Property Taxes & Rural Services

Senate Bill 1 delivered real farmland relief, and I'll say that plainly: about an 11% cut to farmland bills after three straight years of double-digit increases. But it was a down payment, not the fix. It helped the dirt and left the barns out. The same year, barn, grain, and livestock building assessments jumped, some by as much as 300%.

Dubois County is the #1 turkey county in Indiana, and the families who raise those birds hold their value in barns and equipment, not dirt. They got little from the land-side relief and took the full force of the building reassessment. I'll fight to move agricultural buildings from the 3% tax cap to the 2% cap, smooth reassessment shocks, and lock regular cost-table updates into statute so we never get another 300% cliff.

There's a trap in the current law: the good part sunsets in 2027, while the building increases don't roll back. Relief should be permanent and structural, not a two-year patch we re-fight every session.

And we can't fund tax relief by hollowing out the communities taxpayers live in. The costs landed on local budgets: the county roads our grain trucks run on, the volunteer EMS that answers a farm accident, the small school our kids attend. A tax cut that shows up as a longer ambulance response isn't much of a win. The state collects zero property tax and sits on reserves. Real reform pairs relief with a state backstop for rural schools and emergency services.