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When billboard lobbyists and Indianapolis officials were at odds in 2024 over proposed state legislation to allow owners to relocate signs without receiving a city permit, State Rep. Jim Pressel, R-Rolling Prairie, withdrew the amendment and asked the parties to come to a compromise.
That compromise appeared to be an ordinance drafted by the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development that the City-County Council passed in early 2025. According to a memo the department shared with IBJ, the ordinance compromised on about six of the 10 requests from the billboard industry.
The measure upheld the city’s prohibition on new billboards inside Interstate 465—the crux of the matter for those involved with historic Indianapolis neighborhoods—but allowed outdoor advertising companies to relocate a sign within the same parcel of land without receiving a permit to do so.
Now a similar state proposal is back, authored by a Republican from northern Indiana. It appears to be part of a trend: at least three bills this state legislative session stem from conversations previously had at the Indianapolis city level that ultimately didn’t work out the way that stakeholders and the council’s super-minority GOP caucus wanted.
Speaking specifically about the billboard legislation, Senate Bill 167 from Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, a Democratic state senator from Indianapolis compared the process to that of a child who doesn’t get his or her way.
“So when you don’t get something, what do you do? You go to the other parent—in this case, the big parent,” Sen. Andrea Hunley said, referring to the state government, “and you say, stomping and crying, ‘We didn’t get what we wanted. You come fix it for us.”
The legislation would allow for the relocation of billboards anywhere in Marion County provided that the parcel is zoned commercial or industrial. It also states that permits not approved or denied after 30 days will get automatic approval.
The Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, has fully approved the legislation despite objections from Hunley and other lawmakers, mostly Democrats who represent Indianapolis. Pressel, who previously asked for a negotiation between the parties, will once again be a decisionmaker as the bill is assigned to the House Roads and Transportation Committee, which he chairs.
The Mayor’s Office said in a statement from spokeswoman Aliya Wishner that, “local government best reflects the voices of our community, and decisions made at the local level should be respected and upheld.”
Home rule violation, or necessary interventions?
Local Democrats who have a stronghold on Indianapolis generally oppose intervention from the Republican supermajority that passes policies at the Indiana Statehouse, but Indianapolis Republicans are willing to invite it.
Two other Indianapolis-focused bills—Senate Bill 284, which would weaken the civilian majority IMPD General Orders Board, and House Bill 1025, which would preempt the city’s requirement that public defenders must live in Marion County—stem from Republican-authored council proposals that the Democrat-led council shot down last fall.
Lawmakers have advanced both HB 1025, related to the residency of public defenders, and SB 284, related to law enforcement boards, out of the chamber of origin. That means they are awaiting committee hearings in the Senate and House, respectively.
Councilor Dan Boots, a Democrat, told IBJ that he objects to the practice of Republicans shopping legislation to lawmakers when it doesn’t pass locally. That’s the case with the potential shift to the police board, which would be placed into just an advisory role if state lawmakers pass the legislation.
Councilor Michael Paul-Hart, who led the push to shift the board to advisory as part of the GOP caucus’ public safety package, told IBJ he talked to State Sen. Cyndi Carrasco, the author of SB 284, after the provision failed locally. Councilor Josh Bain also spoke at a Jan. 20 state committee hearing on the legislation.
Bain urged lawmakers to pass the legislation, saying, “People get the governments they deserve, but Indianapolis needs your help.”
State Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, asked Bain to confirm that the “other side of Market Street declined our invitation” to voluntarily change the function of the board. When he confirmed the failed vote, Freeman said, “There’s a state law coming their way.”
The 25-member City-County Council has just six Republicans and 19 Democrats. The Statehouse is similarly proportioned in the opposite direction, with Republicans holding a supermajority. That means, in either case, that all members of the minority party could be absent for a vote and the legislative bodies could still move forward.
A council spokeswoman told IBJ that President Maggie Lewis, a Democrat, “is closely following these bills and working to understand their potential impacts on our city and the communities we serve.”
Besides the partisanship, Boots said he objects to “the propensity of the Statehouse to get more involved in our local matters and violate the home rule principle that should allow us to handle our own local matters.”
He pointed to a 2020 law that blocked Indianapolis’ attempt to create a bill of rights for the landlord-tenant relationship as one example.
In the instance regarding the council GOP-led residency proposal, which Hart initially wrote to include all employees but later amended to just encompass the Marion County Public Defender Agency, critiques didn’t fall along party lines.
An Indianapolis Democrat, Mitch Gore, said the body “should’ve shown leadership and fixed this when they were asked to.”
At the city level, the measure failed 18-6. Boots joined Republicans in voting in favor of the amended version, which applied only to public defenders.
State Rep. Alex Zimmerman, R-North Vernon, authored HB 1025. He told IBJ in a statement that members of the Marion County Public Defender Agency had approached lawmakers in 2025 over difficulty hiring and retaining qualified attorneys due to the residency restriction.
Rather than introduce a bill immediately, Zimmerman said lawmakers waited for city action, but that the Indianapolis City-County Council “declined the invitation to act.”
Zimmerman said the bill would put these agencies on an “even playing field with courts and prosecutors’ offices, which are already not subject to any residency restrictions.”
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