INDIANAPOLIS (Network Indiana) — The signing of President Biden’s pandemic relief package gives legislators one more job for this session: setting rules for spending it.
Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray says he’s waiting to find out Indiana’s share of the $1.9 trillion package, and reviewing what limits Congress has set on how it can be spent. But he says Indiana’s budget has recovered enough that it shouldn’t need federal money to prop up the bottom line.
Instead, he says legislators will look to earmark the money for Hoosiers hard hit by the pandemic’s side effects. He says two likely candidates are a pair of bills already passed by the House: a financial-aid program to help hotels and restaurants, and funding for summer school to help students who fell behind while schools were closed get caught up.
Bray says legislators will incorporate the federal aid into the two-year budget they’ll approve next month. The Senate version of a bill revising Governor Holcomb’s emergency powers specifies legislators decide how federal aid money gets spent, the same as any other spending.
