Indiana Governor Mike Braun is wrapping up his first year in office.WRTV sat down with him to discuss what his administration accomplished in 2025 and his priorities for the year ahead.WATCH FULL STORY BELOW Indiana Governor Mi ke Braun reflects on first year, outlines priorities for 2026The Governor says his agenda is driven by what he calls kitchen table issues."Healthcare, education, utility rates. Running government more efficiently benefits all Hoosiers. That's what I'm going to focus on." On healthcare, Braun says Indiana must turn around troubling statistics."Indiana sports some of the worst healthcare outcomes with the highest costs in the country. You can see even Medicaid, which everybody complains about being reimbursed too low. Well, it's an issue."Governor Braun says he secured big wins for Hoosier parents and students, including universal school choice, increased teacher pay, new accountability ratings for schools and more money going into the classroom."Came in and got all of our public schools' post-secondary to do what Purdue did for 13 years, freezing tuition and other mandatory fees for two years." Braun also plans to continue focusing on utility rates in 2026 after appointing three commissioners to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, which he says will be ratepayer-conscious."They're also going to be able to see strategically what we can do to benefit as a state with having data centers placed in places where people might want them, not next to population areas. I think we'd have 40 or 50 rural counties that would be interested in it. It would be perfect. It would lower their property taxes by a fourth or a third. Wouldn't overburden their own school and healthcare systems. A lot of win-win there."He says Indiana is on the leading edge of electricity generation."Which will probably be small modular reactors, and by the way, have the best relationship with the administration that wants to do a lot of that." Reflecting on 2025, Braun says:"We're in a great place."One of his top legislative achievements was Senate Bill 1, which cuts property taxes for most Indiana homeowners, farmers and businesses."The first year, we got Senate Bill 1, that was then completely deconstructed to make it a shell. We had to rebuild it in the House Ways and Means to where it was historic property tax relief. It's put a lid on how you can grow government, even in places we'd like it to be, super healthy local government school districts. You can't grow them faster than the economy, or else you're asking the taxpayer to do more than what they can afford." Braun also brought up redistricting during the conversation, saying:"That has nothing to do with what we can do as a state working together. I think that was just where the Senate was out of sync with a large majority of Hoosier Republicans and conservatives.""I'm hoping that both chambers are going to be entrepreneurial and taking this opportunity of a super majority with a governor that wants to tackle tough problems and where it requires legislative work on them because it's best for Hoosiers," Braun added. The Governor says he has streamlined state government by consolidating agencies."I transformed a sprawling array of agencies into eight policy silos being run by secretaries that got deep private sector experience along with government experience. That's why our cash flow is exceeding the austere budget forecast. So that puts us in a great place to be healthy."On Indianas relationship with the federal government after redistricting debates, Braun said:"I think when you took a risk there, when the rest of the country that was asked to do it, did it quickly. We'll see what materializes there. I had a good relationship with the administration. We were the first call on a lot of stuff they wanted to do more broadly. I think most of that will be intact. Where you get your hands slapped on being out of sync, we'll see." He stressed that one disagreement doesnt define Indiana:"What defines us as Hoosiers is being entrepreneurial in a government that's generally been a little laid back."Healthcare will be a major focus in 2026."We've already spent time on it. I've got a track record for actually having successes there; it is hard to do through government. That doesn't mean you don't try to. Our public health in Indiana is in much need of improvement. Our system of two big insurance companies basically that run the entire sector of insurance and increasingly more and more very few rich hospitals at the expense of all rural ones." When asked about critics who claim he called a special session simply because former President Trump wanted him to, Braun responded:"We've just talked about reforming healthcare, taking education already to the level where all other states look to us, raised teacher pay starting by $5000. I-Read scores took the biggest jump in the history of our state. We're doing everything to embolden parents with complete choice. That's what I'm going to talk about. That's all stuff we can do."Looking forward, Braun wants lawmakers to focus on education, healthcare, the cost of living, utility rates and improving state government."I'm already doing that without needing any legislative help, and I think they can see that too, but we'll work together on those issues." ...read more read less