Indiana officials tout economic achievements, another county adopts vote centers and should the Secretary of State get out of politics.

From the television studios of WFYI Public Media, it's Indiana Week in Review for the week ending October 2nd, 2026.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey Indiana officials are touting major business investments that have brought jobs and higher wages to the state.

Ben Thorp reports the Indiana Economic Development Corporation met for a quarterly meeting this week.

IEDC officials highlighted the 69 companies moving business to the state, including Amazon.

They say it will bring over 5000 new jobs that pay well above the state's average wage.

Governor Mike Braun says he's been clear what economic development under his administration needs to accomplish.

Create more opportunities for Hoosiers, grow wages, and make Indiana the best place in the country to start a business, grow a business and get a good job.

State officials also approved a $5 million grant for a state of the art supercomputer to bolster investment in research and artificial intelligence.

So is Indiana's economic forecast all sunshine?

It's the first question for our Indiana Weekend Review panel.

Political strategist Lindsay Haake, Republican Chris Mitchem.

Leslie Bonilla Munoz, reporter at the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

And Lindsey Erdody, editor in chief at Free Press Indiana News.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

So, Lindsey, is there another spin to this economic assessment?

Lindsey.

Which Lindsey.

But yeah.

well, I yeah, I mean, I'm not really sure you can trust all of the information coming out of the agency itself on this.

You just can't.

I mean, you'd be absolutely throwing your head in the sand if you did so.

You've got a lot of concerns right now from the fiscal picture that Indiana is facing coming up with its budget for 2020, for the 2025, 2027, excuse me, 27-29 budget.

There we go.

Right.

and so a lot of these revenue streams are being talked about left and right.

And here we are with this glowing, beautiful story out of the IEDC, which is on its third leader in like less than three, two years.

And, you know, you've just got a lot of drama there.

So yeah, saying that this is all rainbows I mean I'm happy with that.

But that's only a picture for one little tiny sector of Indiana's society and fiscal picture.

You just got to do more and look back behind it.

I mean, Chris, we are, you know, exactly a year out from an audit of the IEDC that showed, you know, some conflict of interest, some issues within the agency.

Are we back on track now?

Lindsey mentioned there are new leaders and we, you know, heard the governor tout a lot of economic success.

Yeah, I mean, they put out the numbers that I think can be validated by the local governments that they're partnering with.

I'm not sure what other numbers you would believe if there was another set of numbers, but I think this is a really easy win that Governor Braun can continue to tout because like you said, the IEDC was under a lot of heat when he first came in, and I think they've been able to navigate those waters really well.

You haven't heard of any huge scandals or anything and that and that association.

And also one thing that he committed to when he came in was saying that we are going to convert the IEDC from just bringing in jobs in central Indiana and kind of that hub to expanding it across the state.

And you've really seen that they've had border to border expansion.

They've had multi-million dollar expansions in counties such as DeKalb and Dearborn and Marshall counties.

So really making sure they partner with different areas of the state, partnering with our universities are huge.

Manufacturing our big, bioscience industry as well, to see how can we best help the state rather than just central Indiana.

And they're also really, I think, capitalizing on a lot of modern trends.

You see from a nationwide perspective, you're seeing a lot of defense industry investing.

the federal government has been a really good partner with Indiana, having economic development around the Crane Naval Base in southern Indiana and then also, with the nuclear, scene that you've been seeing, Indiana has been a leading on that, bringing in multi-billion dollar investments and jobs in that sphere as well.

So I think a lot of credit has to go to Chuck Goodrich, for his leadership on this, and then also Governor Braun that the IEDC, quite frankly, really has been doing a really good job of really taking in the whole state of account, bringing in thousands of jobs and not just regular jobs, but a lot of high paying jobs.

And so I think now they've really kind of done their part on the full spectrum of what is economic development.

Now.

I think it's to the legislature to making sure we continue to address things like child care, which we've seen is going to be a big topic in the next session.

Education.

We've seen a lot of momentum on as well.

So I think there's a lot of momentum going forward to make sure that we keep Indiana as competitive as possible.

You know, I have heard people mention, though, a lot of the jobs that were touted, are you these high paying jobs, you know, are these going to help average Hoosiers?

I mean, a lot of times these jobs go to people that are coming in from out of the state, which has its own economic benefits.

But we're also hearing about, you know, the supercomputer and, that's tied to to data centers.

