2025 Indiana General Assembly 

Week four of the 2025 session of the Indiana General Assembly is now complete. We’ve gone through with a fine tooth comb the entire cadre of bills filed – over 1,200 separate pieces of legislation. Make sure you keep up to date with legislation we’re tracking on our 2025 Indiana General Assembly page.

This week was a pretty busy one for us at the Indiana General Assembly - we testified on eight bills in five different committees. We supported a handful of bills, but unfortunately, more bills earned our opposition than support. In the Senate Family and Children Services Committee, we testified in support of Senate Bill 529, authored by Greg Walker (R-Columbus) which would remove the asset limit for Hoosiers who receive Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program funds (also known as food stamps). Indiana is the last Midwest state with an asset limit, which prevents Hoosiers from saving money to pay utility bills, fix a car, or save for a home or rent. The bill passed 7-2 and heads to Senate Appropriations. 

In Senate Environmental Affairs, we testified in support of a measure we’ve supported before, Sen. Andy Zay’s Senate Bill 310, which would allow the Indiana Department of Administration to conduct energy audits of the Indiana State Government Center and the Statehouse. The bill passed 10-0 and heads to the Senate for a vote as early as Monday.

We testified on two bills dealing with Carbon Sequestration, House Bill 1579 in the House Utilities, Energy, and Telecommunications Committee and Senate Bill 457, in the Senate Natural Resources Committee. While we are opposed to Carbon Capture and Sequestration generally, we were reassured by the civil penalties added in the bills, and the clarification regarding the permitting process for stratigraphic test wellls. We articulated ours concerns for the lack of public hearing requirements and transparency efforts in the rulemaking process and advocated for a more robust process involving landowners and community members. HB1579 passed 11-2 and heads to Ways and Means Committee due to its fiscal impact to the State. SB457 passed 8-1 and heads to the Senate for further action.

Also in the House Utilities, Energy, and Telecommunications Committee, we unfortunately saw the passage of House Bill 1007, a priority bill for the House Republicans, by a vote of 9-4. While SB423 and SB424 will be up for a vote before the whole Senate as early as Monday, House Bill 1007 is headed to Ways and Means for another hearing since it has a fiscal impact because of the generous SMR tax credit proposed for manufacturers. All three bills put the wallets of Hoosier ratepayers on the hook for “project development costs” related to small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), effectively forcing ratepayers to involuntarily finance extremely expensive and risky SMRs, even if the utility cancels the project. As a reminder, we testified in opposition to HB1007, which you can watch here. You can read more about the SMR trio of bills here. Please visit act.citact.org/I45KhgJ to email your state legislators to reject these bills right away!

We also testified on House Bill 1037 in House Environmental Affairs, which paves the way for further no-more-stringent-than policy in Indiana, barring locals from stormwater management that goes above the bar set by federal standard. HB 1037 ignores the innate geographical differences that our local communities feature - southern Indiana karst, our wetlands, aquifers, etc. Despite an overwhelming amount of testimony against the bill, the House Committee sided with the special interest Builders Association and passed the bill 9-4. 

In Senate Utilities on Thursday, CAC testified in support of SB422, Advanced transmission technologies, which requires that the utilities fully consider software or hardware technologies that increase the capacity, efficiency, reliability, or safety of an existing or new electric transmission facility during their integrated resource planning process (IRP).  Grid capacity and congestion is at issue right now. These technologies promise to alleviate some of those concerns and could help avoid the need to build expensive, new transmission lines. 

Additionally, we spoke in opposition to SB425, Energy production zones. This bill creates what is being called “energy production zones,” which are parcels of land that are either (1) currently hosting a generation facility of 80MW or greater, or (2) an abandoned or closed coal mine. The bill pre-empts any and all local permitting requirements or ordinances related to the construction, operations, siting, or zoning of any generation resource proposed to be built in an energy production zone. While CAC remains concerned with the number of renewable projects being stopped at the local level, telling communities that have no say when it comes to locating facilities which pose risks to public health and safety, like nuclear reactors and pipelines carrying hazardous gases and fluids, is a bridge too far. 

You can visit act.citact.org/kjvtpjc to urge state legislators to hear and support three excellent proposals designed to protect consumers, especially low-income households, and hold the monopoly utilities accountable. 

And please also visit act.citact.org/jejx60k to take action on two awesome Community Solar bills! CAC strongly supports those pro-consumer bills and we urge you to make voice heard and help us get those bills a hearing. 

The Senate Elections Committee passed and sent SB10, which prohibits university students from utilizing their university identification to vote, to the full Senate floor. It will be up for a vote as soon as Monday.  As always, we’ll be watching any and all bills that have a hand in our democratic process this year.

Items upcoming this week

• The House Elections Committee will also meet this coming week to consider SB284 which will reduce early voting to seven days down from 30 calendar days before the election.

   

• The House Utilities Committee will hear House Bill 1628, a contentious siting bill that’s earned interest before it was even scheduled for a hearing. Rep. Snow’s bill will be heard Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., and we’ll be live tweeting as always.

We’ll be updating our social media regularly throughout Week 5 of the legislature. Follow our social media for an up-to-date detailing of our work at the Indiana State Capitol: Facebook, X , and Instagram.

Respectfully submitted,

The CAC Team