Section 7 of 10

What councils are talking about

From Indiana's Counties Going Into the 2026 Election · Ben Hizer · October 11, 2026

[embedded content: Keyword counts per meeting document in the county sweep, top eight topics per county; 82 counties with topic data; data/county\_responses\_\[a–d\].json. Approximate: OCR and keyword matching.\]

Jails and justice buildings. These are the single largest commitments in county government right now. — Allen is building a nearly $268M jail under a federal court order. Marion's Criminal Justice Center carries $637M of debt. — Monroe declared a jail-overcrowding emergency. Madison, Owen and Randolph are working on jail projects, and Hendricks is weighing a $90M judicial center. — Jail income taxes were added or proposed in Grant, Greene, Shelby, Marshall and Tippecanoe.
EMS and 911. Counties are taking over or propping up ambulance service and dispatch. New EMS income tax rates came in Carroll, Martin and Union, and are proposed in LaPorte; dispatch money was added in Shelby and Wells.
Roads. Wheel taxes are spreading (about 13 counties). Officials often said they were needed for state Community Crossings grants, but INDOT's 2025 guidance says they are not. Under IC 8-23-30-2(k), having both a wheel tax and an excise surtax qualifies a county for a separate lane-mile distribution instead, which paid $28.5M to 67 counties in June 2026. Roads are also where budgets dropped as a share in 2026.
Pay and health insurance. Raises of 1–4% were typical, with stipends instead of raises in Orange and capped raises in Noble. Rising health-insurance costs pushed Dubois to move $4.2M into an income-tax fund.
Data centers. This is the newest land-use fight. At least 16 counties adopted or advanced moratoriums, pauses or rules in 2025–26, including: — Franklin, Fulton, Howard, Huntington and LaGrange (moratoriums); — St. Joseph (a 6–3 vote to begin a ban process); — eleven counties from Rush to Whitley, and several more from Lawrence to Ripley (counted there together with solar rules). — Others are signing deals: Jasper approved Amazon data-center tax abatements with payments of $1.25M per building per year. Sullivan, which has no zoning, has a large data-center park going ahead under a negotiated agreement. — A 2026 law lets a county or city that signs an agreement with a data center collect up to 1% of the sales tax the center doesn't pay on electricity.
Solar and wind siting continues in about 15 counties, usually as ordinance updates.
Schools barely come up in county minutes. Cass included Logansport schools in its SEA 1 study, and Dubois questioned school resource officer use. Harrison moved $2M of school property-tax relief to a county mechanism. Otherwise, county and school finances are discussed separately, even though they share the same tax base and caps.

What this says: county government is being pulled toward public safety (jails, EMS, dispatch) at the moment its property-tax growth is limited. The income tax is becoming the main lever, which makes the 2028 county–city split the defining local negotiation.

Whose job this is, on this ballot

Everything above is some office's responsibility, and most of those offices are on the ballot on Nov. 3. Below is which office does which part of it, what the law puts in the job, and what this study found about it.

County Council Member 368 races on this ballot

Adopts the county budget and the levy, and adopts the local income tax rates — including the 2028 rebuild, which every council must adopt between July 1 and Oct. 1 of 2028.

In this study Councils were already deciding in 2025–26: about eight raised the income tax, roughly 35–40 took a documented step toward the county–city negotiation, and the hardest votes split 4–3 and 5–4.
County Commissioner 94 races on this ballot

The county's executive: contracts, buildings, highways and ordinances, including wheel taxes and zoning questions the council then funds.

In this study Wheel taxes, jail and justice-center projects, and data-center moratoriums are commissioner-and-council business; 57% of commissioner races this year are uncontested.
County Auditor 65 races on this ballot

Keeps the county's books, applies every deduction and exemption to assessed value, certifies the net value to the state, and calculates the bills with the treasurer.

In this study Auditors turned out to be the in-house analysts of the 2025 overhaul — in Jay, Shelby and Owen they led the income-tax and task-force work, and Madison's auditor warned publicly about rainy-day use and jail bonds.
County Assessor 92 races on this ballot

Values property, and moves values toward the market each year using sales data. Assessed value is the base every deduction and every tax cap is applied to.

In this study State cost-table increases raised assessments sharply — Morgan +32% then +24%, Switzerland +35% — and assessors say they are understaffed for their parcel counts. Every county elects an assessor this year; seven of those races are contested.
County Treasurer 15 races on this ballot

Collects what is owed, holds and invests county cash, and makes the transfers between funds the state requires.

In this study Cash position is now the live question: Floyd and Knox ended 2025 with about 44 days of general-fund cash, and Knox took $3.8M in loans from its rainy-day fund.
County Sheriff 92 races on this ballot

Runs the jail and the patrol division, and asks the council for the staff and the building to do it.

In this study Jails and sheriffs take $1.04B of 2026 county budgets — the fastest-growing claim on them. Grant, Madison and Monroe hold about 30% more people than their stated limits; Allen, Howard, Madison and Monroe have jail projects of $100M to $270M. Every county elects a sheriff this year.
Prosecuting Attorney 92 races on this ballot

Charges and tries criminal cases for the circuit, and staffs the office the council funds.

In this study Staffing is the recurring request: Vanderburgh asked for more than six new prosecutors, Howard for six deputies (tabled), and Tippecanoe has nine attorney vacancies. Hancock is pursuing pay parity between prosecutors and public defenders.
Clerk of the Circuit Court 62 races on this ballot

Runs elections and keeps the court's records.

In this study Clerks appear in these minutes mostly through election costs and staffing; Lawrence made an emergency voter-registration hire in October 2026.
County Coroner 22 races on this ballot

Determines cause of death, and contracts the autopsies and forensic work the county pays for.

In this study Jasper's coroner asked for a forensic center as part of a $2.08M five-year plan, and a 2026 law adds training requirements for coroners.
School Board Member 632 races on this ballot

Adopts the school corporation's budget and its own levy, and decides which buildings stay open.

In this study Schools take about $0.42 of every property-tax dollar levied in Indiana. Enrollment is the pressure underneath: Elkhart is down 2,336 students since 2018–19 and is closing four elementary schools, and the 2025 overhaul dissolves Randolph County's Union School Corporation on July 1, 2027.
Township Trustee 939 races on this ballot

Runs township assistance and, in many townships, the fire service — on its own small levy.

In this study Townships take about $0.03 of every property-tax dollar, and fire and EMS are where the most new county income-tax money is going: Carroll, Martin, Shelby, Steuben, Union and Wells all added rates for it.

Find which of these are on your own ballot.

What's included: the U.S. House, statewide offices, every Indiana House and Senate district on the ballot, Indiana's statewide public questions and judicial retention questions, and county, township, city, town and school board races from the Indiana Election Division's candidate list.
Everything else: Local races (county, city, school board, judges) and anything else on your ballot are on your official sample ballot: IndianaVoters.in.gov.
Candidate lists: As of Monday, October 19, 2026.
At the polls: Indiana law lets you bring a list of candidates and public questions into the polling place, including one stored on your phone, as long as you don't electioneer. IC 3-11-8-18.5

This is not an official ballot. Confirm your registration, polling place and ballot with your election office through vote.gov.