Indiana's New Balanced Budget Amendment Gets "Positive" Rating From Moody's

Tuesday, November 13, 2018 at 8:17 AM

By Mike Perleberg @mikedup84

Hoosier voters ratified the constitutional amendment on state spending with 71 percent support.

Indiana Statehouse

(Indianapolis, Ind.) - Moody’s Investor Services is giving props to Hoosiers’ decision to add a new amendment to the Indiana Constitution.

The amendment passed on Tuesday, November 6 requires the Indiana General Assembly to pass a balanced state budget every two years. The requirement can only be disregarded if two-thirds of the House and Senate vote to pass an unbalanced budget.

Voters across the state overwhelmingly voted to ratify the amendment, with 71 percent voting “yes.”

Moody’s, a national credit rating agency, labeled the amendment as “credit positive” in its Weekly Credit Outlook. The outlook reviews policy decisions impacting state and national government finance.

In fact, the Indiana amendment was the only state finance-related ballot measure to earn a positive rating in the report.

Moody's noted that the balanced budget amendment’s passage means that Indiana will no longer be among a handful of states explicitly requiring lawmakers to budget no more money than it expects to take in. The publication also acknowledged that "Indiana has effectively operated with balanced budgets" in recent decades.

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