Part of a series—look for more analysis and opinion on Indiana’s 2025 legislative session in TheStatehouseFile.com.
Less than a week ago, the Indiana General Assembly declared “sine die,” effectively ending the 2025 legislative session. Out of the hundreds of bills that made it to Gov. Mike Braun’s desk, here are the favorite and least favorite in the eyes of Indiana lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.
Rep. Ed Delaney
Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis.
Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, who once authored a bill about legislative oversight, said the best bill that passed during the 2025 legislative session was Senate Bill 5—a bill that would keep government officials from entering into secretive no-bid contracts.
This type of contract is a noncompetitive agreement between a government entity and a merchant, meaning there were no other candidates that the government was looking at to provide them a service, including ones that may have cost less money.
SB 5 will bar state agencies from entering into nonpublic contracts and require them to publish any contracts they adopt at least 30 days before money is awarded.
DeLaney said this will be an important statute because it will prevent no-bid contracts, like the millions of dollars’ worth that The Indiana Capital Chronicle reported Secretary of State Diego Morales has been entering into since 2023.
“I think it’s a good step. It’s not all the way there, but it’s a pretty big step for us,” DeLaney said. “And I think it will help deal with the Diego Morales situation and similar events in the future. I think we’ll see less of that, should we call it ‘overreach,’ that some people engage in.”
The session’s worst bill, in DeLaney’s opinion, was House Bill 1001—the newest state budget. DeLaney, who has historically co-authored bills related to higher education and is a member of the House Education Committee, said he was most frustrated with the bill’s impact on students and professors at Indiana University (IU).
Last Wednesday night, just over 24 hours before lawmakers would make their final vote on the state budget, the Republican supermajority Indiana General Assembly inserted language into the budget that will allow Gov. Mike Braun to appoint every person on IU’s board of trustees.
“It was a complete violation of the normal legislative process,” DeLaney said.
He added that there was not a hearing about the addition in the Education Committee or the chance for input from the public.
DeLaney’s concern is that the university will have trouble recruiting good professors and that the ones who are currently there will have unfair evaluations, which could negatively impact post-tenure reviews and promotions.
Mark Bode, IU’s executive director of media relations, told the IU Daily Student, “Indiana University is currently reviewing the potential impacts of the proposed state budget.”
“A third grader could have figured it out in half an hour,” DeLaney said in response to Bode’s statement. “So they weren’t studying it. They were caving into it.”
DeLaney also said that if IU openly supported the bill, its students and staff may have fought back.
“They were afraid,” he said, “that the students and professors would wake up and realize that they’re under attack.”
Sen. Andy Zay
Sen. Andy Zay, R-Huntington.
Photo provided: 
Sen. Andy Zay, R-Huntington, one of Senate Bill 140’s authors, said it was the best bill of the 2025 legislative session—even though he did not think it reached its full potential.
Historically, Zay has worked on legislation relating to pharmaceuticals and health-care plans, with SB 140 now joining that list.
The bill primarily targets pharmacy benefit managers (PBM)—a third-party negotiator for health insurance plans, employers and government entities to arrange the cost of prescription drugs. Zay said PBMs take trillions of dollars from the health-care system by keeping the spread—the difference between the original and negotiated price of a drug.
SB 140 will require increased transparency from PBMs through mandated data reporting to the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Insurance.
During the 2023 session, lawmakers unanimously supported House Bill 1445, which allowed for an audit of Indiana’s pharmacy benefit services. The audit revealed that PBMs were profiting over $300 million from Hoosier prescription drugs.
“The health space is very difficult,” Zay said. “We saw many challenges in other parts of health-care systems, health services, and this is one area where I think we did make a breakthrough that could show vast savings to employers, employees and taxpayers through the state.”
Zay’s bill also encourages independent employee health plans to separate their health insurance from their drug plans. State employees will also be permitted to shop drug plans instead of using the one linked to their health insurance.
Zay said this may save employers and employees hundreds of millions of dollars.
Although he did not mention any “negative or bad bills,” Zay indicated that there were several unique topics discussed this session like car drifting, lab-grown meat and car color changes.
He added that it was a “different kind of session,” referencing the $2 billionbudget shortage and Gov. Mike Bruan’s newly inaugurated administration.
Zay said he hopes to improve Senate Bill 1—the property tax relief bill—over the next few years.
“We’ve got to determine how much government we want and how we’re going to pay for that government, and obviously, in a state like Indiana, … with a strong conservative base all the way through, you know, moderation and our liberal friends, … we’ve got to find that sweet spot of how we can fund government and provide safety, security and the necessaries that the government provides at all levels,” he said.
Sen. Liz Brown
Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne.
Photo provided:
Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, said there were a lot of good bills from the 2025 legislative session, but the ones she worked on that stood out to her covered topics including eviction, eyewitness identification at crime scenes and cybersecurity.
Brown, who created an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Task Force during the 2024 session, emphasized her work on cybersecurity in 2025.
She said Senate Bill 472 will establish and assess the best practices for cybersecurity in political subdivisions, state agencies, schools and state universities.
“There are no guarantees, but they’ll be, you know, protecting your data and also protecting the infrastructure that you were relying on,” Brown said.
The disappointments Brown encountered this session primarily related to the budget.
She said Turnstone, a therapy and activity center in Fort Wayne for disabled Hoosiers, received funding in the 2023 budget but not in 2025.
“They’re going to have to work really hard,” Brown said. “That was not just extra money. That was money they used for services.”
