Indiana Senate president pro tempore faces challenge for District 37

A Martinsville Republican incumbent faces a challenge from Mooresville Democrat for Indiana Senate District 37.

Rodric Bray, the Senate’s president pro tempore, has been in office since 2012, taking a seat that was held by his father for a number of years. The Republican is running again because he wants to continue to work on addressing some of the challenges facing his district and the state, he said.

Kimberly Schofield, a Democrat who twice ran for Mooresville Town Council but was not elected, is seeking to oust Bray from the seat. Schofield is running because she found herself wanting to see more Democrats running for office. She also always felt a call of duty to her town and the state, she said.

To help voters make their decision in this Senate race, the Daily Journal asked the candidates their takes on issues facing the state ahead of the Nov. 5 election and early voting.

Here’s a snapshot of what they said, edited for length, repetition and clarity:

Next year is a budget year. What should be prioritized?

Bray: The biggest priority of the state budget is education. It’s just about half the budget. … There are challenges in this year’s budget. If you look at the last three budgets we’ve done from ‘19, ‘21 and ‘23, we had a little extra revenue because things were going well. … For whatever reason, the revenues were coming in higher than projections. That probably won’t be the case this year. It looks like it’s going to be relatively flat. … So we’re going to have to be extra judicious with our decisions. But first and foremost, we’re going to pass a balanced budget that spends within our means. That’s the job. … Last budget, there was a missed forecast. It’s not lost money, but they misestimated a forecast of how much Medicaid was going to cost to the tune of like $984 million, so a huge number. We’ve been working on that, and kind of mitigated that, but still probably looking at starting in a financial hole because of that missed forecast.

Schofield: Education. As [Democratic Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer would say, ‘We need to fix the damn roads.’ … Our abortion rights; women are now second-class citizens in every state in the union, and it deteriorates me so [much that] it’s back on the ballot. … Now we’re a state that doesn’t allow, I consider it medical care. Of course, at my age, I’m well past being able to bear children, but that’s not how I think. There was a woman, in one story I read, in Georgia who died at the age of 26 because she could not get the care that she needed. It’s despicable, so feel a little strongly about that, and then we’re a book-banning state — that’s ridiculous. So we don’t trust teachers. I taught a little bit before I retired, and I just remember rolling a book cart down the hallway and going into our classroom and pulling books off the shelf. That’s ridiculous. So we don’t pay teachers. We don’t trust them to make decisions. If a parent ever called me and said, ‘I really don’t want my kid reading this book,’ I would find another book. But for them to ban books, I mean, it feels like they’re in the ’30s.

Do you think Hoosiers need property tax relief?

Bray: [I knocked] on a lot of doors this spring, talked to a lot of people this summer at fairs and festivals, and based on those conversations, the answer is yes — people are feeling it. Part of the reason, of course, is that the local tax rates haven’t particularly gone up, but the property taxes people are paying go up. Tehre are a couple of reasons for that. If you’re a residential or commercial property, the value of those properties has gone up a lot, and as a result, the assessment goes up and what you pay goes up, because the value of your property goes up. Value of property going up is a great thing normally, but if you’re not selling, then you just have a larger property tax bill to pay. That becomes really hard, especially in this inflationary environment. … We’re going to take a look at trying to find some relief there. I had a large meeting with a group of farmers out of Johnson County some weeks ago now. They made it very clear that their aspect, the agricultural property tax piece, is really causing a serious pain point, so we’re taking a big look at that one as well. It’s a complicated process. It’s not just as simple as saying we’re going to cut it for seniors, or we’re going to do this or do that, because there are other repercussions if you make a cut for residential property. For instance, the share of the property tax that farmers and commercial and industrial properties pay goes up [and] vice versa.

Schofield: Well, that’s a tricky question, but we definitely need to. … The thing about property taxes being used to fund schools is not a good policy at all. So, yeah, we do need tax relief, but we also need taxes to fund public things like roads. I just think we need to come up with a solution. … My property taxes have gone up. Basically, [it was] pretty manageable. Now, are you kidding me?… I’m open to discussion, and if I hear a good idea, I will change my mind. If you make a good argument to me about something, I will change my mind.

Can property tax relief be done without reducing tax dollars that fund local governments and schools?

