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State Sen. Jim Banks has resigned his seat in the General Assembly following his election to northeastern Indiana's 3rd District congressional seat. The Columbia City Republican sent a letter to Senate President Pro Tem David Long resigning the seat effective at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Republican Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb has rushed to distinguish himself to voters since his party chose him to replace Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on the ballot the three months ago, after Pence dropped his re-election bid to become Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate.
As Republican John T. Young and Democrat Michael Reddick vie for the Indiana House District 47 seat, their focus will be on improving education, making school funding more efficient and finding better ways to gauge if schools and students are succeeding. Issues such as fixing Indiana's infrastructure and addressing growing addiction problems among Hoosiers are also important to the candidates.
The Indiana gubernatorial candidates said during a debate Tuesday that they believe the state should do more to attack the growing abuse of heroin and other drugs. Democrat John Gregg and Republican Eric Holcomb both pointed to proposals they've made for addressing the problem as federal statistics show Indiana saw a 59 percent jump in overall drug overdose deaths between 2006 and 2014.
Indiana's gas tax hasn't changed in more than two decades. The most recent time it was raised was in 1993, when it was upped from 9 cents to 18.4 cents.
A federal judge's decision to block a new Indiana abortion law from taking effect was a setback for anti-abortion activists who backed the push to tighten restrictions on the procedure that are already among the most strict in the country. Provisions put on hold a day before they were to take effect Friday would have banned abortions sought because of a fetus' genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome or because of the race, gender or ancestry of a fetus, and required that aborted fetuses be buried or cremated.