Want to dive deeper into the details of our priorities? Follow the link below to access the full Legislative Agenda:

2025 Legislative Agenda

HOOSIER ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Background: Indiana’s higher education assets and history of successful startups create a robust environment for entrepreneurship. However, we launch significantly fewer new ventures than similarly sized coastal markets and have less venture capital available ($5 billion in Indiana vs. $320 billion in Boston).

• New R&D ventures were launched at two times the rate in Boston than Indy over the last 20 years.
• Boston’s venture capital ecosystem is currently valued at $320 billion, compared to Indiana at $5 billion.

Policy Solution: Support continued investment by the state into venture capital to support companies in the growth phase and continue to optimize the state’s tax climate to encourage both starting and growing young companies.

ROAD FUNDING

Background: To support Hoosier communities’ ability to maintain and accelerate economic growth, Indiana needs an additional $2.4 billion in revenue to repair local infrastructure in poor condition.

Policy Solution: Support policies that increase available funding for local road funding infrastructure.

• New Revenue: Increase the available resources for local roads and streets, state-maintained right of way, and transformational infrastructure investments by establishing fuel-agnostic revenue streams with long-term projected growth. Examples include tolling, choice or HOT lanes, regionally based tax options, or a mileage-based user fee pilot.
• Distribution: Support a growth-positive distribution formula where dollars follow traffic while also ensuring all infrastructure is maintained at a high level.
• Transformation: Support collaborative efforts between INDOT, local communities, and the private sector, like the redesign of the Inner Loop interstate system, which aims to reconnect the Indy region, renew downtown neighborhoods, and catalyze Indiana’s economic development.

TALENT ATTRACTION & RETENTION

Background: The single greatest barrier to continued economic growth in the Indy region – and across the Hoosier state – is a limited skilled workforce.

• There are approximately 140,000 unfilled jobs in Indiana today. This number is expected to continue to grow as business investment and job creation continue to outpace the growth of our skilled workforce – which is currently forecasted to grow by just 110,000 from 2025 to 2050.
• Indiana is a top 10 importer of college students, with more than 25,000 non-residents enrolling in an Indiana college or university. Unfortunately, Indiana is also a top exporter of college graduates, with 34,000 departing the state each year.

Policy Solution: Support state funding for talent attraction and expand existing eligibility beyond remote workers, allocate funds for college graduate retention programs, and explore individual tax incentives for graduates.

POST-SECONDARY ACCESS

Background: By 2031, 72% of jobs in the U.S. will require education or training beyond high school. Indiana faces a shortfall in meeting this demand with only 39% of adults 25 years and older holding an associate degree or higher.

Policy Solution: Support the establishment of a statewide framework to encourage employer engagement in the Indiana Apprenticeship Pathway while ensuring continued state support for college enrollment, including first-generation students.

CIGARETTE TAX

Background: Tobacco use drives health challenges and high healthcare costs, which means higher insurance premiums, less money toward wages, and more tax dollars to support publicly funded Medicaid—paid for by Hoosier taxpayers and businesses.

• 63.6% of likely voters support increasing the tax on tobacco while only 22.6% oppose an increase.
• Indiana has the eighth-highest smoking rate in the United States.
• Annual healthcare expenditures directly caused by tobacco use in Indiana equal $3.4 billion.

Policy Solution: Support increasing the tax on cigarettes by $2 per pack to reduce smoking rates, lower healthcare costs, and generate approximately $360M in annual revenue.

The Indy Chamber exists to accelerate the Indy region’s economy for all, helping Central Indiana and the state to lead the Midwest and compete globally, driven by the strength of People, Place, and Business.

Central Indiana leads all other Midwest metros in economic growth. However, the Midwest lags behind the nation’s top-performing regions. Now is the time to accelerate Indiana’s economic momentum by prioritizing talent retention and attraction, improve health outcomes for Indy’s residents while covering the Medicaid shortfall, funding our communities’ infrastructure, and investing in Hoosier startups.

PEOPLE

Indiana faces a critical talent gap, with 140,000 unfilled jobs today and only 110,000 additions to the skilled workforce projected between 2025 and 2050. Despite being a top 10 importer of college students, the state struggles with retention, losing 34,000 graduates annually within a year of degree completion, placing it in the bottom 10 nationally. At the same time, only 39 percent of adults hold an associate degree or higher, and college enrollment among high school graduates has dropped to 53 percent, down from 65 percent in 2015. With 72 percent of U.S. jobs expected to require education beyond high school by 2031, Indiana must address these challenges by increasing state funding for graduate retention programs and strengthening employer engagement in work-based learning pathways to attract, develop, and retain skilled talent.

Indiana’s high smoking rate—the eighth highest in the nation—continues to undermine health and economic growth. Smoking costs every Hoosier household, whether they smoke or not, an average of $1,134 annually in taxes to cover smoking-related government expenses. Businesses face an additional $3.1 billion each year in smoking-related healthcare costs. Raising the cigarette tax by at least $2 per pack is a proven way to reduce smoking rates and associated costs, generating up to $356 million annually to help close the state’s Medicaid shortfall.

