HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) – Early Friday morning, a new two year budget was passed by the state senate after nearly 18 hours of debate.

The revised budget creates a $1.5B increase in K through 12 school tuition support. That is about a $300M increase from the plan released on Wednesday. The plan still allows school choice vouchers to expand significantly. A family of four making up to $20,000 a year would become eligible.

“The idea was that we would take the Senate’s version of the budget as pertained to the K-12 public school, and put the vouchers on top of that. It kind got squished in between there, so there wasn’t as much money in there for the traditional public schools, so we had to start over and get it to where we needed it to be,” said State Senator Rodric Bray.

“And then just the continued support for VOUCHERS, I mean I’ll tell you as an advocate for that program when it first started out, it had very noble beginnings, but I was warned by colleagues on the other side of the aisle that this is a race to the end and hopefully they are at the end,” said State Senator Greg Taylor.

Here is a look at how state senators representing the Tri-State voted:

  • (D) Veneta Becker: No
  • (R) Jim Tomes: Yes
  • (R) Mark Messmer: Yes

Governor Eric Holcomb says he’s “extremely proud” of the two year budget, and says Indiana remains in a state of perpetual forward motion.