A longtime Republican state representative is hoping to hold onto the House District 60 seat once again this election season.
She faces a challenge from a Democrat who hopes to bring a new perspective to the Indiana Statehouse.
Peggy Mayfield is aiming for her sixth term. As she’s become more familiar with the legislative process and more ingrained in leadership roles, she wants to continue the progress that’s been made during her time as a representative.
“All those early years … you’re taking things one bite at a time and digesting it, and it’s all starting to make more sense, so you’re taking that deeper dive,” Mayfield said. “That’s why I want to use that experience to continue down these policy paths we’ve taken.”
Democrat Michelle Higgs describes herself as a community leader, wife, mom of three and a Martinsville High School alumna. After moving back to Indiana from California in 2016, she became involved in local organizing around issues like the environment and healthcare and housing. But she found a lack of Democratic voices in the statehouse to hear those concerns.
“I was sitting with my neighbors, and we were talking about the impact of being gerrymandered, and sometimes you feel like, well, your vote doesn’t really much matter,” she said. “And so when voters don’t have a reason to turn out because nobody’s on their ballot that represents their values, then that can actually directly impact up ballot as well. So, that was one of the key reasons. If not now, when? And if not you, who?”
The following are their responses to questions the Daily Journal developed based on issues likely to be brought up in the Statehouse and issues that voters are talking about. Their responses were edited for length, grammar and clarity.
Next year is a budget year, what do you think should be prioritized?
Higgs: I feel, first off, that budgets are a moral document, so they represent how we prioritize things. When I look at the budget I see we’re putting a certain amount into education, but we are seeing a huge amount of money going toward vouchers that are largely subsidizing wealthy families already, and in particular, impacting the public schools in community and small town areas. That is something that I would want seriously to look at and revisit, especially when many of those schools that are being vouchered are not under the same accountability standards. The other thing I would want to have looked at seriously is the Medicaid funding and the fact that there was a supposed budget error of a significant amount. Meanwhile, there are accounting things and third-party billing that need to be looked at significantly. There are definite ways to save money, but it should never be at the expense of our most vulnerable. And I’m deeply concerned that is seemingly the first step they do is, we’re going to cut the most vulnerable people.
Mayfield: Sometimes the priorities make themselves known. Sometimes you have the option of choosing the priorities, and sometimes they kind of choose you. We’re facing a lot of different challenges, but we’re still in a fantastic financial position, the fiscal position throughout the state. We no longer have that $6 billion surplus that everyone talked about a few years ago, but I think the important parts are going to be, investing in, obviously, education will be our No. 1 item, and how we are going to fund that? Are we going to make any changes to that? Another driving factor is Medicaid. A lot of people have talked about the billion-dollar shortfall, and one of the things I just want to stress is: there is no missing money. So it’s not like that money is missing and no one can account for it. It was a miscalculation in the projection based on the data that was provided at the time. But we have to account for that, that’s an obligation of the state. So we have to come up with that in some way, shape or form. What drives Medicaid, we have to make sure we are always watching so that it doesn’t basically overwhelm our budget and then everything, instead of education being the No. 1 expense, now Medicaid is the No. 1 expense, and all other areas have to share the rest of the pie. So we have to be very careful how we approach that. Other things; public safety has continued to be a main concern for a lot of people. … Property taxes are clearly what we’re hearing from the constituent side, and how we’re going to address that.
Do you think Hoosiers need property tax relief? If so, could it be achieved without impacting local governments and schools?
Higgs: Yes, definitely. I’ll be honest, the thing that I am looking to understand more, and this comes really from living in Los Angeles for the time that I was. Los Angeles enacted what we call Proposition 13, and that helps to protect and shield property owners from the increase in property values that would happen. So when, particularly in that boom-and-bust cycle of 2007-2008 that was huge to protect a lot of people with the property taxes. There’s other issues that were going on, but that at least shielded many. Coming here and then watching in the same period, I’ll be honest, watching very predatorial practices from out-of-state investors increasing property values was like I’ve seen this before. This is disturbing. And then to see how our property taxes are layered on top of that valuation, I feel like we should have had some protection mechanism from a boom-bust economy that is oftentimes outside of our control. … Again, it comes back to, the goal is housing. So if we need to keep people in their houses, what do we need to do to do that? … To me, those are fixed incomes, whether they are retired or they are on disability, or veterans. You start there, and then you move outward. But it is egregious to me when I see people at risk of losing a home that they have paid for and their whole lives just because of property taxes, [and] at the same time understanding that that is the mechanism by which we fund our local governments.
