Your county
Jasper · Huntingburg · Ferdinand · Holland · Ireland · Birdseye · St. Anthony
Home base for me and for this campaign. Dubois County is where I learned that showing up, pulling the records, and asking for a vote can actually move a county government. This district is bigger than my home county. The promise on all six pages is the same: whoever is closest to a decision gets heard first.
In February 2026 your neighbors delivered more than 8,000 petition signatures and a December 2025 Public Policy Polling survey, commissioned by the Property Rights Alliance, showing 81 percent opposition to the Mid-States Corridor. On March 31, 2026 the County Council voted 6 to 1 to begin withdrawing from the corridor RDA, and the withdrawal ordinance passed second reading in April 2026. Jasper council members announced their opposition in December 2025.
That happened because people did the homework and kept showing up. The project is not dead. In October 2025 INDOT narrowed the route to two expressway options east of Huntingburg and Jasper, each consuming an estimated 1,400 acres or more of farms and homes, and INDOT scheduled the draft environmental study for fall 2026 with a final decision expected in summer 2027. I will keep treating this the way it deserves: with records requests, public meetings, and votes.
The state's 2025 tax law phases in cuts that hit local budgets hard. County government is projected to lose about $349,000 in 2026, growing to about $934,000 by 2028. Northeast Dubois schools stand to lose enough to nearly cancel the referendum their own voters approved. A tax cut that shows up as a longer ambulance response is not much of a win.
AES is building a large solar and battery storage project between Huntingburg and Holland. The battery system would be one of the largest in Indiana, and it sits within about two miles of Holland Elementary and the Southridge schools. Residents raised permit discrepancies and safety questions at public meetings through 2025 and 2026, and commissioners said the current ordinance gives the county little room to act. Construction was scheduled to begin in March 2026, with operation targeted for late 2027.
If you live near the site or send kids to those schools, I want to hear from you before I take a position on what the county should do next.
Most of unincorporated Dubois County has no zoning. The county's comprehensive plan was scheduled to reach its steering committee in August 2026, and the county's solar moratorium expires in December 2026. Corridors, solar, batteries, and data centers all come down to the same question: do the people who live here get a real say in what gets built next to them? I believe local control has to mean more than a formality.
Huntingburg's council is already debating how to regulate data centers and battery storage. A solar farm west of Huntingburg already sells its power to a data center campus in Fort Wayne under a long term contract. I am not against growth. I am against ordinary families paying higher bills to subsidize some of the largest companies on earth.
Memorial Hospital ran locally for about 75 years. Its ambulance service moved to Deaconess EMS in October 2024, and in August 2025 the hospital itself became Deaconess Memorial. Deaconess has promised major investment, and nothing here is an accusation. It is a question worth asking out loud: when decisions about local care move to a regional system, who speaks for Dubois County patients?
Dubois County unemployment was 2.1 percent in April 2026, near the lowest in Indiana. Employers here cannot find workers, and workers cannot find childcare or a house they can afford. By the county's own study, we need roughly 2,200 to 2,900 new homes by 2035. If we want the next generation to stay, this is the work.
Your town
What am I missing?
I live here, but I do not pretend to see everything. If something in Dubois County deserves attention, from a road that floods every spring to a decision made without a public meeting, tell me about it.
Local news in Dubois County
Page last updated July 18, 2026.
