The Indy Chamber 500

Legislative Updates Archive

While the first week of any Indiana General Assembly session is typically slow, the second week brings critical filing deadlines – and a flood of proposed legislation! Following a Tuesday evening interlude for Governor Mike Pence’s State of the State address, over 1,050 bills were up for consideration by Wednesday, January 14th.

Your Indy Chamber advocacy team is working in overdrive, monitoring some 550 of these bills between now and April 30, with special attention dedicated to the following priority issues:

Regional Cities Initiative

  • HB1403 offers critical support for Indiana’s regional economic hubs to build places where companies want to locate and workers want to stay through strategic investments in quality of life. As previously mentioned the Regional Cities Initiative is a project of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) and the Indy Chamber’s top legislative priority in 2015.
     

Equity in Local Government Funding

Alternate proposals to address local government funding equity include:

  • HB1135 (Rep. Cherrish Pryor) and HB1179 (Rep. Mike Karickhoff), which would require an individual who works or owns a business in a different county than where he or she lives to pay a tax to the county of employment at a rate of one-half or one-fourth that of residents of the county. The commuting individual would also receive an equal tax credit in the county where they live.
     

Early Childhood Education

  • HB1129 would build upon last year’s progress on early childhood education by expanding the pre-K pilot program beyond its initial five counties to 13 additional ones around the state, including Madison County. In a sign of growing support for this issue, the bill is co-authored by a bipartisan group of four legislators.

 

Mass Transit

  • HB1215 would provide an additional 40% of funding beyond the governor’s budget proposal to Indiana’s Public Mass Transportation Fund (PMTF) for the development of transit in communities around the state.

 

Water

  • SB410 would establish a water resources institute to responsibly manage state water resources. The institute would be staffed by experts in a variety of water issues and required to regularly update a long term water resources master plan for Indiana.
  • SB474 mandates an analysis by the Indiana Finance Authority of the long term needs of water utilities serving Indiana’s 15 most populous cities.

In the meantime, we hope you will join us Tuesday, February 3rd for the next installment of our Pancakes & Politics series, featuring a special preview and discussion of the Metro Indy Economic Growth Strategy with Indy Chamber President and CEO Michael Huber, Westfield Mayor Andy Cook, and Eli Lilly Vice President of Global Taxes and Chief Tax Executive David Lewis. Register here now.

Stay tuned for our next update as “The Indy Chamber 500” begins to move through the committee process in the coming week.

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