In July of 2025, the Bureau of Disabilities Services (BDS) issued public notice on the intent to submit amendments to the Family Support (FS), Community Integration and Habilitation (CIH), Health and Wellness (H&W), and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Waivers to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for consideration.

The 30-day public comment period concluded on August 9, 2025. Following review and consideration of public comment, the BDS has submitted the amendments to CMS for review. BDS intent, with CMS approval, is to move forward with the proposed limits presented in those amendments for Recreational Therapy, Music therapy, and the service changes to Behavior Support Services.

The Bureau’s transition plan for these service limit changes includes the ability for individuals to maintain the service they are receiving up to the effective date of this change. Any service plan as of December 31, 2025, that includes services in excess of the proposed limitations, must be updated by the waiver effective date, to ensure compliance with the new limits.

Therefore, individuals will be able to continue receiving their current approved hours until December 31,2025. After this date, all hours must be adjusted to meet the new service limits requirements. Individuals should be working with their case manager now to appropriately plan for any changes in services necessary to ensure compliance with the service limitations. If individuals in services have questions about their service plan, they can contact their waiver case manager.

The Evansville Police Department Pension Board (the “Board”) will hold an Executive Session on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, at 8:15 a.m. The Executive Session will be held in Room 307 on the third floor of the Civic Center at 1 N.W. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Evansville, Indiana. 

The Executive Session will be closed to the public for the following reason: for discussion of records     classified as confidential by state or federal statute (I.C. § 5-14-1.5-6.1(b) (7)) and to receive information about prospective employees (I.C. § 5-14-1.5-6(b) (5)). 

Immediately following the Executive Session, the Board will conduct its regularly scheduled monthly meeting, which is open to   the public.

October 1, 2025 Agenda

Evansville Residents Raise Awareness and Funds for Alzheimer’s Care, Support and Research

WHAT: On Walk day, participants honor those affected by Alzheimer’s with the poignant Promise Garden ceremony — a mission-focused experience that signifies our solidarity in the fight against the disease. During the ceremony, walkers will carry flowers of various colors, each color representing their personal connection to the disease.

For more information and to register, visit act.alz.org/Evansville

WHEN: Sat., Oct. 4

Event opens at 9 a.m.
Ceremony at 9:45 a.m.
Walk at 10 a.m.

WHERE: Friedman Park, 2700 Park Blvd., Newburgh, Ind., 47630

NEWS: The 2025 Walk to End Alzheimer’s – Southwest Indiana offers a great opportunity for media to report various Alzheimer’s-related storylines and the disease’s impact on residents, including:

• The personal impact of Alzheimer’s on local families
• The challenges facing Alzheimer’s caregivers
• Inspiring personal stories on why individuals participate in Walk

Experts from the Alzheimer’s Association Greater Kentucky & Southern Indiana chapter can also address the following:

• Alzheimer’s statistics and disease impact on Indiana families
• How the Association supports families and delivers services in the community
• How the Association is fighting for a cure and more treatment options

BY: CASEY SMITH

Indiana lawmakers heard stark warnings Thursday that the state’s prison population is again nearing capacity while funding for local alternatives is shrinking.

Margaux Auxier, with the Indiana Department of Correction, on Thursday told the state’s Interim Study Committee on Corrections that the agency’s incarcerated population dipped during the pandemic but is now back on the rise.

“We saw during COVID-19 that our numbers drastically dropped … our population did dip quite a bit during that time period,” she told the panel, which is made up of lawmakers, prosecutors, public defenders and other corrections-related officials.

She said DOC recorded 22,000 inmates at its low but that the state now has more than 25,000 individuals in custody, with facilities operating at more than 95% capacity.

Auxier told lawmakers that Indiana’s facilities are once again filling up.

“Now, we’re seeing an increase in our population overall,” she said. “To try to mitigate some of these issues, we have implemented a policy to allow more minimum security placements. We actually will eventually go onto a waitlist. So we’re trying to get those folks that are low-risk individuals into a facility that would help them transition better back into the community.”

Prison numbers rising

She noted that “an influx” of Level 6 offenders “are coming back to us to serve their time in DOC instead of at the county level.”