Bray: It’s important that everybody understands that while we’re working in the space, not one dollar of property taxes goes to the state, not one dollar. It all goes to local government — meaning counties, cities, towns, townships, schools. … Local government needs money in order to run its affairs, so we have to be very cognizant to that. … Because of the property taxes, because of the property values going up, a lot of local governments have enjoyed a little bit of an increase in revenue based on that, and most of them are using it very wisely. … We have to be cognizant of not getting rid of the revenue stream for local government or schools such that they can’t continue to operate in the way they need to operate and provide the services they have to provide.

Schofield: Well, there are other ways that the state brings in money. I’d have to say that I haven’t really explored that, but property taxes continue to go up when that’s one of Indiana’s posting points, that we’re affordable place to live. Like I said, I would have to hear other ideas, because I don’t know. I just don’t think it should be to property taxes. I know [the state] has an incredibly high, rainy day fund. … [When] COVID hit, Indiana was able to pay me, as a teacher’s aide, my contract and was able to do several other things that other states couldn’t because we have that rainy day fund. … That’s a really hard question for me because I don’t really know much about how the state funds things. I would want to get in with a bunch of lawmakers and figure it out.

A recent study says Indiana needs $1 billion to fund needed improvements to local roads and bridges. What could the legislature do to raise this money?

Bray: We have a commission working on that, led up by Sen. [Michael] Crider from over in Hancock County. … First of all, we’ve been fortunate in our ability to fund our roads and bridges and local roads over the last few years. And in fact, Gov. [Eric] Holcomb cut a ribbon on I-69 recently. We’ve been able to build that project, and we don’t have any debt associated with it, no bonding or anything. We paid that in real time and we’re particularly proud of that. But a mile of asphalt is much more expensive than it was back in 2017 when we put in place a system to make sure we’re paying for our roads. It’s more expensive to build a mile of road and the maintenance and everything else. … The inflationary market has made that all really challenging. Couple that with the fact that there are more hybrid electric vehicles on the road, [and] they don’t go to the gas pump as much. The gas tax, 100% of that goes to these roads, and so the money’s just not going as far as it used to go. … Sen. Crider and some folks in the House are leading an effort to take a look at that and see what changes we need to make to continue to fund our roads responsibly. I think local governments have been pleased over the last few years with the local arrangement we have between the state and local government to help those roads. But again, the money’s not going as far as it used to go, so it’s becoming a bit of a challenge now and that’s what we’re working on. The other thing that local governments need to understand, if they have not already done so, they can to impose a wheel tax.

Schofield: Gas is coming down, but it’s still too much. I remember when gas was like $1 something. I think that’s a little macroeconomics there, but I know a congressman was asked by his constituent to look into why gas prices vary from point A to point B, and like, how does that happen and he couldn’t figure it out. So I’m not really sure how we would raise the money, but we sure do need to.

Do you think the Indiana legislature is on the right track with recent education legislation?

Bray: I do. There’s a lot of talk this summer about some changes to the diplomas, and that conversation was productive. If anyone watched, they saw Dr. [Katie] Jenner take a lot of input and make some changes such that. … The gist of it is simply this, only half of our high school students even try to get a four-year degree. Only about a third of them actually get it, but our high schools have largely been focused on the idea of getting a four-year degree, and people choose not to do that for a number of reasons. … This work-based learning idea is a pretty strong idea for the state of Indiana. First of all, if you want to go get a four-year degree and you want to take upper-level academic classes, that is all still there. There’s nothing that’s going to take that. … But you have also the ability to get some work-based learning education, and hopefully, students will be able to go out, leave the high school and work in a job environment … and also get school credit. …

