Who proposes · Zoning and land use · Page 10 of 10
A City-County Councilor cannot introduce a zoning change. Not a text amendment, not a rezoning. Indiana's metropolitan planning law reserves that to the Metropolitan Development Commission and to landowners, and gives the Council a vote only at the end. One sentence of state law would change it.
Indiana has three planning laws. Most counties use the advisory law, a few use the area law, and Marion County alone uses the metropolitan law. The initiation power differs by which law applies, and the difference is a parenthetical.
The plan commission may initiate the proposal. (Under the advisory planning law or the area planning law, any participating legislative body also may initiate the proposal and require the plan commission to prepare it.)
The proposal may be initiated (A) by the plan commission; or (B) by a petition signed by property owners who own at least fifty percent (50%) of the land involved,
with the same advisory-and-area-only parenthetical for legislative bodies.
Under the metropolitan planning law, the plan commission is the Metropolitan Development Commission. The parenthetical that lets a county council or town council in Hamilton County or Hendricks County initiate a zoning proposal does not name the metropolitan law, so it does not reach the City-County Council. A councilor's only tools are to ask the Commission or its staff at the Department of Metropolitan Development to initiate, or to pass a non-binding resolution asking them to.
Two lanes, and in both the Council appears once, at the end. The highlighted step is the only one that belongs to us.
Changing a rule that applies everywhere: a use table, a parking minimum, a setback, an overlay standard.
Changing the district on a specific parcel or parcels.
The call-down is real power over a rezoning someone else proposed. It is no power at all to propose one. And on text amendments, the rules that shape every project in the county, the Council cannot even see a proposal the MDC voted down.
Whether the Council can use a call-down to approve a rezoning the MDC denied, rather than only to reject one it approved, is ambiguous in the statute's text and turns on what is "certified" after a denial. Council counsel and the MDC Rules of Procedure should answer it. Indianapolis's own zoning code, Chapter 740, defers the whole procedure to the MDC's rules and the state statute; it has no initiation section of its own.
The January hearing
Asked to review a code we cannot amend
HEA 1001 requires a public review of the development ordinance against nine barriers by January 1, 2027. The Council will sit through it, and if a councilor concludes a parking minimum or a lot-width rule should go, the councilor cannot introduce the change. Only the MDC can.
A District 20 example
The alley rule at Washington Square
The transit overlay along the Blue Line requires a drive-through to take access from an alley. The Washington Square ring road has no alley and never will. The fix is a one-line text amendment. The only route available to me was a variance hearing that split a board 2 to 2 and came back a month later.
The duplex on a 40-foot lot
A use-table change
The owner-occupied duplex this series is built around needs a use-table entry in the districts where the lots are. That is a text amendment. Twenty-five elected legislators cannot put it on an agenda.
Accountability
Voters cannot reach the initiator
The Council appoints four of the MDC's nine members and the mayor appoints five. Residents can vote for neither the Commission nor the staff who bring it proposals. They can vote for us.
No new process, no new body, no change to the MDC's hearing or recommendation. Add the metropolitan planning law to the sentence that already lets every other legislative body in Indiana initiate.
The plan commission may initiate the proposal. (Under the advisory planning law, or the area planning law, or the metropolitan development commission law, any participating legislative body also may initiate the proposal and require the plan commission to prepare it.)
So that a rezoning may be initiated by the Commission, by a landowner petition, or by the legislative body of the consolidated city.
IC 36-7-4-605(b) · conforming changeProvide that a proposal initiated by the legislative body is certified back to it with the Commission's recommendation, favorable or not, so the MDC's advice is heard and the Council still votes.
Under this language a councilor introduces a proposal, the Council refers it to the MDC, the MDC holds its hearing and makes its recommendation exactly as it does today, and the proposal returns to the Council for a vote with that recommendation attached. The professional planning review stays intact. What changes is that an elected official can start the conversation.
Statutory text was read from the current Indiana Code in September 2026. The Council's own rules for introducing proposals, Revised Code Chapter 151, were not retrieved and would need a conforming section. Whether a councilor-initiated proposal should require sponsorship by more than one member, as some states do, is a design choice for the bill's author.
State · 2027 session
The amendment above
A legislative author for the 602 and 605 changes, framed as parity: every other Indiana legislative body already has this power.
Local · now
A Council resolution of support
The standard predicate for a Statehouse ask, and a record of which colleagues want the power.
Local · now
An MDC-initiation request procedure
Until the law changes, ask the MDC to adopt a rule that a written request from a councilor, or from the Council by resolution, is placed on its next agenda for a vote on whether to initiate. That costs nothing and it starts the record.
Local · January
Use the HEA 1001 hearing
Put the alley rule, the duplex use table and the parking minimums on the record at the required review, so the report to the state shows what the Council would have introduced if it could.
What this means for you
Pick who you are in the bar at the top and this section changes.
Every code fix you have asked a councilor for has hit this wall. If there is a text amendment you would want introduced on day one, a use, a setback, a parking rule, tell me which, so the list exists before the January hearing.
The overlay rules that stall a listing's redevelopment are text amendments. Today nobody you elect can propose changing them.
The nine barriers HEA 1001 names are all text-amendment territory. Bring the specific sections you would strike; a councilor cannot introduce them, but the January record can carry them.
Predictability in the code is what your underwriting prices. A code that only the Commission can propose to change is predictable in one sense and unaccountable in another.
The by-right lane for affordable housing that this series will propose is a text amendment. Under current law your councilor cannot introduce it; the MDC must choose to.
When a zoning rule hurts your block, the person you elected cannot propose fixing it. This page is about changing that, without taking the professional planning review away.
Two asks for colleagues: co-sponsor the resolution of support, and join a written request to the MDC for an initiation-request rule. Neither changes anyone's vote on any zoning case.