Auxier also pointed to sentencing changes as a factor behind the rise.

“If you think about it, just from a numbers perspective, 75% is more than 50% so they’re serving a longer period of incarceration,” she said, referring to changes in Indiana’s sentencing laws that increased the portion of a sentence that offenders must serve — from 50%, or day-for-day credit, to 75%, or three-for-one credit.

That change means offenders now serve a longer period of their sentence in prison, which Auxier said contributes to a higher prison population over time.

“Those individuals kind of stack up over time,” she continued. “That’s what we’re seeing as a stacking effect.”

Chris Daniels of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council additionally highlighted a decade-long shift in criminal filings.

“We’ve seen a pretty dramatic increase in the most violent crimes, in our most serious levels, in terms of our murders and our level one and two felonies,” Daniels said.

“Our threes, fours and fives, they’ve stayed about the same,” he added, referring to felony offenders. “And then we see a decrease in some of our level sixes and a fairly significant drop in our misdemeanor charges.”

There are six felony levels with level one being the highest.

According to prosecutor data, Indiana courts handled 316 murder filings in 2015 compared to a projected 572 this year. Filings for the lowest-level offenses have moved in the opposite direction, with misdemeanors falling from more than 220,000 in 2015 to under 190,000 projected for 2025.

Daniels said the complexity of those top-tier cases — murders, rapes and major drug-dealing prosecutions — has forced prosecutors to shift resources away from low-level filings.

“These are complex drug dealing cases, rape cases, terrible child molest cases, the types of stuff that we really want prosecutors’ offices focusing on,” Daniels said.

But Zach Stock with the Indiana Public Defender Council further noted that despite spikes in violent incidents, overall crime trends have been relatively flat or down.

“On average, crime is declining or holding steady, but there are spikes in certain places,” he said. He warned that “suicide, alcohol, drug-related deaths far outnumber homicides,” and that jails and prisons too often serve as “the providers of last resort” for behavioral health.

Funding shortfalls

Shifting gears, Scott Hohl, executive director of Marion County Community Corrections, told the interim committee that probation and community corrections now supervise more than 106,000 Hoosiers daily. But state grant funding — the primary support for such programs — has been flat for seven years and was cut by $7 million statewide this year, with more reductions expected in 2026.

“We are community supervision,” Hohl said. “We are more cost effective than having someone in a jail or prison, and the services that we provide then provide individuals an opportunity to get out of the system and hopefully avoid returning to the system.”

Local impacts of the cuts are already showing up in next year’s grant awards. Monroe County, for example, will lose funding for both its drug court and mental health court, according to DOC records presented to the committee.

In Lake County, community corrections saw its award shrink by nearly $600,000, with reductions hitting its re-entry and veterans courts.

Smaller counties face similar challenges. Boone County lost support for jail treatment programming, while Dubois County’s request for expanded community supervision was pared back.

Hohl cautioned that the timing could not be worse.

“The need has never been greater,” he said. “Cutting these programs now will only push more people into already overcrowded jails and prisons.”

Still, Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, raised questions about the program’s financial accountability. He pressed Hohl for specifics on how much of the program’s budget comes from state grants, county contributions and user fees. Freeman was especially concerned about the lack of data on how many participants are declared indigent and therefore do not pay for services.

“Only government can be so special as to tell me, ‘We have a funding problem. We have no idea how many people don’t pay for a service that they’re actually using, but I need more money from the state,’” Freeman said.

The senator acknowledged the challenges that come with collecting fees from participants, however, especially once debts are sent to collections.

“I mean, look, there is a finite amount of money. In my time in the General Assembly, the amount of money that the taxpayers give to government has almost doubled,” Freeman said. “I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. I’m just telling you it’s almost doubled.”

Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, pressed lawmakers to confront the root causes of crime rather than only funding prisons.

“Most of the people we’re encountering in these programs, they either have substance use disorders or mental health issues or most of the time, both,” Pierce said. “Unless we start funding these programs to get at the underlying cause of crime, we’re going to continue to have our constituents frustrated. Why does this person keep coming back all the time? Why didn’t you just lock them up forever?”