Rep. Lopez Puts Forward Safety, Jobs Bills
STATEWIDE — State Rep. Danny Lopez, a Republican from Carmel, is pushing six bills that focus on safety, schools, foster care, and the economy, combining short-term protection with long-term opportunity.
“I’m focused on economic development,” Lopez said. “One of the bills I’m working on in particular is figuring out how we can get shovel-ready projects out the door and fund projects that are driving wages up in communities that don’t necessarily look like the donut counties but need economic investment.”
Among the measures Lopez is sponsoring is a Foster Youth Bill of Rights, which he said is increasingly important as the number of foster care cases continues to rise.
“This is particularly important given the rise in the number of foster cases that we have,” Lopez said.
Lopez is also backing legislation that would increase penalties for crimes committed while wearing a mask and create new penalties for hate-motivated littering, which he said has increased across the state.
“We’ve had a tremendous rise in the number of hate incidents,” Lopez said. “They’ve typically been targeted at the Jewish community, but not exclusively the Jewish community.”
Under the proposal, hate-motivated littering would be elevated to a Class A misdemeanor.
Another bill Lopez is carrying would update Ivy Tech Community College’s governing structure to better reflect workforce demands across the state.
“This really is aimed at assuring that the mission we’ve laid out in statute for Ivy Tech reflects workforce needs,” Lopez said. “So many of the programs at Ivy Tech are preparing kids to go off and compete.”
Lopez is also sponsoring legislation affecting Hamilton County’s use of its innkeeper’s tax and a measure that would give the Indiana Economic Development Corporation greater flexibility in using EDGE tax credits to help employers retain workers at higher wages.
“We want to take smaller communities around the state and support projects that are ready to go,” Lopez said. “If you can do it in a way where the business community is investing and the dollars stay local, we want to support those projects.”
Lopez said the common thread running through his legislation is ensuring economic development incentives lead to higher take-home pay for Hoosiers.
“We’ve got to make sure everything we invest in from an economic development standpoint is aimed at driving wages up for Hoosiers,” he said. “We’re looking at all aspects of the economic development ecosystem, and there are a lot of different pieces that fit into that.”
