SB 14 would limit the ability of counties, cities, and towns to regulate certain home gardening and small-scale agricultural activities. As introduced, the bill would have barred local governments from adopting or enforcing ordinances that prevent a person from cultivating a vegetable garden on their property or on another person’s property with permission, while still allowing local standards on matters such as height, setbacks, water use, fertilizer use, and invasive species control so long as those standards are applied consistently across similarly zoned property. It also would have allowed local governments to regulate the keeping of livestock, including limits on species, number of animals, accessory structures, and minimum lot size.
Impact
The bill adds a new chapter to Indiana Code chapter 36-7-2.6, affecting local zoning and land-use authority. It preempts local ordinances that would effectively prohibit vegetable gardens, and it preserves local power to impose generally applicable property standards. The bill also authorizes local regulation of livestock keeping, and the committee amendment broadens the measure by adding a separate chapter for agricultural uses on agricultural property, including a prohibition on local ordinances that would block agricultural uses and a clarification that rezoning may still occur, with agricultural nonconforming-use protections potentially continuing after rezoning. The bill expressly does not impair homeowners association contracts or governing documents, and it excludes beekeeping from its livestock restrictions.
Sentiment
The bill appears to have been broadly supported in the Senate. It was reported favorably out of the Senate Committee on Local Government by a 10-0 vote and later passed third reading in the Senate 49-0. That voting record suggests little overt opposition in the chamber and a generally favorable view of the measure’s property-rights and local-food-production themes.
Contention
The main policy tension is between private property rights and local zoning control. Supporters appear to favor protecting residents’ ability to grow food and keep small numbers of livestock, while local governments retain authority to regulate nuisance, safety, and land-use impacts through neutral standards. The committee amendment indicates some concern about the original scope of the bill, narrowing and reorganizing the text to distinguish residential property from agricultural property and to preserve local rezoning authority. Another point of contention is the bill’s explicit statement that it does not override homeowners association rules, which limits the practical reach of the new protections for some property owners.
Enhancing the criminal penalty for an offense committed with the intent to commit transnational repression, requiring the development of transnational repression recognition and response training, providing that theft of livestock or implements of husbandry is a severity level 5, nonperson felony, providing that the theft of grain or hay is a severity level 6, nonperson felony and providing that certain portions of the crime of cruelty to animals do not apply to any person who catches a feral cat to provide vaccination, spaying or neutering and returns such cat back to the location where such cat is caught.
Relating to the authority of the Texas Military Department to negotiate the release of a reversionary interest and certain other interests of the state in certain property in Palo Pinto County owned by the Palo Pinto County Livestock Association.