PLACE

The health of Indiana’s communities relies on quality infrastructure, yet local governments face a $2.4 billion funding gap to repair roads and bridges in poor condition. Strained by high inflation and declining gas tax revenues, the state struggles to maintain existing infrastructure and fund transformative projects. To stay competitive, Indiana must establish sustainable, fuel-agnostic revenue streams, such as expanded tolling to share costs with out-of-state drivers and regional tax mechanisms for targeted investments. Local wheel taxes should also increase to bolster infrastructure funding. A pro-growth funding model that allocates dollars based on traffic is critical to ensuring all communities thrive.

BUSINESS

Empowering skilled people to create new businesses is essential for the dynamism of our communities. Hoosier higher education and the state’s history of successful startups create a robust environment for entrepreneurship. However, Indiana launches significantly fewer new ventures than similarly sized coastal markets and has far less venture capital available ($5 billion in Indiana vs. $320 billion in Massachusetts).

Indiana should continue strong state investment in Hoosier startups, ensuring fund management that maximizes deployment of funds for startup creation and growth, and continue to enhance the state’s tax environment to encourage business starts and sustainability.

The Indy region and the state of Indiana are on the brink of a bright future. Hoosier businesses are the backbone of our economy. What they need most is for Indiana to invest in its people and the communities that support them. By nurturing our talented workforce and enhancing our vibrant places, we can unlock our great state’s full potential for prosperity.

Matt Mindrum
President & CEO, Indy Chamber

John Hirschman
President & CEO, Browning
Chair – Board of Directors, Indy Chamber

Ensure state and local collaboration to invest in regional downtowns, roads and streets, and transformational projects to enhance quality of life.

• Economic Enhancement District: Support the Indianapolis business community’s efforts to create the Economic Enhancement District (EED) to direct sustainable, dedicated funding for safety, cleanliness, and homelessness response in downtown Indianapolis.
• Funding Indiana’s Roads for a Stronger, Safer Tomorrow Taskforce (FIRSST): Drive strategies to increase revenue to Indiana’s critical infrastructure and establish equitable distribution models for sustainable, long-term maintenance.
  • New Revenue: Increase the available resources for local roads and streets, state-maintained right of way, and transformational infrastructure investments by establishing fuel-agnostic revenue streams with long-term projected growth. These might include tolling, choice or high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, regionally-based tax options, or a mileage-based user fee pilot.
  • Distribution: A sustainable model for the state’s distribution of roadway maintenance dollars should prioritize infrastructure with the highest traffic counts while ensuring that all infrastructure is maintained at a high level.
• Indianapolis Inner Loop Redesign: Drive Indiana’s economic advantage by implementing a recessed design for the reconstruction of the Indianapolis Inner Loop to catalyze economic development, support quality of place, equity, and resilience, and enhance the competitiveness of Indiana’s capital city.
  • The Indianapolis downtown interstate system is nearing the end of its useful life and will need to be replaced.
  • Reconstructing the Inner Loop constitutes a once-in-a-generation economic development and infrastructure opportunity for the state’s capital city.
  • A recessed design maintains existing traffic capacity and regional connectivity, ensures maximally efficient land use for right-of-way, and would transform the quality of place in downtown Indianapolis.

Drive the Indiana healthcare market toward value-based care to ensure high-quality health outcomes and competitive costs.

• Support the requirement (included in HEA1001-2023) for implementing value-based care in the State of Indiana’s self-insured plan as a demonstration and market-shaping project.
• Advance state level policies that support the creation of employer-driven coalitions to increase healthcare data transparency, drive improved coverage options, and result in better health outcomes.
• Support the ongoing implementation of enhanced public health investment.
  • This includes ongoing optimization of public health service delivery and government reform in alignment with the 2022 Governor’s Public Health Commission recommendations (minimum service standards, shared service models, Indiana Department of Health technical assistance, and talent attraction).

Continue to optimize the state’s tax climate while prioritizing the ability of state and local government to make transformational investments in Hoosier’s quality of life.

STATE & LOCAL TAX REVIEW TASKFORCE: Ensure a resilient, competitive tax climate with a broad basis for all taxes and an equitable balance of burdens between state and local levels.

• Right-Size Local Income Tax Reserve Balance: Align local government local income tax reserve requirements with state budget best practices by reducing from 15% to 11% to free up local resources while maintaining fiscal stability.
• Government Reform: Identify and prioritize opportunities to eliminate inefficiencies in government service delivery and stewardship of taxpayer dollars. This could include steps such as township government elimination.

Enhance the state’s education and workforce pipelines by supporting private sector efforts to expand apprenticeship and work-based learning. Simultaneously, continue to remove barriers to postsecondary enrollment by allowing undocumented students to qualify for residential tuition at Indiana state-supported universities.