We got some criticism with the idea of, ‘If you get through third grade and you don’t pass IREAD, then you can’t move forward.’ And that’s that’s not even exactly true. There are a couple of exceptions that can move you from third grade to fourth even if you didn’t pass IREAD, but we really don’t want kids to move on past there if they don’t pass IREAD for a couple of reasons. People said, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so hard on a child if you hold them back.’ I would come back and say, ‘It is extraordinarily hard and cruel to a child if you don’t hold them back.’ Because if you’ve got to hold them back when they’re in the ninth grade, and you finally realize they’re not able to read, that’s a whole lot more difficult than it is in the third grade. You just have to get that right, because after third grade, you are reading to learn, not learning to read, and that’s why it’s really that pivotal. … A lot of our kids, a shocking percentage, almost 20%, really weren’t able to pass that exam. And I’ll tell you, IREAD is not the pinnacle of reading for third grade. It’s based on the second-grade level. If you don’t pass that, that means you can’t do the bare minimum. So it’s not fair to move them on until they get that figured out. … With regard to vouchers, the idea of parent choice has proven to be wildly popular in the state of Indiana. Lots of folks use it. Still, about 90% of our kids are in traditional K-12 public schools. But for those kids who feel like there’s a better fit somewhere else, it’s a good policy…. Finally, with regard to truancy, that’s a little trickier. … We’ve got pretty good truancy laws now. There are consequences for kids that don’t go to school, and even potentially for parents that don’t send their kids to school. What we got out of the habit of … enforcing that, focusing on how important it is that kids are in school. Because if you’re frustrated with the reading proficiency rate right now, it’s not going to get better if kids aren’t in school. There might be a little bit of tweaking we could do on attendance, but largely, our laws are OK.

Schofield: I absolutely do not. Are we going back to the ’40s? This is ridiculous [that] we’re a ‘Don’t say gay’ state because teenagers, they know their sexuality, and it’s really just dangerous to do that kids. And banning books. I probably have in my own library, banned books. I’m sure I do. And banning books? That’s awful. It’s just awful. You don’t read a book. I read all kinds of books. I was a reader in high school and college and it didn’t have an effect on my sexuality, my morals. So we need to really do something with education. Teachers aren’t appreciated. Nobody asked me, before they came in my classroom, how I felt about the book they were banning. Some of the best books I’ve ever read blew aside. … Somebody’s dropping the ball in K-2 if you get into third grade and it’s not passing IREAD or whatever they’re calling it this week. That’s a tough one, because you don’t want a kid to be held back and their friends move up and you know you’ve got to repeat [the grade]. Kids know that stuff. Kids are not always nice, but they should have been given … an IEP, individual education plan, when they are seen to be falling behind in first grade and second grade. So I don’t think you should scoot them along when they’re not ready. I just have a really hard time holding kids back. My own child was held back. He was not ready for prime time, and he had to do kindergarten twice. Now, he excels in academics.

Editor’s note: The “Don’t say gay” reference by Schofield is likely referring to House Enrolled Act 1608 of 2023, which prohibits human sexuality instruction in pre-K through third grade and requires parent notification of student name or pronoun changes. The book banning law Schofield is referencing is House Enrolled Act 1447 of 2023, which allows parents and community members to request books be banned from school libraries.

Should the legislature act to help curb hospital costs for Hoosiers?

Bray: We’ve been working hard on that since 2019 frankly and largely, we tried to work in the space of transparency so people could see what their bills are, and understand before they go in what their bills are going to be. For example, we passed … a requirement of good faith estimates so that you’re going to go in for a procedure for to have your appendix removed, or a knee replacement, or whatever, that within five days of that procedure, they have to give you a good faith estimate of what that’s going to cost, assuming it goes according to plan. Obviously [when] something gets complicated, that’s a different matter. An all-payer claims database, where people can go online and look at cost and compare cost, is now up and running. We’re really proud of that. It just happened about a month or so ago, so people can look at compare costs from one facility or one hospital to another. There are lots of things that we’ve done. … We’re not really done yet. There’s still a lot of evidence out there that while Indiana is a low-cost state, our health care costs are kind of an outlier, and they’re much higher than they should be based on the rest of the costs in [the country]. So we’ll continue to work on that. … We did some legislation in 2023 that is going to come due in 2025, early ‘25 that we’ll be able to look at. It’ll help us compare apples to apples, how Indiana compares to other states, and how one hospital or health care facility compares to another. All that information is going to help us continue to craft policy that puts downward pressure on our health care costs, because that is it’s really becoming difficult for Hoosiers to afford. It also is difficult for a lot of businesses to pay for.

Schofield: I know that my hospital has a sliding scale, and they do offer relief. I don’t know if every hospital does. But [costs] are ridiculous. They’re absolutely outrageous. If you’re uninsured, you’ll come out of the emergency room with thousands of dollars of debt, so we have to do something. We don’t fund education, we don’t fund medical, and we have got to turn this around. I don’t know why they’re so high, but I would certainly find out. That bill, that financial information, if a person can go over that before they leave the hospital, you know, apply for that aid. We have a lot of problems.