Mayfield: We had that two-year [State and Local Tax Review] Task Force … and I’m sure they will have some recommendations. My feeling is that they will probably put forth … the ones that there’s more consensus on, bipartisan consensus. I don’t know if they’re going to put forth a bold program. I think that those ideas will be coming from individual legislators, and there is no shortage of ideas on what to do with property taxes, which is a good thing. … You’re throwing out all kinds of ideas that maybe we’ve never really taken a hard look at before, because things worked well under the formula that we had, but now we’ve got this disruptor, and it’s given us the incentive to think a little bit outside the box. So not only do you have different ways of calculating, maybe capping the growth, or tying it to an index that does not exceed inflation, all of those things are good ideas. And then you have [Rep.] J.D. Prescott’s proposal of doing away with property tax and replacing it with a sales tax on services, which is very intriguing. Never really thought through, and it might be too bold to absorb in a single session, but it has garnered a lot of interest, mainly because it’s not upsetting the revenue side and homeowners will own their homes and never be subjected to losing them based on failure to pay taxes. That is very appealing to a large segment.
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?
Higgs: That’s an area that I am just really starting to explore, so I don’t know that I feel well qualified to answer in that space, but I do feel like you need to bring in people that are actively involved in those industries. I think that there are cost saving measures. I think that there are ways of bringing in revenue or better stewarding the revenue that we have to prioritize those needs.
Mayfield: I think that’s part of what that Road and Transportation Interim Study Committee [was] working on. Whatever recommendations they are going to put forth. … Nov. 1 is when their recommendations are due. Let’s wait until they analyze all the testimony they took and see what recommendations they put forth. Even if those come out, that doesn’t mean that any individual legislator won’t have ideas of their own.
Do you think the legislature is on the right track with recent education legislation?
Higgs: No. I have three children, two of which are in grades K-12, and what I am seeing is the state legislature has overstepped in areas where it has eroded trust with our educators. I’m a believer that our teachers are incredibly well-educated. We put a lot of requirements on our teachers to turn around and second-guess every single thing they do. In any other industry, people would just be aghast that that’s the case, and yet we seem to do that time and time again with our teachers. I feel also with regard to the vouchers and how they’re looking at funding for schools, it’s coming from a scarcity mindset. If we are truly looking at school choice, and I understand there is no one size fits all, but if we are looking at that, then you need to increase your funding to cover all of those things, not take from one group to put it on another. Particularly when the group that is being taken from, which is our public schools, is also required to maintain their infrastructure, to maintain their transportation and their special ed services. So I tell people a lot, as a parent, I may think that I’m going to send my child to a charter school or private school or home school. If those options do not work out, the law still requires that my child is educated. At the end of the day, the public school in my area is required to maintain an infrastructure should I, at any time, need to put my child there. That requirement is not on any of these other schools, so there isn’t a commitment to education as a whole. … If we want businesses to stay and come to Indiana and invest in Indiana, it requires families. If we want families to come and stay, it requires our children to have childcare and education, and if those aren’t there, I don’t know how we expect to compete in this global economy.
Mayfield: With reworking the diplomas … the process worked as it was intended. They put forth ideas. They took the testimony, they heard the pushback, they modified it. They put it forth again, heard more pushback and they modified it again. Ultimately, the result of where it landed and being accepted by so many different and diverse groups, saying, you know, you kind of landed in the sweet spot. So that process worked as it should. I’m happy with where it landed. It doesn’t mean that will be its final spot. We always find those unintended consequences, things that don’t work and we need to tweak them. That’s why we meet every year, is to address policies that need change. So I certainly don’t oppose it, and I think that they did a lot of great work to get where they are, and basically got consensus across all groups. On the vouchers, I’m a solid supporter of school choice programs, and I think, the family is … the best unit to decide what is the best learning environment for their children. That could mean different places for different children within the same family.
Do you agree with the cuts made to Indiana Medicaid causing some Hoosiers to lose coverage or pay for it for the first time? Is there a better way the Medicaid shortfall could’ve been made up?
Higgs: No, I do not agree with that. As a matter of fact, I talked with a woman the other night, and you know, she is just so frustrated because she has a doctor that she’s working with, and the administrative layer of Medicaid interrupts that relationship. So the doctor would prescribe certain medicines, and then the administration there would say, “Oh, no, we’re going to send you and have you do this type of medicine instead.” And I think what I find is when these third-party groups are in the middle. First off, they make money. We call it churn. … They make money every single time they touch an application, they send an email, they do a phone call — all of those points of contact, they charge money for. And so if you’ve ever followed anybody that is trying to get assistance in these systems, they are very confusing and they’re made it that way because these groups make money from it. … Our goal is health care for people, that has to be the goal. And so what are the mechanisms that we have in place to make that as seamless as possible, so that the patient and the doctor are in relationship, not the legislation and not the administration, and definitely nonprofit entities in the middle.
