The state's 2025 road funding law ties new state road dollars to whether a city adopts a wheel tax. Tell City's council delayed one in August 2025 while it looked for alternatives, and by July 2026 local reporting called it likely. Add the 2026 gas tax holiday, which pulls over half a billion dollars from state and local road funds, and the pattern is plain: the state cuts ribbons, river towns get invoices.

One more number worth knowing. When Public Policy Polling surveyed Indiana voters statewide in February 2026, in a poll commissioned by the Property Rights Alliance, 88 percent said they would rather see transportation money go to local road and bridge projects than to the Mid-States Corridor. Perry County roads are a district issue, and the district agrees with the river towns.

Perry County Memorial is the county's only hospital, and it runs the county's ambulance service. In July 2026 the hospital board and the county commissioners held a work session on hospital finances, and the commissioners appointed two of their own members to the hospital board. I am not going to speculate past the public record. I am going to watch it closely, because rural hospital finance is a state policy problem wearing a local name.

Perry County electricity comes from Tell City Electric and the Southern Indiana Power co-op, not from the big investor owned utilities, and CenterPoint is your gas company. The co-op's wholesale supplier has already adopted a rule that any huge new customer, like a data center, must pay all of its own costs so members do not subsidize it. That is the right instinct, and it is exactly the standard I want written into state law.

Tell City is replacing lead water service lines with a 4.2 million dollar state loan approved through the state revolving fund. Brushy Hollow residents spent June 2026 documenting sewage backups from failing grinder pumps. And in April 2025 the Ohio neared 49 feet at Tell City while the levee and the pump stations held. None of this is glamorous. All of it is what government is actually for.

The Forest Service logging and burning plan between Paoli, French Lick, and English drew opposition from county commissioners in the region, and Governor Braun asked the Forest Service to withdraw it in February 2025. As of mid-2026 the agency had issued no final decision. A separate Forest Service logging project farther north was halted by a federal judge in September 2025 over gaps in its water impact study, so the courts are watching this closely too. Perry County holds a big share of the Hoosier National Forest, and the trails economy is real. Before I take a position on forest management, I want to hear from the people who hunt, hike, log, and guide here.

Waupaca's Tell City foundry picked up work when the company idled plants elsewhere, and Webb Wheel is expanding with 28 new jobs after the county approved abatements with claw-back protections. Good. Abatements should always come with strings that protect the public, and skilled trades in Perry County should never be an afterthought in Indianapolis.