And we've had questions about how many jobs, some of these industries coming to the state will ultimately bring and lasting effect that they may have.

Right?

Data centers don't typically bring in that many permanent jobs, aside from, you know, the temporary construction jobs.

But I think overall, our incentivized jobs are just a fraction of what, you know, people are working in across Indiana.

And our wages have historically been pretty low.

Bureau of Labor Statistics says we're about 30th in the country as of the beginning of 2026, and we're even lower than that for wage growth.

So I think that's a problem that we're going to have to continue dealing with, as well as even after projects are announced.

We've had, pretty intractable, debates over the citing of these projects.

There's, you know, lawsuits over like Skynet, for instance.

They're they're project, they're development and so on.

And I think that's something that something else that lawmakers, for instance, might have to continue, struggling with that topic until they can reach, you know, whatever balance they want to strike on that.

I mean, do you think, Lindsey, that, you know, an announcement like this sometimes seems tone deaf to Hoosiers that are, you know, struggling right now to make ends meet?

We do.

They're also touting, you know, the very low, unemployment rate in the state.

So, you know, people are working.

But I know that people are still, having difficulties.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's part of the economic picture if you're talking about, you know, is Indiana's economy all sunshine?

Right.

This announcement is absolutely part of it.

But the other part of it is people are struggling to pay for things like childcare and health care and, you know, housing, utilities, all of those things.

So that that definitely plays into it.

The other thing that I thought that was interesting is you got to kind of put these numbers in context, right.

And so I went back and looked at the past few years, the annual reports in terms of, you know, how many new jobs and what was that like total wage amount.

And we're not all the way through 2026 yet.

But even comparing where we are now to where we were in 2025, we had 11,000 new jobs.

We're not even halfway there if we're comparing.

And the, total wage growth was like 900 million and then 2024 and 2023 or even higher than that, it was like 17,020 1000 jobs.

And the wage wages expected were over $1 billion each year.

So if we're putting this in some historical context, this year doesn't actually look that great.

Where we were still post Covid to where it was 20.

Was a lot of money in the system post Covid.

Certainly, the the infusion of federal funding.

But affordability remains number one.

I'm polling.

Thanks for doing the right thing, by the.

Way.

I tried to go back further, but the reports pass that wouldn't load.

I did want to ask you, though, largely about because you wrote, you know, about the Space Academy, which is a kind of another, fly by your seat sort of idea.

And the governor was like, you know, this is a done deal, but it just another piece of the announcement that was interesting to me.

you know, whether or not something like this would come to Indiana.

Well, it seems like Todd Young has been, a big supporter of bringing the new, space Academy to Indiana.

But, we are one of many states that are competing for that, including some states that already have pretty big NASA installations, like Florida, in Texas.

but yes, the governor was, a little less enthusiastic.

He just said it, you know, is an option for us.

And that would certainly compete for it because we're competing for whatever it could be for anything certain.

so we'll see.

But another Indiana County, I've heard of the ability to vote at any location on Election Day this week.

Hamilton County has considered the measure for a number of years now.

It will join 72 other Indiana counties that used vote centers.

The move allows voters to cast a ballot at any center, as opposed to having to go to a specific precinct.

Hamilton County Clerk Kathy Kreag Williams says the county's rapid growth played into the decision.

And then we started to get to the point where we just kept adding more and more precincts, and it was getting harder and harder to find a location.

Studies show that vote centers reduce cost, and they provide counties with more flexibility.

The centers will be open to Hamilton County voters during the 2027 municipal elections.

So, Chris, why do you think it's taking so long for Hamilton County to adopt vote centers?

Yeah, I think it's because they have a very unique situation.

Obviously, you have the rapid population growth in that county, but you also have the difference in population densities in southern Hamilton County, right next to Marion County.

You have Carmel, you have Westfield, which are just drastically increasing the population.

And then towards the north you have more rural agricultural focus things.

So the idea of just kind of totally switching your voting system on a whim, you have two very different populations and different situations you have to take into account.

So I do think they did a really good job of taking it by steps, rather than just kind of going with the trend of just doing it and hoping it works out.

And, I think, like I said, I think it is a good decision to transition to this system just because you've already seen that the precinct system seems to be kind of antiquated.

More and more counties continue to go to the vote center model.

And also, you have to remember, when it comes to precincts, you know, whenever a community gets a drastic increase in population, you only have so many people per precinct.

