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Indiana on pace to collect billions more than needed in budget cycle

A sign on a wall in the Indiana Statehouse reading "State Budget Agency" with the room number below. At the bottom of the sign, the words are also in Braille.
Brandon Smith
/
IPB News
With two months left in the 2023 fiscal year, Indiana has collected nearly $1.9 billion more than the state budget plan expected.

Indiana is nearly $2 billion ahead of its current budget after April tax revenues came in well above the expectations of that spending plan.

The state is nearly at the end of its current, two-year budget. And it has collected more revenue than needed for the budget in all 22 months of that cycle.

This fiscal year, Indiana has nearly $1.9 billion more than the budget plan expected.

And state lawmakers have already planned to spend a lot of that money. In the new state budget, HB 1001, approved just a couple weeks ago, Indiana will spend more than $1 billion this fiscal year on previously approved projects that have become more expensive due to supply chain issues and inflation.

READ MORE: 2023 legislative session was all about the money, from health care to housing to education

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Those include state prison upgrades, a new state archives building and a new, combined campus for the Indiana School for the Deaf and the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

The state will also spend $700 million with money collected this fiscal year to help pay down debt in a teacher pension fund.

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.

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Brandon Smith has covered the Statehouse for Indiana Public Broadcasting for more than a decade, spanning three governors and a dozen legislative sessions. He's also the host of Indiana Week in Review, a weekly political and policy discussion program seen and heard across the state. He previously worked at KBIA in Columbia, Missouri and WSPY in Plano, Illinois. His first job in radio was in another state capitol - Jefferson City, Missouri - as a reporter for three stations around the Show-Me State.