After the Morales Travel Flap, Indiana Demanded Receipts. Some of Braun's Top People Turned In Blanks.

Gov. Mike Braun at a press conference in Gary, Oct. 30, 2025. Braun topped this year's list of travel spending by Indiana's top officials. Photo: DHS/Tia Dufour, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Fifty-six travel entries. Not one dollar figure among them.

That is what two of Gov. Mike Braun's cabinet secretaries handed in when Indiana asked its highest-ranking officials to account for a year of official travel. Management and Budget Secretary Lisa Hershman listed 37 travel entries, including a meeting in Texas, and supplied no numeric expenses. Business Affairs Secretary Mike Speedy listed 19 and did the same, according to an Indiana Capital Chronicle review of the reports published Friday.

The Capital Chronicle's review doesn't accuse either secretary of spending public money improperly. The issue is simpler and, for taxpayers, more irritating: Indiana passed a law so the public could see where its leaders go, why, and who pays. A year in, the paperwork still lets officials skip the part about money.

The law the Morales trips built

State law now requires an annual report on the purpose and location of official travel, the expenses incurred and the state fund that paid for each trip. The requirement followed scrutiny of Secretary of State Diego Morales' international travel and who paid for it. The new reports, filed with the State Budget Agency, cover July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026. Sixteen of them add up to $132,572.

The Capital Chronicle found the filings vary so widely that comparing one official with another is difficult. Some list trips paid for by sponsoring organizations without saying how much the sponsor covered. Others report travel with no cost attached and no explanation of who paid. Some name who the official met and why; others offer little beyond a general description of a meeting or official event.

Who left what out

• Health and Family Services Secretary Gloria Sachdev listed $456.72, including a $350 virtual conference, plus trips to Washington, San Diego and Boston with no numeric expenses and no word on who paid.

• Braun's chief of staff, Josh Kelley, listed three trips, including an August visit to Washington, all marked as not paid with taxpayer money. The report doesn't give amounts or name who paid.

• Education Secretary Katie Jenner listed $70 in state expenses for an April apprenticeship exchange in Zurich. Her report says outside organizations paid some or all of the costs for that trip and several others, without saying how much.

• Energy and Natural Resources Secretary Suzanne Jaworowski spent $2,167.41 on a May trip to New York to meet a South Korean construction company about economic development. The report doesn't name the company.

• Attorney General Todd Rokita described the purpose of every event as official business, listed broad regions of Indiana instead of destinations for many entries, and reported two Florida trips totaling about $1,900 without naming the cities or the reasons.

The biggest number came from the governor who mostly stayed home

Braun led everyone with $28,014, narrowly ahead of Morales at $26,563 and Jaworowski at $25,046. Most of the governor's travel kept him inside Indiana, and those costs were charged to an Indiana State Police fund, with entries naming the counties he visited. To his credit, his report assigns expenses to individual travel days, the kind of line-by-line accounting the law seems to want.

One entry was thinner. A February trip to Washington is described only as being for events and not paid with taxpayer money. His office told the Capital Chronicle it was a Republican Governors Association meeting paid for through his campaign fund.

Jaworowski's spending deserves a closer look on its own. She accounted for about 62% of the $40,460 listed by Braun's seven cabinet secretaries. The largest single expense was $8,283.97 for an April 20 to May 1 trip to Seoul and Busan, where her report says she attended a nuclear energy conference and met with South Korean officials on economic development. Her Washington meetings dealt with nuclear work tied to Crane Naval Base in southern Indiana.

Morales, Rokita and the rest of the statewide ballot

Morales, the official whose travel started all this, listed five out-of-state trips worth about $8,000, including secretaries of state conferences in Washington and Biloxi, Mississippi, and a July 2025 election integrity briefing at the White House. Most of his total, though, came from monthly fleet charges of $18,329.49, about 69% of everything he reported. Those charges are lumped by month rather than tied to individual trips, so the public can't tell which drives they paid for.

Rokita's bottom line was modest at $5,694.54, about $5,400 of it on 10 out-of-state trips. He went to Washington seven times; five of those visits totaled nearly $3,400 and included U.S. Supreme Court arguments in two transgender sports cases, a Medicaid fraud event and an HHS announcement. A trip to Sea Island, Georgia, cost $60. The spending is small. The detail is smaller.

Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith reported $16,355 after reimbursements, about $13,500 of it in-state. A December 2025 trip to Washington for the White House Christmas reception cost $1,237.76 in airfare and hotel. "Susan and I were honored to attend the White House Christmas Reception yesterday in DC," Beckwith posted on his official X account, thanking President Trump for the invitation. The National Lieutenant Governors Association reimbursed part of his trips to Sarasota and Washington.

Treasurer Dan Elliott listed $6,987.11, about $5,000 of it in monthly gas card charges. His Dec. 6 to 12, 2025, delegation to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with the National Association of State Treasurers and the America-Israel Friendship League shows $458.59 in expenses, and the report doesn't establish the trip's full cost.

One report that shows how it should be done

Comptroller Elise Nieshalla reported the least of the six statewide elected officials, $2,912.39. Her report also does what too many others don't. Her office covered $1,273.29 for a September Washington trip to speak at a Club for Growth event, and the report names who paid for the rest: the State Financial Officers Foundation for conferences in Washington and Clearwater, Florida, and the State Policy Network for a meeting in New Orleans.

That is the standard Hoosiers should expect from every office: a place, a purpose, a price and a payer on each line. A sponsor's name with no amount, or official business with no city, tells voters where the paperwork stops, not where their government went. The full reporting is at the Indiana Capital Chronicle and was republished by Indiana Public Media.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.