ROAD FUNDING

RESIDENTIAL TIF

• SB 104 would require a unit to reserve 5% of their residential TIF increment to pay for public safety services and would limit the life of the TIF (currently up to 20 years) to when the first bond issuance is paid off.
• Aim supports residential TIF as an important financing tool for housing development, particularly workforce housing, throughout the state and want to work to ensure that financing options are as flexible as possible. Further limiting the life of the residential TIF does present challenges for effectively financing these important projects.
• SB 104, authored by Sen. Rick Niemeyer (R-Lowell) and sponsored by Rep. Hal Slager (R-Schererville), was heard in the House Ways and Means Committee this Wednesday but was held for future amendment and vote at a later meeting.

PUBLIC BIDDING

• SB 5 would require all local units that receive state appropriations (which is all cities and towns as MVH and LRS are distributed to every municipality) to competitively bid all contracts except for legal services with an exception for states of emergency. It would also void all contracts on July 1 that did not comply with this requirement that are currently in effect.
• This change would obviously have wide-ranging negative impacts on local governments. On Wednesday, the bill sponsor, Rep. Matt Lehman (R-Berne), announced his intention to amend these sections that would negatively affect local governments out of the bill when it returns to committee for amendment and vote.
• SB 5, authored by Sen. Scott Baldwin (R-Noblesville), was heard publicly in the House Ways and Means Committee this Wednesday but was held for future amendment and vote at a later meeting.

PUBLIC NOTICES

• HB 1312 would create a new statewide website to which local governments could post legally required public notices free of charge instead of being required to publish them in a local newspaper.
• This has been a long-standing Aim legislative initiative. Local newspapers charge for public notice publication, which does create a negative fiscal impact for communities, but just as importantly, local governments must time their public meetings when papers can publish the notices to meet statutory deadlines. As papers close or reduce the number of issues they publish per week, this process becomes more and more difficult and, in many rural communities, largely unworkable.
• Aim continues to meet with members of the Senate Local Government Committee to encourage them to pass this bill in its current form. We encourage our members to reach out to legislators from their area of the state to support this bill as well!

WATER UTILITIES

• HB 1459 would require all municipal water and wastewater utilities to develop an asset management plan that complies with standards set by the IURC and submit it once every four years. This week, the bill was amended to provide additional technical assistance from the IURC to any utility that is not in compliance before initiating any rate oversight or other punitive measures. It also allows utilities that come back into compliance with the requirement to immediately opt out of any rate oversight by IURC.
• Aim worked with the bill author and sponsor to ensure that there is a workable process and sufficient technical assistance for small utilities to comply with the new asset management requirement and a lot of our suggestions were integrated into the amendment.
• HB 1459, authored by Rep. Jim Pressel (R-Rolling Prairie) and sponsored by Sen. Eric Koch (R-Bedford), passed the Senate Utilities Committee on Thursday with a vote of 9-0.

Listen to more about this week on the eleventh episode of the 2025 Market Street to Main Street Podcast Series, Aim’s legislative episodes of the Hometown Innovations Podcast and a supplement to this e-newsletter. In this episode, Jennifer is joined by Campbell and Isabel to chat about the past week at the Statehouse and what’s on the docket for next week.

To listen to Market Street to Main Street, please visit The Terminal post and click the “play button” on the audio player. Or you can subscribe to Aim Hometown Innovations Podcast on Podbean, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.