virginia is by far the most challenging for Kennedy. Its overwhelmingly rural and white population was long Democratic, but the collapse of the coal and steel industries in the state have spawned a profound distrust of party elites, Kennedy said. He recalled a visit to West Virginia just after he founded the Groundwork Project, when a bearded young man asked him, 'How come you Democrats think we don't know how to work?' To every such question, Kennedy's implicit answer was to organize. 'I think Mississippi has so much to teach our nation about resilience, never losing focus and not giving up when your government is actively working against you,' he said at an event in Indianola. Kennedy is applying the same calm resolve to his own political future. He and his wife, Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, an attorney and children's advocate, have a 6-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. Kennedy laments having missed so much of their infancy while serving in Washington. 'The question is, is what I would get out of going back into elective office worth the sacrifice that I asked my family to go through again?' For now, Kennedy is content to leave the question unanswered. 'I'm 44,' he said. 'And at some point down the road, I wouldn't necessarily rule anything out.' This article originally appeared in
Boston Globe
33 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Dozens gather at Boston Medical Center to protest Trump''s ‘Big Beautiful Bill,' cuts to Medicaid
Donald Trump's tax bill, which he signed into law on July 4, will strip about $186 billion from SNAP and close to $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, the Globe Advertisement The bill could strip healthcare coverage from some 250,000 Massachusetts residents, Governor Maura Healey Advertisement Republicans frame the bill as a way to target Medicaid fraud and save money. It would require states to 'We're here to expose the harm of this big, bad bill that will transfer wealth from working people to wealthy people,' said Marlishia Aho, the regional communications director for 1199SEIU. Franswa Jean-Enard, a personal care attendant for his mom and a member of the union, said he's anxious his mom could be stripped of her healthcare benefits 'at any time' because of the cuts even though he has 'all the paperwork to justify her need for it.' She has several conditions, including advanced arthritis, and relies on Medicaid for 'all her care,' including physical therapy and medication. Jean-Enard said it was important for him to protest because even if he isn't ultimately affected, he doesn't want other people to lose access to life-saving treatment. 'Back home in Haiti, there's a saying — when your friend's or neighbor's beard is on fire, put yours in order — which means when something is happening to your neighbor, it could happen to you,' he said. The state requiring more frequent eligibility checks would also be a burden, as Jean-Enard said the paperwork for his mom's Medicaid is already time-consuming and can take months to process. 'I'm hoping it doesn't get to that, but I'm hoping with the help of the union, what we're doing and organizing, we can push back,' he said. Advertisement Jean-Enard said he understands the government wants to streamline spending, but that it shouldn't come at the expense of healthcare. 'Every single PCA is doing crucial work,' he said, adding that his mom's needs will only grow with time. Janice Guzman, also a PCA for her mom, was cut from 'That's why I'm here, fighting back,' Guzman said. 'My mom needs my assistance 24/7 — and I don't get paid for 24/7 — but it's helping me pay my bills. Right now, it's like, what am I going to do?' Others at the protest, like 70-year-old Fe Guidry, a PCA in New Bedford, said they're worried about cuts to SNAP, which Guidry said SNAP 'really helps' her purchase healthy food. 'We're fighting for the benefits that we have,' she said. Emily Spatz can be reached at
The Hill
7 hours ago
- The Hill
Views from the front lines of Trump's war on the science community
The Trump administration has unleashed a tsunami of budget cuts to federal science programs. Mass firings have taken place at both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, part of a deliberate decimation of research staff across the federal government. Since January, the administration has systematically cut science funding to its lowest level in decades and issued a flood of budget plans and executive orders that are reshaping how the government uses and supports science. Some outcomes have been immediate and tragic, including staffing shortages that have left cancer patients stranded during experimental drug trials and delays in approving COVID-19 vaccines. The extent of these actions is unprecedented. The administration for a time froze all grant funding at the National Science Foundation and abruptly terminated thousands of the ongoing projects that it funds, as well as those of the National Institutes of Health. As scientists at leading research institutions, we have personally witnessed the effects of the administration's policies — including colleagues relocating overseas and students leaving research altogether. Undergraduate science internship programs have been canceled, and graduate programs in many research universities paused. As a result, scientists are increasingly seeking jobs abroad. The administration claims its goals are to increase efficiency and raise the standards of scientific research. In fact, thousands of programs and projects have been cut solely on the basis of ideologically motivated keyword searches, without any concern for their performance, design or conduct. That's not efficient. A Trump executive order issued in May underscores the purely political nature of these attacks. Titled ' Restoring Gold Standard Science,' the order puts hand-picked presidential appointees into every agency to review and 'correct' any evidence or conclusions with which they disagree. That's not scientific. Further, many of the administration's policies effectively punish researchers simply for asking discomfiting questions and punish institutions for teaching about unpopular ideas. Viewed together, these outline a political strategy toward science that is both systematic and dangerous: a full-scale war on the scientific community, the network of individual researchers across many institutions whose collaboration is essential for scientific progress. Despite the media stereotype of a lone genius in a lab coat, science is really a communal activity. As Isaac Newton, one of the most important scientists of all time, wrote: 'If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.' Every research project builds on foundational theory, tested methods and vetted findings created and refined through previous research. And every scientist depends on the distributed efforts of an extensive community to vet and review manuscripts for publication and proposals for new research, maintain common journals, databases and tools needed to share and build upon knowledge and educate and train the next generation of talent who help operate their labs. Institutions of higher education are the traditional hosts for the scientific community in the U.S, providing an independent forum for developing and refining ideas, an environment for training students and infrastructure for labs and shared resources. For more than 80 years, U.S. society has partnered with these institutions to foster a healthy scientific community. Federal funding enabled universities to build and maintain the infrastructure necessary for scientific research and support the most promising students. The scientific community collaborated to evaluate proposals for research across fields, ensuring resources were directed to the highest-quality projects, independent of political and institutional bias. No system is perfect, but the external scientific community has successfully partnered with the government to provide independent guidance and vetting — balancing competing interests and perspectives to evaluate proposals, advise the agencies that set funding priorities, accredit the programs that train researchers, review research findings and publish research results. Scientists within the government participate in the larger scientific community, reinforcing community standards as they move between jobs, and preserve the autonomy to ask scientific questions and share their findings. The administration's policies represent a three-fold attack on the scientific community. First, the administration aims to directly seize control over the key community functions that support scientific independence: Administrative actions have politicized the review processes for funding at National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, suppressed scientific data and withdrawn support for students. Second, the administration aims to subdue universities that provide an independent home for the community by weaponizing institutional accreditation and student visas, threatening individual institutions and their leadership when they are slow to align with the administration's ideology. Third, the administration is isolating scientists and scientific functions within the government. It does so by sidelining scientific expertise, firing entire independent expert advisory panels, canceling government access to scientific journals, preventing government scientists from publishing in them and, now, subjecting scientific analysis to systematic political modification and censorship. The government's war against science is a disaster for both. Without intellectual and political independence, the scientific community can't function effectively to discover new knowledge and solve hard problems. It's magical thinking for politicians to expect to receive truthful answers about the world when they poll to find the most popular answer, pay to get the answers they want or ignore data they dislike. And it's anti-democratic when political leaders dictate whether questions, data, and conclusions are appropriately scientific. Society needs science to tackle complex problems and to teach others how to do so. Science doesn't function without a healthy scientific community. As citizens, we should debate what problems are essential. As voters, we should decide which problems deserve public research funding. As free people, we should not tolerate political attacks on science and the scientific community. Micah Altman is a social and information scientist at MIT's Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship, MIT Libraries. Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