So say if you have a neighborhood that just drastically increases, you still have to create a bunch of new precincts in there, right?

If they get more people and every new precinct typically requires more effort from the county chairs, it requires finding more volunteers or requires finding more poll workers and, and things of that nature.

So the idea of kind of condensing all of these being strategic, of where you place these voting centers, especially for such a transient community like, Hamilton County, who's working in Marion and Hendricks and all that kind of stuff.

It really does allow you to consolidate a lot of your resources so that you have one voting center that maybe has 25 to 30 election machines versus maybe one precinct that's used to serving 2000.

And now, five years later, they're serving 25,000.

So I think it's really a good idea to start transitioning to this.

And for Republicans getting ripe for making it harder to vote, just trying to prove who you say you are.

I think this really does benefit a lot of the voters in Hamilton County of just making it a lot more convenient to go where you want to, to and from work, wherever it happens.

And, have a lot more options to vote, hopefully in a faster manner as well.

I know we've enjoyed it here in Marion County for some time, but, you know, it has been a while that Indiana has allowed the vote centers.

Yeah, Tippecanoe County has been doing this for more than 20 years.

So, you know, I think this is a way of just showing that Indiana's laws regarding regarding elections are so antiquated.

We are one of very few states left that does not have polling polls open past 6 p.m., which is such a huge no putting the vote, the voting, the polling place closer to perhaps someone's work as opposed to having to go home, put all your stuff away, put your kids, get your kids fed and then go vote.

Like, please, like yes.

Finally, these counties have caught up to the fact that Indiana law is so antiquated that we are going to do it ourselves in a way that makes more sense.

And frankly, if I might just it's cheaper to do it this way for local governments.

You've got finally, and then hopefully more Republicans committing to making democracy happen for more Hoosiers, in a, in a cheaper way for local government.

So it's also important to keep local control, I think.

Is this one really important?

You don't want to push these ideas on more rural communities that are used to going to their their, you know, local court and voting like they have for the last five, ten years.

It works for other communities and they can actually increase cost.

If you try to push new technology and new methods on these.

Local leading.

The front is important for democracy and making sure everyone can.

Vote.

But if you push something on a local community that they don't want, that will raise costs that totally reverses the logic.

I think there has been some studies, Lindsey, about, you know, whether or not it does reduce costs.

And here in Indiana, we found that, it over overall usually does reduce costs.

But whether or not it increases voter turnout is another question.

Yeah.

I mean that I think is still kind of up for debate.

I think officials will tell you, yeah, it is going to increase voter turnout, but we have 72 of our 92 counties have those centers.

And yet historically, Indiana is among the lowest in the country in terms of voter turnout.

Now, lots of things go into voter turnout, right?

This is not the only aspect of it.

Like Lindsay was saying, polling hours go into that early voting, like how many days and having to in races, contested races, who's on the ballot, how how people are excited or not excited about those races?

you know, I've even heard, like what the weather is on Election day to how many people are going to go vote, right?

So it's not just vote centers that are playing into our voter turnout, but I also don't think that that's going to magically jump us to the top of the list in terms of voter turnout.

I mean, Leslie, I did hear as well when I was talking about the vote centers with that, having the schools on board this year in Hamilton County particularly, was really important.

And people that said that, you know, having, students see people voting at their school also is as an engaging way to have students become civically minded.

I mean, there's been discussion about how effective Indiana schools have been in that civic education.

maybe that is a good way to to model that to people.

well, see.

I mean, in Hamilton County, I do think that is particularly good when you're talking about those dense population centers, because you've seen the cathedrals that is Carmel High School, that's Westfield High School.

So I think a lot of credit goes to them for being able to open themselves up.

And all of the checks it takes when it comes to security and the amount of people coming through your doors.

I think a lot of credit has to go to them for kind of lending a hand and making sure this can go smoothly.

It's bringing it back.

Well, now it's time for viewer feedback.

Every week we pose an unscientific online poll question.

This week's question do vote centers help increase voter turnout in Indiana?

Vote yes or no.

The last question posed to viewers will the loss of Medicaid coverage impact overall health costs in Indiana?

91% saying yes and 9% answering no.

If you would like to take part in the poll, go to WFYI Mortgage The independent candidate, running to be Indiana's next secretary of state, says he wants to see the office banned from endorsing other candidates or donating to a political party.

