(INDIANAPOLIS) — Legislators are aiming to end this year’s session eight days ahead of
schedule.
Legislators have made a habit of trying to finish before the legal deadline of April 29, allowing them
to get home sooner, and eliminating the hard midnight deadline that can create last-minute chaos.
But Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray (R-Martinsville) is setting an unusually ambitious goal of
adjourning by April 21, and enforcing it by moving up deadlines for committee hearings by a week
to start the session’s endgame a week early.
There’s a limit to how far in advance legislators can adjourn. They can’t finalize a budget until they
receive an updated revenue forecast in early to mid-April. Bray says the House and Senate are
already negotiating so they can just tweak the numbers at that point.
House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) calls the April 21 date a “great goal,” but says
lawmakers at a minimum should be able to adjourn that week. Along with the usual reasons for
wanting to go home early, he says there are additional reasons this year. He says the coronavirus
pandemic makes it a good idea to minimize how long legislators remain gathered together, while
pandemic safety measures will make it harder to hold end-of-session conferences to resolve
differences.
And Huston notes a special session is a certainty this year, because the Census Bureau hasn’t
delivered the population data needed to redraw congressional and state legislative districts, which
must be done this year. He says wrapping up the regular session early will offset some of the
extra cost to taxpayers when legislators come back.
