HoosLeft Podcast - LIVE w/ Josh Burbrink for HD59

The HoosLeft Podcast with Scott Aaron Rogers talks Indiana politics, history, and culture from an unapologetically leftist perspective. IFire Week continues on this special Thursday bonus episode as Scott talks with Josh Burbrink, a volunteer firefighter and the Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 59 (Bartholomew County, including Columbus). By day Burbrink is a business intelligence director at Mainstream Fiber Networks, working to extend rural broadband; he also sits on his county’s planning and zoning board, volunteers with the Sierra Club, and serves as president of the Friends of Bartholomew County Library. The two trace how SEA 1, Indiana’s 2025 property-tax overhaul, hollows out the institutions he calls “the heart” of rural communities — fire departments, schools, and libraries — forcing fire departments toward costly consolidation that lengthens response times and raises homeowners’ insurance rates, all to deliver meager saving for homeowners against a $1.2 billion state giveaway to business. They dig into school vouchers increasingly captured by families earning over $100,000 rather than the low-income students they were meant to help, a tense library board fight over children’s book displays amid the Moms For Liberty-led moral panic, and the lobbying culture Burbrink encountered firsthand at the Statehouse’s Renewable Energy Day. He closes by flagging two priorities for a (hopefully) more-Democratic 2027 session: requiring data centers to be net exporters of renewable energy, and regulating Flock license-plate cameras, which currently operate in Indiana with no warrant requirement or data-retention rules. Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us Josh Burbrink: https://www.voteburbrink.com/ HoosLeft and PIN rely on your support. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at progressiveindiana.net WHAT’S INSIDE: 00:00:21 Introduction: Fire Week Continues 00:03:14 Welcoming Josh Burbrink 00:06:53 The Brown County Wildfire 00:09:46 Volunteer Firefighters’ Billions in Savings 00:13:16 SEA 1’s Disproportionate Hit on Rural Fire Departments 00:15:55 Consolidation, Response Times, and Rising Insurance Rates 00:17:43 The Real Math on SEA 1’s “Savings” 00:20:17 The Heart of Rural Communities 00:22:17 Would Eliminating Townships Make It Worse? 00:24:53 Friends of the Library and the Summer Reading Program 00:28:13 The Library Book-Banning Fight 00:32:53 Rural Broadband and the Day Job at Mainstream Fiber 00:39:33 Snow Days, Remote Learning, and Testing Pressure 00:41:04 School Vouchers: Choice for Some, Not for Rural Districts 00:45:45 Breaking the Supermajority 00:47:04 Lobbying Culture at the Statehouse 00:52:22 Data Centers and Renewable Energy 00:53:37 Flock Cameras and Surveillance Without Guardrails 00:56:11 Closing Pitch and Where to Find Josh Burbrink 00:57:21 Show Outro