By Niki Kelly | Editor-in-Chief
“I went every year to the State Fair growing up. I went to Colts training camp every summer. I’ve been voting here since I was 18, paying income taxes here for the past eight years. I took my oath of office for the United States Marine Corps at the War Memorial downtown.” — Democrat candidate Beau Bayh
Residency has a long history in Indiana politics. And this year, major party secretary of state candidates are calling on their Hoosier credentials.
In layman’s terms, the judge and the defense counsel are going to share office space — the latest development on the utility regulatory front.
Speaking of offices, the new state archives building is a gem. Check out our tour.
Plus, medical frailty, surveillance and the new school cellphone ban.
Who’s a real Hoosier? Secretary of state candidates spar over time in Indiana.
By Tom Davies
The birth of Beau Bayh and his twin brother was headline news across Indiana in 1995 as the first children born to a current governor and first lady in more than a century.
That hasn’t inoculated Bayh from political attacks over his Hoosier ties as he runs as the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, with Republicans swiping at his years of voting in Indiana while living elsewhere.
Republican nominee Max Engling, meanwhile, touts “Hoosier roots” in his campaign advertising despite only living in Indiana during his college years and returning after more than a decade in Washington for an unsuccessful 2024 congressional race.
The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission and Office of Utility Consumer Counselor will soon share office space. Many employees will work remotely. (Photo by Niki Kelly/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
State utility advocate, regulators to share digs
By Leslie Bonilla Muñiz
The Indiana agency representing ratepayers in utility cases is set — before the end of the year — to share office space with the independent arbiter that decides those cases, Energy and Natural Resources Secretary Suzanne Jaworowski has confirmed.
In December, they’ll move to newly renovated digs at the Indiana Government Center’s north building in downtown Indianapolis, a quarter-mile from their separate offices in the PNC Center.
Officials say they’ll share a front desk reception area but maintained that “there will be separation.”
COMMENTARY
Data collected by Open Secrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on campaign finance, estimated that in 2024, the total cost of Congressional races reached $9.5 billion. (Getty Images)
Examining the cost of money in campaigns
By Laura Merrifield Wilson
Money matters. It opens opportunities, provides for experiences, and creates connections that — even if possible without it — invariably become much easier with it. Despite The Beatles proclamation that “money can’t buy me love,” nearly every political campaign and candidate in American politics knows the great impact of a full war chest.
NATIONAL NEWS
A Flock camera monitors passing traffic on Sept. 2, 2026 in Miami. The state department of transportation said this month it will remove license plate readers, such as Flock cameras, from all state highways, citing an increase in reports of misuse of the systems. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Flock surveillance cameras raise constitutional questions, bipartisan US senators say
By Ariana Figueroa
WASHINGTON — A vast and growing network of artificial intelligence-driven Flock cameras could violate constitutional privacy rights, U.S. senators on a Judiciary Committee subcommittee said during a Wednesday hearing.
GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the chair of the Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said the point of the hearing was to find out “what is going on with the expanding surveillance network that appears to be going coast to coast in this country.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Teachers say Indiana’s ‘bell-to-bell’ phone ban makes enforcement easier | Mackenzi Klemann
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