APPRENTICESHIPS AND WORK-BASED LEARNING:

• Indiana legislative and executive leadership must continue to partner with private sector efforts to expand apprenticeships and work-based learning across the state.
• Clarify that the use of the state’s Career Scholarship Accounts (enabled under HEA1002- 2023) for eligible work-based learning experiences counts towards high school graduation requirements and ensure that students who participate in the Modern Apprenticeship Program, and similarly qualified apprenticeship models, earn credit that can be translated to post-secondary education.
• Provide authority to employers to define occupational standards and provide the authority for those to be incorporated into professional and academic education.
• Enact targeted employer liability protections to support high school juniors’ and seniors’ participation in on-site apprenticeships.
• Enable flexibility for high schools to participate in youth apprenticeship programs, including ensuring students participating in the Modern Apprenticeship Program are counted toward a school’s average daily membership (ADM) count and are supported in their participation through transportation, scheduling, childcare, or other needs.

RESIDENTIAL TUITION RATES:

• Allow students who are domiciled in the State of Indiana, have attended an Indiana high school for at least three years, or have graduated from an Indiana high school to be eligible for the resident tuition rate at state educational institutions.

EARLY EDUCATION & CHILDCARE: Ensure Indiana’s attractiveness to prospective employers and top talent by enhancing the availability of affordable, high-quality childcare and early education.

• Define early education and childcare as essential infrastructure for a 21st Century economy and critical to Indiana to take advantage of generational economic development opportunities, such as the CHIPS Act.
• Streamline state regulations on early education, while maintaining quality and safety:
  • Establish minimum licensing standards and enhance talent attraction to the profession.
  • Enable provider micro-site creation and provider site sharing.
• Support efforts to implement the tri-share childcare payment model.
• Support other recommendations of the Interim Study Committee on Public Health, Mental Health, and Human Services.

When it comes to core drivers of economic growth, the availability of highly skilled talent in an environment where it can thrive is the greatest predictor of an economy’s success. People are the engines that drive growth, innovation, and, ultimately, prosperity.

But whether people can participate in a growing economy depends on their access to education and work experiences that equip them with skills employers need. To remain competitive, Indiana must ensure greater access to, participation in, and completion of postsecondary education, including alternative pathways, such as modern youth apprenticeships. We must also retain more graduates and compete for new talent by investing in safe and vibrant communities people want to call home, whether they grew up in Indiana or become Hoosiers by choice.

Right now, Hoosier students face an uncertain future. Around 25 percent of Hoosier high school graduates complete a two- or four-year degree at an in-state, public postsecondary institution. For students of color, the rates are even lower, with only 11 percent of Black Hoosier students and 16 percent of Latino students completing college at public universities in the state.

The need for skilled talent is anticipated to rise, particularly with the advent of AI and continued automation. By 2027, 70 percent of jobs will require a postsecondary degree or credential. Proactive solutions are needed to create more accessible pathways that directly align with employers’ needs and are resilient to leadership turnover. This necessitates broad collaboration across education, business, and government.

While a high school diploma is no longer sufficient to provide the skills needed for most to succeed in our modern economy, a traditional college degree is not the only path to success. It is imperative to construct alternative pathways to high-skill, high-wage career opportunities, such as modern youth apprenticeships. Inspired by the Swiss model and studied at length by Hoosier leaders from education, business, government, and philanthropy, youth apprenticeship programs are being piloted across the state in diverse industries such as healthcare, advanced manufacturing, financial services, and technology.

The business community is eager to expand the reach of these programs. Legislative support is essential to ensure high school and postsecondary credit is offered for apprenticeship experience, to involve employers in performance evaluation and academic standard development, to develop appropriate safety and liability standards, and to maintain current levels of school funding by counting apprentices toward average daily matriculation. These policies are vital for expanding work-based pathways to high-skill opportunities for Hoosier students.

Alongside efforts to construct new, experiential pathways to high-skill, high-wage jobs, it remains critical to make traditional college degrees more accessible for Hoosier students. Automatic enrollment of eligible students into the 21st Century Scholars program in 2023 was a move in the right direction. The next step is to allow in-state tuition at Indiana public universities for eligible undocumented students—an important strategy to retain a diverse and fast-growing population that already calls Indiana home.

When it comes to investing in Hoosier communities as talent-magnets, there is no more important place to start than downtown Indianapolis. Downtown’s Economic Enhancement District (EED) – supported by the business community, authorized by the General Assembly, and enacted by the Indianapolis City-County Council in 2023 –  dedicates sustainable funding toward public safety, cleanliness, homelessness response, and economic growth in the Mile Square. These are important ingredients to a commercial and residential environment that attracts and protects property owners’ investments. Downtown belongs to all Hoosiers, and the EED will be critical to supporting its vibrancy for years to come.

The connection between cultivating a skilled workforce and fostering dynamic communities with robust economic development is inextricable and indispensable for Indiana’s long-term success. Central Indiana must establish a resilient and adaptable framework to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving economy. Legislative support, strong partnerships, and a shared commitment to Indiana’s future growth and competitiveness will be instrumental in achieving these goals.

Matt Mindrum
President & CEO, Indy Chamber

John Hirschman
President & CEO, Browning
Chair – Board of Directors, Indy Chamber