On April 24, the Indiana General Assembly concluded the 2025 legislative session after nearly four months of deliberation over each of the 243 bills that made it to Gov. Mike Braun’s desk. Tuesday, on the deadline to take action, the governor signed the last 60 bills of the session.
Among these bills were the state budget, several education-related pieces of legislation, multiple Medicaid bills and other hot topics of the session.
Braun had seven days to sign them, and if he had chosen not to, the over 60 bills with a May 6 deadline would have become law without his signature.
Mike Wolf, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University, said Braun’s last-day signatures were likely not because he wanted to veto anything, but rather he wanted to study what he was signing due to his experience in the U.S. Senate—one of the most deliberative branches of government.
“There were controversial bills in the mix and the budget as well,” he said. “Given the large volume of legislation and the level of controversial topics—for health, for culture wars, for budgetary necessity in a time of tight budgets—it’s understandable to give things a read. Plus, it is his first year as governor and his most recent political experience was in the U.S. Senate, the most deliberative, and likely slow, legislative body in the world.”
Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis, said having over 60 bills left to sign on deadline day was somewhat unusual but, like Wolf said, could be explained by the budget year.
Although Braun waited until the last minute, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed his last bills days before the deadline in 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023, all of which were budget years. In 2015 and 2013, Gov. Mike Pence took a similar approach.
The difference for Braun in 2025 could be, according to Merrifield Wilson, that the budget was estimated to be $2 billion budget short just two weeks before the session adjourned.
“There was a lot of rush at the end of the session,” she said. “Things go through very quickly towards the end because there’s been a lot of debate, but I think in large part, because in the budgeting session, because we had the budgeting shortfall, … you had really last-minute negotiations.”
