Shortly after taking office last year, Gov. Mike Braun signed an executive order for state agencies to keep businesses in mind when setting environmental rules.
The order, signed in March 2025, said state environmental rules should not be more stringent than federal standards and that agencies should not “impose unnecessary burdens on business, communities, agencies or industries.”
Braun’s directive could soon materialize in changes to rules governing the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Senate Bill 277 is authored by Lowell Republican Sen. Rick Niemeyer and passed the Senate last week. It would overhaul much of IDEM’s code, often referred to as Title 13.
But some argue that the legislation sacrifices oversight in favor of economic development.
IDEM Commissioner Clint Woods told IBJ the bill’s goal is to “simplify, streamline, consolidate and clarify” Indiana law. That includes getting rid of references to outdated standards, eliminating or consolidating certain boards and clarifying the permitting process for businesses.
For Jason Lenz, who owns the environmental consulting group Creek Run Environmental in Montpelier, the bill’s biggest impact would be the certainty it would give businesses regarding how IDEM operates.
“It will make things more efficient and therefore be more effective,” Lenz said. “I don’t believe that they’re proposing anything that’s going to harm the environment.”
But where Woods and Lenz see streamlined government, groups like the Hoosier Environmental Council see IDEM abdicating its enforcement duties.
“This bill doesn’t just get rid of some outdated references. … It does some really significant changes,” said David Van Gilder, senior policy and legal director for the Hoosier Environmental Council. “But it did that under the guise of just sort of a code cleanup.”
SB 277 is ambitious in its scope. By Woods’ count, the current version of the legislation cuts Title 13 by 10,000 words. That eliminates or consolidates what he called more than 250 “unnecessary mandates,” and 40 “needless” paperwork requirements.
In an interview with IBJ, Woods emphasized the bill does not change any standards for air, water or waste protections. Woods called the effort a “structural modernization, not a rollback,” adding that the Legislature hasn’t looked at Title 13 since the late 1990s.
Woods said the proposed language is guided by Braun’s executive order and by results from a survey IDEM posted on its website that asked for public feedback on where regulations could be improved.
Woods shared that feedback with Niemeyer, who chairs the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee, and the two crafted the legislation over a series of meetings last year.
The legislation touches on most of IDEM’s operations, including reconfiguring pollution control divisions, requiring the department to consider whether federal environmental laws are inconsistent with Indiana law, requiring IDEM policies be “no more stringent or burdensome” than federal law and defining regulatory processes for new advanced processing industries.
Though “burdensome” is not defined in the legislation, Niemeyer pointed to record-keeping and reporting requirements as rules he believes fall in that category. For instance, SB 277 would change reporting requirements from monthly to annually for certain data from recycling companies. He said around 40 states have language prohibiting state regulators from going further than the EPA.
The bill also changes “shall” to “may” in dozens of sections of IDEM code. Certain provisions addressing board appointments, data collection and permitting would become optional for regulators.
Woods said many of the “shall” provisions refer to one-time powers granted to the environmental rules board decades ago to address a specific situation. Woods said he understands how adding “may” to many lines could appear to weaken IDEM’s authority, but he emphasized that IDEM will continue to enforce regulations.
“Actually, as a result of this bill, you’ll get more concentrated and focused efforts on the highest-priority environmental matters in terms of air, water and lands,” Woods said.
Business concerns
Businesses that testified before Senate committees were generally supportive of the bill, saying it keeps environmental standards in place while cutting down on red tape.
“The bill includes common sense improvements to permitting and hearing processes that are vital for the manufacturing sector,” Indiana Manufacturers Association Vice President of Government Affairs Ashton Eller wrote in a statement. “SB 277 focuses on cooperative federalism by ensuring state and federal environmental laws work in harmony. This approach will prioritize projects that are environmentally beneficial while removing unnecessary barriers to growth.”
Private-sector representatives said the red tape in question is most common in permitting and record-keeping procedures.
Rebecca Joniskan, president of the Indiana State Poultry Association, said poultry farmers are particularly affected by lengthy permitting timelines given that they deal with live animals.
“When you submit an application, and the expectation is 67 days, and you get to 90 days, and we still don’t have decisions — it’s just frustrating,” Joniskan said.
