Campaign Phone
7654302913
Education
University of Illinois: BS Mechanical Engineering and MBA
Experience in Leadership and Management
Over 15 years at Caterpillar working with global cross-functional teams to execute new product development. Six year board member with Habitat for Humanity of Lafayette.
Expanding voter registration up to election day gives people more time to get registered or update their registration. Allowing no-excuse absentee mail-in voting to provide greater flexibility to those juggling work, school, child care, elder care or other situations which make it difficult to vote in-person. Extending early voting efforts to include more rural areas and expanded hours to include non-traditional working schedules can improve voter turnout.
State government should have primary responsibility over natural resource management and establish the legal framework within which local entities operate. Because natural resources cross municipal and county boundaries, there needs to be legislation that protects all of Indiana, so one county's decisions do not negatively impact another. Outside of these overarching rules, local governments understand their communities the best and should have the ultimate decision making power to approve or reject projects.
Indiana public schools are not adequately funded. The per-student funding has not kept pace with inflation, school choice vouchers are shifting taxpayer money to private schools, and property tax changes are further removing funds from schools. As an example, let's look at Tippecanoe School Corp. For the 2024-2025 school year, TSC would have had an additional $3.88 million if funding would have kept up with inflation and an additional $6.81 million if there was no school voucher program. With the property tax changes, TSC is facing a reduction in funding of $8.6 million over the next three years. Together, these trends make it clear public schools are consistently being asked to do more with less.
Indiana should allow state-wide referendums. These can be powerful democratic tools that give voters a direct voice in shaping major public policies. They help citizens feel engaged in the decision making process rather than relying on elected legislators to interpret public opinion. Hot topic issues such as marijuana legalization and abortion rights can be decided by the citizens, ensuring policy outcomes reflect the will of the people rather than the preferences of a small group of lawmakers, particularly in areas heavily affected by gerrymandering. By incorporating referendums into Indiana’s political system, the state could strengthen democratic participation and increase public trust in government decisions.
Redistricting should only be done as scheduled, after a census, and should be nonpartisan. Having fair representation is a core principle of democracy and manipulating maps to give a certain party more control is wrong. I do not see any cons with nonpartisan redistricting, however having the public believe it is truly nonpartisan will likely be a difficult task.
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Making election days state holidays.
Maximize polling locations from early voting through election day.
Simplifying voter registration.
Open mail-in voting as an option to more Hoosiers.
Like food trucks visit neighborhoods, create voting trucks and bring them to neighborhoods to enable easier voting.
The people who live in proximity or will be in any way affected by the proposed land and natural resource management should have the final say on what's done with it. It should be democratically decided after enough time has been given to educate the public to their satisfaction on all aspects related to the development.
Who shouldn't have primacy are the developers or capitalists who want to extract wealth or resources from the communities they propose to enter. They must convince the public that their proposed use of land and natural resources is in the best interests of all affected parties and that the compromise is agreeable. Developers should not be able to plunder from unengaged communities.
Public schools have been under continual divestment for decades. I've talked to many superintendents in my district and they all tell me this same story. Tax changes that decrease funding from the General Assembly keep happening. Mandates that public schools haven't asked for are imposed without funding to support them. Plundering from public school funds to prop up private charter schools that don't have the same requirements. It is clear that the supermajority wants to see education fully privatized in our state so the control of our education system is in the hands of ultra-rich capitalists and not the public. We need democracy to decide how our public schools should operate and funded and privatization will further divide us.
I'm only familiar with school corporation referendums to ask the public for more funding than they are getting from the state. With the cost of living crisis and continued divestment from public education by our General Assembly, asking the public for more help when they are already struggling to afford feeding and housing themselves and their families is dystopian. There is plenty of state money to fund public education so that we don't need to resort to begging for more local taxation. We just need the political will to generate it via taxing the wealthy for their fair share and prioritizing education over tax breaks to mega corporations who don't need it.
There are really only pros in a world where elected officials don't get to pick their voters. Democracy is the name of the game whether in elections, decisions that affect a community, or the borders that define the communities to be represented in our government. The only "con" is the logistics of setting up this practice in our state but there are already models for this that we can reference from other states, so this is no excuse not to implement it.