Greg Ballard called for other secretary of state candidates to make a similar promise to stay out of politics if elected.

Ben Thorp has more on how that may be more complicated.

A ballot is made the independence of the secretary of state a major part of his campaign.

But Ballard also wants to form his own party after election day, the Lincoln Party, when asked if candidates under that party wouldn't appear to be endorsed by him simply by being members of his party, Ballard said they wouldn't.

Well, everybody who runs for office has a party associated with them that will be there.

But you're going to make the pledge.

I want you to make the pledge that what you're in in this particular office, that you're out of politics forever.

A spokesperson for Republican candidate Max angling claimed.

Ballard has previously said he would work to select candidates and is now saying he won't.

A statement said, quote, were confused by Mr.

Ballard stances continuing to flip flop.

So, Leslie, do you think there seems to be a little bit of a dilemma here?

I think there's a little bit of an inherent sort of complication there, and that, you know, you have to engage in politics in order to ascend to this position in charge of our elections.

And there's I mean, it's also an intensely political time.

And I just think it's a little bit difficult to separate those things.

particularly because he is, you know, starting a political party.

He's not running just as an independent.

and there's, you know, obviously some controversy over how close will be to that party and what role that, you know, will be taking in, in shaping who who will run for office?

I think the other thing is, it's, it's it's difficult to, to separate those because.

I mean, even if, for instance, if someone was appointed to that position instead, it would still be a highly political process to, in the in this election of whoever runs our elections, it would just be less transparent.

So I don't know that there's necessarily a way to resolve that tension, but I think I think it's interesting people are talking about it.

I mean, everybody had a comment, you know, after he made this, this announcement this week.

And it is interesting.

I mean, he's starting a brand new party, which, we really haven't got a lot of information about what that party might stand for, but, it would be difficult to start your own party and stay completely out of politics.

Balloting, not.

Yeah.

I don't really understand how that would quite work.

I mean, I guess he could appoint someone else as kind of his proxy to to start it and kind of like carry the torch.

but in a way, I think it's easier for him to, you know, throw this out there as an idea because he's not used to any like, party norms.

If he's going to be part of this new party.

Right, like versus the Democrats or the Republicans, for example, like they're used to supporting each other, you know, kind of like Leslie was saying, like they donate to each other's campaigns, they go to campaign events, they campaign with each other, you know, so it would be really hard for someone in one of those parties to just suddenly, like, not do it, especially at such a high level.

Then the secretary of state's office, you know, and even the libertarian candidate said, you know, I pay party dues as, as part of being a libertarian that could be seen as a contribution, you know, and Ballard did say, like, okay, well, we could make an exemption for that, but but still, you see, like how how tricky it could quickly become.

I like this is just like a new interpretation of like what a political party does.

I think for them it's really just a way to get around the signature requirement, which is pretty expensive, really.

How many candidates?

Yeah, it's not wrong.

A lot of time trying to get all those signatures.

Heard him say, though, that, you know, you know, what is the what is the democratic part of the what is the Republican Party?

I mean, it's not well defined, but it.

Right.

And these lines are also getting so blurred now, you know, the whole the way that the pendulum is swinging is just different day to day especially.

But also welcome to the murky place that is the House and Senate Elections Committee.

While you're maneuvering the minutia of all of these laws, right.

They're complicated and very tricky.

We saw that with the Spencer Deery case earlier this fall in how literally an interpretation of one very one line could be dependent on an entire Supreme Court case.

Right.

And so there's there's some we'll we'll see how this gets.

I'm curious to see how the legislature puts its thumbprint on all of this, because that's really what matters in these conversations is how these laws are crafted and what the you know, how how the statutes interpreted.

I mean, that was his call for the legislature to adopt some sort of, you know, law that would restrict, people from being donating and endorsing other candidates.

Would the legislature ever consider something like that, do you think?

I mean, it depends how the breadth of what he's talking about.

Right.

Like, and I think that it goes back to his statement as a whole.

It's like, hey, man, I get what you're saying.

Like, stay out of politics, I get it.

But I think the the responses from the other campaigns was certainly worth pointing to, because I think a temptation would be to jump on that and say, yep, we agree with him.

We should absolutely stay out of politics.

He's totally right.

The other campaigns actually came out, I think, by his campaign, said that we commit to if Joe Biden gets elected, he won't, support other campaigns in his official capacity.

