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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowFollowing mounting concerns over the extent of the Indiana Economic Development Corp.’s authority, a bill intended to ensure greater agency transparency is garnering bipartisan support.
Criticism has ramped up in recent years over whether the agency, which receives hundreds of millions in tax dollars each year, has been transparent and fiscally responsible enough. Lawmakers’ unease with the IEDC reached a boiling point as the state pursued large land purchases and water withdrawals to support its massive LEAP Research and Innovation District in Lebanon. (LEAP stands for Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace.)
The House Ways and Means Committee unanimously supported Senate Bill 516 on Wednesday, sending the legislation to the full House floor for consideration.
“I think all of us would agree that there have been concerns around transparency and communication with locals around some of these projects,” sponsor Rep. Danny Lopez, R-Indianapolis, said Wednesday. “To the degree that we can continue to support the tools that work and are effective, but also enhance transparency [to] ensure that locals are part of that process, I think that would be an important step.”
Bill author Sen. Brian Buchanan, R-Lebanon, has previously said the bill’s measures would streamline the development process.
Under the legislation, if the IEDC wants to purchase over 100 acres of land within a county, it must notify the county or municipality at least 30 days before the deal closes. Through an amendment adopted Wednesday, the State Budget Committee would also need to receive notice.
For each innovation development district in the state, the IEDC and involved local governments would be required to produce an annual report detailing the district’s tax-increment financing. Innovation development districts allow the state to capture state and local revenue to fund improvements and incentives at the sites. The state currently has two sites under the designation: the SK Hynix site in West Lafayette and Eli Lilly and Co.’s 600 acres in the LEAP District.
The bill would also establish the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which would manage several new and existing programs to support small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. The bill is similar to Rep. Jake Teshka’s House Bill 1172, which passed out of the House and is awaiting a Senate committee hearing.
Through another amendment to the Senate bill passed Wednesday, this new office would oversee certified technology parks instead of the IEDC. The state has more than 20 such parks, including the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette and WestGate@Crane Technology Park in Odon.
Several chambers of commerce, business advocacy organizations and the state’s secretary of commerce have all vocally supported the legislation.
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The primary mandate of the IEDC should be to re-establish viable infrastructure in places that have declined. Brownfields, dead malls, unsustainable stroads, and etc. Clean up any environmental messes that may exist; demolish dilapidated structures if there are any; re-establish a denser street grid with smaller subdivided lots where applicable; and work with municipalities to establish optimal zoning, streetscape, and transportation options.
Basic infrastructure fuels private investment better than anything else. It may not be sexy, but re-establishing high quality infrastructure in places that have declined stands to be one of the most effective ways that the IEDC can drive economic development.
Secretive negotiations with private companies? Hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate acquisition for a speculative megaproject whose purpose is to attract non-specific megaprojects? These are just prime examples of some hybrid between cronyism and top-down, CCP-inspired planning.
The IEDC should not even be allowed to engage in subsidy negotiations with private companies or real estate transactions unless a municipality asks for the State’s help with negotiations that began more organically.
If we want more top down economic planning than what I outlined, we simply need to embrace regionalism. Instead of having a single economic development bureaucracy for the entire state, each of Indiana’s regions should have the necessary autonomy over taxes rate, tax revenue, and land-use to handle its own economic development matters.
More broadly, Indiana has too many distinct regions not to embrace regionalism. NWI; South Bend and Elkhart; Greater Fort Wayne & the Lake Erie/Maumee watershed; R1 college towns; Central Indiana; Wabash River & Ohio River manufacturing communities; and the suburban counties of Louisville and Cincinnati, respectively. There is simply too much variance for Indiana’s very top-down state government to handle well.
Well said. Instead, the IEDC takes more farmland and encourages more suburban sprawl. And refuses to update their 1970s economic development playbook. It’s madness!
All good points above. There are so many small “ghost towns” skattered around Indiana that with the right infrastructure and connectivity could become thriving communities again. With the amount of stay at home workers these days these type of communities would be highly attractive with affordable housing and a quiet and comfortable environment.
Agreed! And it would help eliminate health care deserts that are becoming all too common.
Without IEDC, would the Lebanon LEAP development be happening today? That project, if not spearheaded by IEDC, would likely have gone out of the State by Lilly, as Lilly has done in the not too distant past. I’m not defending everything IEDC does, but the agency does need to exist in order to foster the economic development mission of Indiana.