Mayfield: Do you mean the cuts of people who were on it and then were removed after the pandemic was over? I disagree with calling them cuts, because it was known upfront that it was a temporary fix, a temporary stop-gap. Unfortunately, most people used it as if it was of a perpetual benefit, and they got caught in that cutback. I know some of those people personally. So it wasn’t sustainable. It was intended to bridge that gap during COVID. So I think it’s unfair to characterize it as a cut. It was an expiration of a program. But there are other areas that we still are trying to focus on, like the medically-complex children, like this launch of Pathways to Aging that had a bumpy rollout, and that has occupied a lot of my time over the last three months, trying to help people navigate that. Great concept. I don’t know if it was launched too early before the whole structure was in place. I’m not sure I’m still working on that. I’m still learning about who’s responsible for what, but that’s one of the other areas that is definitely affected by Medicaid.
The lack of affordable housing is an issue facing Johnson County and the state. Is this something you think the legislature should address?
Higgs: They could do more. I go back to the private equity companies. We now know, particularly in some of our more urban areas, where private equity has come in and bought up full blocks of affordable housing, and then turn them into rentals or Airbnbs. So there needs to be something to protect what I call the “ecosystem of housing.” Because the ecosystem of housing, it starts from the low-income, maybe subsidized housing, to rentals and affordable rentals to higher-end rentals to homeownership. And what concerns me is that in this age of we have to make a huge profit at all costs. We are having these predatorial companies coming in, and they are churning out low-income renters because they can get a fee, they can get a deposit, they can get all these things all the time. So people are being made homeless. There’s no tenant protection. Indiana does not have tenant protection, so there’s nowhere for tenants to go to really raise the voice. Many of them are living in sub-standard, slumlord conditions because if they complain about something, [they’re] going to get evicted. But to also hear that there are landlords specifically targeting our working professionals who are earning well, but they can never get into the homeowner market because they can’t compete with a cash offer. I go back to this is a predatorial mindset, that’s where I feel our legislation needs to focus on, is to curb those. If we’re talking about free market, then let’s have a free market. But what we have right now is not that. I almost feel like we are in a contained, almost like a fishbowl, that people, you know, these other companies, outside interests are going, oh, let’s go fishing, and we’re all in a fishbowl, and that needs to just change.
Mayfield: I think we have a very limited role in that. I mean, clearly we can’t spend the money. We can offer programs that help these first-time buyers. A lot of programs already exist, maybe we can expand them a little bit. Maybe we can make who qualifies for them a little broader, maybe remove a few hoops, or reduce penalties. … I think that we have a … limited role in those programs. But I think there is work that we can still do. Some of it’s not just buying a house. Some of it is helping people fix what they’ve got so they can stay in their home. Maybe they have a significant amount of collateral already established, so you’ll have to move to a new home if all you need is an addition. Maybe we need to consider that.
ABOUT THE JOB
What: Indiana House of Representatives, District 60
Term: Two years
Pay: $28,791 annually + per diem of $196 a day (2024)
Duties: Representatives draft and vote on legislation brought before the General Assembly, including the bi-annual state budget.
Area: District 60 includes an area of White River Township in Johnson County, along with Morgan and Monroe counties.
THE HIGGS FILE
Name: Michelle Higgs
Party: Democratic
Age: 57
Place of residence: Bloomington (Unionville)
Occupation: Small business owner — property management
Family: Married 37 years; three children
Education: Graduate of Martinsville High School; attended University of the Nations Academy of Performing Arts in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada; and Geerings Business Institute in Ashford, Kent, England
Previous political experience: School Site Council member for the Los Angeles Unified School District
Memberships: Martinsville Chamber of Commerce; Sierra Club; Indiana Coalition of Public Education; Hoosier Action; Reverse Citizens United
THE MAYFIELD FILE
Name: Peggy Mayfield
Party: Republican
Age: 61
Residence: Martinsville
Family: Husband, Dean; Four children
Occupation: Corporate Officer, Mayfield Insurance
Educational background: North Central High School, Indianapolis; IUPUI – Purdue School of Engineering
Political experience: District 60 officer holder since 2012; Morgan County Clerk from 2006-2012
Memberships: National Rifle Association; National Shooting Sports Foundation; St. Martin’s Catholic Church; VFW #1257; American Legion Post #230; Insurance Agents of Indiana; Martinsville Chamber of Commerce; Mooresville Chamber of Commerce; Indiana Farm Bureau; Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce
