Here's what Hoosiers can expect Indiana lawmakers to do in 2024

Indiana lawmakers say they’re aiming for a short legislative session in 2024, composed mainly of tweaking laws rather than introducing whole new concepts.

But in a major election year, anything can happen.

“We’ll have fewer agenda bills to signal that leadership is of the 'less is more' opinion right now,” House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, told an audience at the Indiana Chamber’s legislative preview last week.

Lawmakers gaveled in just before Thanksgiving for the ceremonial start of the session, which officially starts Jan. 8. Leadership in the House and the Senate offered a preview of what lawmakers might tackle at the start of the year.

It'll be a short(er) session

The Indiana General Assembly passed the state’s two-year budget in its 2023 session earlier this year. Without a budget to pass in 2024, the session will be about a month shorter, running from January through about mid-March.

Leaders seem to be angling toward a speedy conclusion. In the Senate, they’ve limited the number of bills lawmakers can file from 10 to five, with exceptions for committee chairs.

After three “aggressive” sessions in a row, Huston said, there’s interest this year in taking a more “measured” approach and restoring some of the original ethos of a short session ― that it’s supposed to be for emergency items.

The 2023 session certainly crammed in a lot before the 4 a.m. finish in April, from a massive private school voucher expansion to bills tackling controversial "culture war" issues like transgender youth health care.

Here is what we know about whether some key issues are likely to come up:

Education

Republican and Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate said they are interested in taking on education-related issues.

Members of the Senate’s Republican caucus are interested in potential legislation to lower the chronic absenteeism rate and elevate reading proficiency levels for young Hoosiers across the state, said Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray, R-Martinsville,.

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There is value in the idea of ending promotion for third-grade students who don't learn to read proficiently, he said.

"The importance of child learning to read by third grade is possibly the most important part of education process," Bray said. "It seems like an awful lot of kids are getting passed on to fourth grade and then not we're not keeping an eye on them to make sure that they they do later become proficient."

But at a press conference, Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, pointed to legislation passed in 2023 on the science of reading and said lawmakers should give that legislation time to work.

"We need to make sure that schools have the opportunity to train their teachers to implement these strategies across the board before we start throwing new legislative hurdles in the way," Hunley said.

The chronic absenteeism topic comes as the Indiana Department of Education in October released recent truancy data for the state, showing a “significant” increase since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s chronic absenteeism rate for the 2022-23 school year was 19.3%, according to the Department of Education.

Social issues

Lawmakers said it before the last session, too: Let’s try to avoid the social issues.

In November 2022, Bray expressed this desire at the Chamber’s legislative preview following an explosive summer special session in which lawmakers passed a near-total abortion ban.

But the 2023 session ended up tackling some of the most divisive social topics of the day, with lawmakers introducing a record number of bills targeting LGBTQ issues.

This year it was Senate Minority Leader Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, who made the wish.

“We are going to try, like we do every year, to hopefully keep those social issues out of the legislative process,” Taylor said, without specifying which issues. “We’re gonna be in a defensive posture and hopefully we will get some support from the other side of the aisle to keep those issues out of the agenda.”

Republican leaders, who control the legislature with a supermajority in both chambers, didn't say whether social issues would figure into their agenda.

Marijuana and gaming

Indiana is still not likely to see movement on marijuana legislation in 2024, despite momentum in the public sphere through the actions of Ohio voters who approved legalizing recreational use through a ballot initiative earlier this month.

Taylor said lawmakers need to act on cannabis before Indiana falls behind other states, but Bray said movement seems unlikely. Huston agreed.

“No one has made a compelling case to me yet on why legalizing marijuana or having more people use cannabis in the state of Indiana is a positive thing,” Huston said. “Until I hear that answer, I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of change.”

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Additionally, Bray said he “wouldn’t bet on” gaming legislation moves this year after news broke earlier this month that former state Rep. Sean Eberhart planned to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud.

Court documents allege Eberhart was promised future employment at a casino company and an annual compensation of at least $350,000 in exchange for using his elected position to assist the company in relocating two casinos.

Bray said that news taints the Statehouse.

“It causes an awful lot of problems and it makes it particularly difficult to engage in that kind of policy," he said.

Water

Water wars have bubbled to the public consciousness in Indiana as residents in Tippecanoe County mount an increasingly organized opposition to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s proposal to pipe water from the Wabash River down to the LEAP district in Boone County.

Legislative leaders are not enthusiastic about passing bills dealing with water regulation until the issue is properly studied, but they also haven’t closed the door on it.

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Two lawmakers plan to file companion bills to put a permitting process in place for large water withdrawals. At the same time, there are multiple ongoing studies about water availability in the area: an INTERA engineering firm study of the Wabash River aquifer expected to wrap in January, an Indiana Finance Authority study of the surrounding 12-county region due next fall, and an Indiana Chamber study of statewide water resources expected by next summer.

“We’re not gonna take any other steps until we have an opportunity to study to make sure that there’s ample water for the processes that we’re trying to bring into the state and we understand how much is too much to take away from a particular community," Bray said Monday. “You may see legislation this year on that issue. Whether or not it moves or not is dependent on...what it says. We'll have that conversation.”

Israel-Hamas war likely to come up

In an opening address at the gavel of the House session, Huston made special mention of a bill in 2023 that sought to codify antisemitism as discrimination on the basis of religion in the section of Indiana law about equal opportunity in schools. The bill, authored by Rep. Chris Jeter, R-Fishers, passed the House, but did not pass the Senate earlier this year.

Huston said this would certainly make a comeback in light of the Israel-Hamas war.

"It was a good bill last year; it's even more appropriate this year," Huston said. "You don't have to turn on the news or read the news not to see the situation happening far too often across our country to the Jewish students. We just happened to be a little bit ahead of it last year."

Senate Minority Leader Taylor said the legislature should not just choose one group of people to support via legislation.

"We need to protect all students on all campuses from any act of hatred," Taylor said.

The 2024 session starts Jan. 8.

IndyStar reporter Ko Lyn Cheang contributed to this story.

Contact IndyStar's state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at brittany.carloni@indystar.com or 317-779-4468. Follow her on Twitter/X @CarloniBrittany.

Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter@kayla_dwyer17.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana 2024 legislative session: Education, antisemitism likely topics