You can't be excluding somebody in their personal capacity from participating.

Which is the norm now.

So and then same with, Schilling's the libertarian candidate, I think she said we've already made a promise to not or recuse ourself from anything from candidates that we supported in the past.

So I think his statement might have been a little broad of the idea.

And that allowed the other campaigns to come in and say, we're doing this, but the idea that you can just totally exclude yourself, especially as an elected leader of your party, there's naturally going to be questions and they expect you to attend events.

And it is very, very difficult as a especially as a statewide elected official, to just say, throw your hands up and say, I'm just going to be out on everything.

It's a little.

Unrealistic.

That would be unrealistic.

Yeah.

and obviously to this as a reaction to our current I think so.

I think so because you've seen our current secretary of state do literally everything except send an official press release that says, I endorse this person.

I mean, all of his activities have been very, for the most part, political.

and how we talk about it is important, you know, I wouldn't say exactly.

The Indiana's got the strongest conflict of interest laws that are protecting, you know, Hoosiers or inspiring a public trust here.

So we've got to do better.

but I'm not necessarily sure how we do it on this topic, aside from just simply say, you know, putting the, the, the fist down and saying, we've got to move forward without, any official side of things, what's.

Been the fascinating race?

And we'll have a debate next week to everyone can be watching the latest Indiana Youth Survey shows a continued decline in nearly every major category of substance use among youth, which includes data reaching its lowest level since current survey methods were adopted in 2015.

Caroline Beck has more.

The 2026 survey is conducted by Prevention Insights at IU School of Public Health.

It collected usable responses from over 53,000 students in grades six through 12, representing 183 schools statewide.

The survey marked the fourth significant decrease in reported use of electronic vapor products.

In the 30 days prior to taking the survey, there was significant decrease in past month alcohol use.

In all grades, with rates reaching their lowest since 2015.

The use of marijuana or cannabis also significantly declined.

Illicit drug use remains rare among Indiana youth.

So, Lindsey, do you think this data is surprising at all?

Actually, no, because.

We've seen it for the past few years that it's been trending down, you know, and we've heard a lot about how alcohol consumption, for example, is definitely down among younger individuals.

and, and that's been trending down for a few years.

vaping has been trending down for a few years, and use of marijuana has been trending down.

I mean, we see this these numbers though, and, you know, you've got to wonder, you know, I think in my generation and this generation here, there's a clear difference.

a lot of people point to the messaging, you know, that may or may not have been successful in driving these numbers down.

I think a lot of risky behaviors are down among teens, including like underage sex, for instance, unprotected, etc.

I think that a lot of conversations have been just about the role that, our online world is playing and what teens are doing in real life versus what they're doing online.

And I think there's definitely some value to exploring, like, are you just not doing as much in your real life because you're spending all your time online?

You're on your phone the whole time.

I mean, that's I think has to be a factor.

Yeah, I definitely think there is a societal shift I see now in college instead of, you know, throwing parties at, frat house is now there's, you know, going on health runs with each other, which is kind of kind of wild.

But I do quickly, I do think the legislature has to get some credit here.

They've genuinely increased the amount of funds going directly to schools for mental health, substance abuse prevention things.

And then also on the school safety front, a lot of school resource officers now are beginning to adopt a more of a, counselor role in addition to their very important safety role as well of just making sure they say the the dangers of vaping and drug use and things like that.

So I think the legislature has really partnered with different organizations to really target where they are in schools.

I mean, as a parent of teens, I'm happy.

In for steps up this year because they're going to have a new ask for more tobacco cessation funds.

It's going to be up to 15 million this year.

And I really hope that they meet that expectation because these numbers are so reassuring to see.

I'm glad to see them as well.

And I hope the legislature listens.

Chris.

Well, that's Indiana Weekend review for this week.

Our panel has been political strategist Lindsay Haake, Republican Chris Mitchem Leslie Bonilla Munoz, Indiana from Indiana, Capital Chronicle and Lindsey Erdody editor in chief of Free Press Indiana News.

You can find Indiana Weekend Reviews, podcast and episodes at WFYI.org/IWIR on the PBS app.

I'm Jill Sheridan, managing editor at WFYI.

Join us next time because a lot can happen in in Indiana week.

The views expressed are solely those of the panelists.

Indiana Week in Review is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

Additional support is provided by ParrRichey