What are your thoughts on the cuts made to Indiana Medicaid to address the $1 billion shortfall?

Bray: I’m largely in agreement with what they’ve done. I know they’re trying in good faith to make sure that program is trying to help the people that that need it the most, but not let it grow into a large entitlement like we have at our federal government level. And so we continue to need to try and do that, because it grew at a massive rate. I think the inflation I think Medicaid grew over 30% since 2020 — absolutely untenable. We cannot continue to do that. The only fiscally responsible thing to do is make sure we curb that growth, make sure it’s helping the people that need the help, but we’ve got to keep an eye on it. If you look at the 2023 budget … it grew by 3%. It was 16% of the budget, and went to just about 19% of the budget. … In 2023, correspondingly, K-12 education dropped by about 3%. Because K-12 is about half the budget, you can see as Medicaid grows, inevitably K-12 will become a smaller percentage of the budget, and we don’t want to allow that to happen.

Schofield: Why are we hurting our citizens? … If you’re a low-income in Indiana, you are really treading water to stay afloat, and we have to do something. So once again, that would be, ‘OK guys. What are your positions? What do you think?’ Because I really haven’t researched what other states have done to remedy that, but I would. A billion-dollar shortfall? That’s going to hurt so many families. It’s hurting to say, ‘I don’t know,’ but I’ll find out. That’s the catch to it.

The lack of affordable housing is an issue facing Johnson County and the state. Is this something you think the legislature should address?

Bray: That’s the trick, isn’t it? What do you do? We have done a little bit in that space, and I think the way we did it was the right way to try and go about it. Essentially what we did, again this was the ‘23 budget, it originated out of the House, but they tried to add money to add infrastructure — meaning roads, sidewalks, water, sewer, things like that — because if you can bring the infrastructure there, the cost of building a house becomes noticeably smaller. … I think that’s had some impact, although the problem is persistence. Affordable housing is really challenging in this inflationary environment that we’re in, and so we don’t really want to get in the business of trying to directly subsidize housing. That doesn’t seem to be wise policy, and so we’ll try and do more of the same when it comes to infrastructure. Because the problem is not solved, it’s becoming harder and harder for middle-class folks — especially young people just starting out their careers — to become homeowners, and I think it’s bad for Indiana, so we need to continue to improve it. I would say too [that] I don’t know that we’ll do anything in the space, but local governments need to take a look at what they’re doing in that space. I had this conversation with lots of local government officials because I don’t know exactly what the percentage is as I sit here … but the the cost that is added to the construction of a home by local regulations is pretty significant. It’s all done with the best of intentions of making sure there’s quality and safety and things there, but they have to make those decisions cognizant of how much that will increase the cost. I’ve talked to a lot of builders who say that that is having a pretty large impact on the cost of home construction right now. So it’s just something that local governments need to be aware of and think about.

Schofield: I have actually put a lot of thought into this. When I was a [Mooresville] planning commissioner, I was the only no-vote because they were just building these cookie-cutter little neighborhoods where each house was very similar to the other house. … So these houses are like $200,000, $300,000 — that’s not affordable. Now I thought, well, we’re really close to the Hendricks County line, and we go to Camby quite a bit, because when they started building in Camby, they kind of ruined Mooresville’s economy. But anyway, I was taking my son to the dentist, and there was this huge construction site and I could tell by the shape of it, that it was going to be apartments. Well, I wonder how much those are going to be. … I get flyers in the mail about my house and telling us [about selling my house]. I’m not selling my house, but that’s how desperate realtors are. Realtors did come to one of our meetings and say, ‘We don’t have any houses to sell.’ So I get it, but the suburban sprawl; there’s got to be a different way. There just does.

ABOUT THE JOB

What: Indiana State Senator, District 37

Term: Four years

Pay: $30,070.24 a year, with a $196 per diem a day (2024). As President Pro Tempore, Rodric Bray made $85,279 last year.

Duties: Senators draft and vote on legislation brought before the General Assembly, including the bi-annual state budget.

Area: District 37 encompasses most of White River Township and all of Union and Hensley townships in Johnson County, along with with all of Morgan County and parts of Putnam and Owen counties.