Lawmakers at the 2023 General Assembly tackled an array of bills with potentially big impacts on technology and the tech sector.
Now that the session has concluded, let’s take a look back at the fate of some of those key bills.
Senate Bill 5, which addressed consumer data protection, enjoyed wide bipartisan support. It passed out of the House and Senate chambers unanimously.
The bill, authored by Sen. Liz Brown (R-Fort Wayne), establishes a consumer data privacy law for Indiana – only the sixth one in the nation. It gives consumers the right to confirm whether a company is processing their data, have their data deleted by a company and obtain a copy of their personal data held by the company, among other things.
A federal law addressing this issue would be ideal so companies don’t have to work through a patchwork of consumer data protection legislation state by state. In the absence of that, the Chamber favors a state law – like Indiana’s – that strikes a balance between business interests and consumer demands
Of note: Such federal legislation could come before the state law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
Senate Bill 271 didn’t enjoy quite the level of consensus as did Senate Bill 5.
Authored by Sen. Brian Buchanan (R-Lebanon), the law is aimed to help Indiana’s 22 active tech parks keep more of the sales and income taxes generated by the businesses within them. The money could be used to administer or expand the parks and their infrastructure, recruit additional companies or provide services to existing businesses.
CTPs were established by state statute – and are regulated by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC) – to encourage and foster growth among start-up companies and entrepreneurs, especially those in the tech sector.
The bill originally increased the funding for Certified Technology Parks (CTPs) from $100,000 to $500,000 annually. In the end, the amount legislators agreed on was $250,000 annually. While the Chamber would like to have seen CTPs get more money, this is definitely a step in the right direction.
Importantly, Senate Bill 271 empowers the IEDC and state lawmakers to collect additional data on CTPs to make sure they are in compliance with the statute. The Chamber is concerned that the additional $150,000 – though welcome – might not be enough for some CTPs to function at their full potential and is hopeful that with the collection and analysis of this data, state lawmakers will re-visit this issue and increase the funding in a year or two.
that received broad bipartisan support is House Bill 1167, which requires governing bodies of state and local agencies, excluding a state supported college or university, but including school boards, to provide, on a publicly accessible platform (most likely the Internet), live transmissions of public meetings and an archive of copies of the live transmissions with links to any meeting agendas, minutes or memoranda.
The measure passed out of the Senate 48-0 and the House 89-5.
The Chamber believes the state is now making a policy statement to add transparency into local government proceedings, and that’s a good thing.
House Bill 1266, from Rep. Christopher Judy (R-Wabash), establishes the Indiana Cyber Civilian Corps program advisory board and requires the adjutant general to provide staff support for the board. The bill also requires the board to provide findings and recommendations concerning the establishment of an Indiana Cyber Civilian Corps program to the Legislative Council.
Judy had hoped to get a $500,000 appropriation to lay out a plan for the way a fast-response cybersecurity plan should work, but that didn’t materialize.
The Indiana Chamber also would have preferred to launch the program rather than merely set up an advisory board to make recommendations for how this program should work. The Chamber thinks such a program could serve any public sector entity subject to cybersecurity attack, and those attacks in big cities and small towns are becoming more common – and more costly.
House Bill 1279 not only deals with technology, but something near and dear to everyone: food.
The bill states that third-party food delivery services such as GrubHub and Uber Eats must have an agreement with a restaurant to feature the restaurant’s menu on their site. At issue is how poor delivery of food hurts the reputation of the restaurants that prepare the food but are not involved in its delivery. While the Indiana Chamber agrees the bill helps the delivery services and restaurants to be on the same page, the Chamber opposed the bill because it failed to consider the role of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
As passed, the bill exposes search engines to liability because delivery apps use them to facilitate orders; and in the process, share customer data with those search engines.
The Chamber contends the bill is unduly burdensome to search engines that are merely trying to help facilitate a transaction. Further, the bill allows restaurants to file lawsuits not only against third-party delivery services but search engines as well. The Chamber believes this could cause a problem with frivolous lawsuits.
It is important to note that in 2021, Google helped provide $4.82 billion of economic activity for tens of thousands of Indiana businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers. More than 353,000 Indiana businesses received requests for directions, phone calls, bookings, reviews and other direct connections to their customers from Google. And Google helped train 163,000 Hoosiers on digital skills.
Senate Bill 468 is a long and complex bill dealing with the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a comprehensive set of laws governing all commercial transactions in the United States. It is not a federal law, but a uniformly adopted state law. Uniformity of law is essential in this area for the interstate transaction of business. The UCC is amended on a regular basis.
Authored by Sen. Chris Garten (R-Charlestown), SB 468 passed with broad support. The Chamber testified the bill would update Indiana’s Uniform Commercial Code statute to accommodate commerce in the digital age. This year’s amendments enable more digital transactions through such functions as electronic signatures and e-filing.
Importantly, Senate Bill 468 amends the definition of “money” for purposes of Indiana’s Uniform Commercial Code to specify that money “is a medium of exchange that is not in an electronic form and does not include a central bank digital currency that is currently adopted, or that may be adopted, by the United States government, a foreign government, a foreign reserve, or a foreign sanctioned central bank.”
That provision, among other things, eliminates the use of cryptocurrencies for purposes of the UCC.
The amendment removed references to digital currency due to concerns by some outside stakeholders. Similar concerns were enough for Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to veto a similar bill based on her impression that the bill would infringe upon “freedom in digital currency.”
Senate Bill 1 deals with mental health legislation, but in its original form would have had a direct impact on the tech sector – and every Hoosier with a cell phone – because of the funding mechanism proposed within the bill.
Initially, a $1 surcharge on cell phone bills was floated to pay for the mental health initiatives outlined in Senate Bill 1. Chief among those initiatives is a 988 call center proposed by the Behavioral Health Commission Report. The 988 system is similar to the 911 system, except callers are not calling for police or fire service, but rather for mental health needs, including drug addiction and suicide issues.
During the General Assembly, the Indiana Chamber voiced its opposition to the $1 cell phone surcharge, instead favoring a $2 per pack addition to the state’s cigarette tax to pay for the initiative. In the end, lawmakers opted for neither once the state received a very positive revenue forecast and simply appropriated $50 million per year for the initiative from state funds.
The infrastructure for the system was laid out in Senate Bill 1, and the funding was in the budget, House Bill 1001. There were additional facets of the two-year state budget that involve the tech sector. Those include:
- $32.75 million annually for the Indiana 21st Century Research & Technology Fund;
- Language clarifying that Next Level Fund dollars should be aimed at investments that give preference to Indiana companies or Indiana venture capital firms;
- $4 million annually for robotics programs and (school-affiliated) competitions as established under House Bill 1382 and We the People programs;
- Increased, dedicated funding for career and technical education;
- Funding of the career scholarship accounts at $5,000 per participant to be used for students to participate in career coursework, apprenticeships and programs to complete a certification; and
- $5 million annually to pursue more direct flights to and from Indiana, which has been a big emphasis for tech and other companies located in the state.