The original draft of the bill would have required IDEM to automatically approve permit applications if the agency hadn’t decided on the matter within 90 days. The Indiana State Poultry Association and the Indiana Pork Producers Association both took issue with that, saying permits approved only by technicality would make farmers vulnerable to lawsuits in case of food-borne illness.
That language has been amended to say IDEM must reimburse application fees if it doesn’t rule on a permit within 90 days.
Woods said IDEM has the smallest backlog of permit-renewal applications of any state environmental regulation agency in the country and that the permitting process generally works well. The main thrust of SB 277 regarding permitting, he said, is to define the proper type of permit for new facilities, particularly those that deal in advanced biomass manufacturing or disposal.
Lenz, who started Creek Run Environmental over 30 years ago, said permitting speed is important. But most of his clients — who primarily hire Creek Run to oversee the management of underground storage tanks — plan ahead and don’t run into major problems for permits.
Instead, Lenz said, the most significant portion of SB 277 is deleting references to nonrule policies. Nonrule policies are statements IDEM leaders make to clarify how they interpret a specific regulation. They don’t carry the force of law since they’re not enshrined in state code, but Lenz said previous administrations issued nonrule policies liberally, making it difficult for businesses to navigate IDEM without hiring an attorney.
“It will keep [IDEM] from issuing these nonrule policies that aren’t really in the legislation, but IDEM just adopts them because they can,” Lenz said. “And the rest of the people that work in the private sector have to try to figure out what they really mean and what they really want.”
Woods said SB 277 cuts out references to administrative code in 50 specific instances. He said eliminating those references is necessary because they give IDEM the ability to work around the Legislature in some key instances.
“For example, the definition of ‘small business’ referred to the administrative code,” Woods said. “You probably don’t want an agency like us deciding in an ad-hoc fashion who is and is not a small business under certain programs.”
Environmental concerns
The Hoosier Environmental Council says the scope of the changes goes far beyond code cleanup. Sam Carpenter, the council’s executive director, is most concerned about the proposed “may” language, which he said will erode IDEM’s authority to prevent bad actors from hurting Hoosiers.
Among other provisions, Carpenter pointed to language that previously required IDEM’s commissioner to sue companies causing pollution in cases of “imminent danger” to the public. The bill as written says the commissioner “may” bring a lawsuit, which Carpenter said could lead to negative health and environmental outcomes that could have been prevented with a court injunction.
He also frowns on language governing public hearings for permit applications. Currently, those hearings must be held in the county where the permit applies. The bill says IDEM “shall attempt to” hold the meeting in the community affected.
“If there are places to remove red tape and extra bureaucracy, we would be happy to sit down and have those types of conversations,” Carpenter said. “But that’s not where it feels like this is going. This feels like a large shift away from important environmental protections.”
The Citizens Action Coalition, which advocates for consumers on utility and energy policy, says the bill strips sections that allow IDEM to police nuclear facilities. There are currently no nuclear facilities in Indiana, but the bill eliminates language that would allow IDEM to set rules around nuclear projects in the future.
“The whole federalism conversation — you definitely have leeway when you’re a state regulating a particular sector,” said Lindsay Haake, a program organizer with CAC. “And so this, if anything, would just further double down on a ‘no more stringent than’ policy that would possibly situate Hoosiers for a huge environmental loss.”
Haake and Carpenter both pointed to a report published by U.S. News and World Report in August, which ranked Indiana last out of all 50 states regarding pollution threats and air and water quality. They see this as evidence the state needs to do more, not less, on the conservation front.
Woods doesn’t see the bill hurting Hoosiers. He said he stands by the agency’s record of holding public hearings and that holding meetings online has been more effective than in-person gatherings in many cases. And when asked about nuclear regulations being removed, Woods pointed to a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held federal law preempts state regulations on nuclear facilities.
Though SB 277 passed the Senate largely along party lines, a handful of Republican senators voiced concerns. Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, said on the Senate floor before the vote that the legislation is too lax in certain areas, including waste disposal requirements.
“My concern is, in some areas, in an effort to try [to] slim down rules and regs, we may be leaving the environment just a little unprotected,” Glick said.
The bill passed 29-19 and has moved to the House, where it is assigned to the Environmental Affairs Committee.•
Copyright © 2026 All Rights Reserved.