SUMMARY:
Fire 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/
WHAT’S INSIDE:
00:00:21 Introduction: Fire Week Continues
Scott recaps Tuesday’s conversation with Rep. Randy Novak (HD-9) and introduces tonight’s guest: Josh Burbrink, a volunteer firefighter, business intelligence director at Mainstream Fiber Networks, and Democratic nominee for Indiana House District 59.
00:03:14 Welcoming Josh Burbrink
Josh joins the show and introduces himself: this is his third run for office, after prior bids for county council and commissioner.
Josh describes cold-calling his local fire department on a whim, getting voted on that Monday, and training through roughly nine months of certifications (Firefighter I/II, hazmat) — now in his eighth year volunteering.
00:06:53 The Brown County Wildfire
Josh’s most memorable call: a 30-plus-acre wildfire at Brown County State Park that kept crews out from 9 p.m. to nearly 4 a.m. using “Indian pack” water backpacks, with state wildfire specialists eventually called in to help.
00:09:46 Volunteer Firefighters’ Billions in Savings
Picking up a figure from Tuesday’s episode with Novak, Scott and Josh discuss how volunteer departments save Indiana an estimated $4–6 billion a year, and why low-call-volume rural areas can’t justify full-time paid staff; Josh’s own department runs a hybrid model with daytime paid coverage.
00:13:16 SEA 1’s Disproportionate Hit on Rural Fire Departments
Josh explains how SEA 1 cuts the property-tax base township trustees rely on to fund fire protection, pushing departments toward new local income taxes — a regressive fix buried in layers of required local sign-off (fire board, chiefs, trustees, county council).
00:15:55 Consolidation, Response Times, and Rising Insurance Rates
Merging fire departments to cover larger areas means longer response times, which in turn raises homeowners’ insurance premiums — and in the worst cases, Josh warns, insurers simply stop covering fire risk altogether, pushing some areas toward costly private fire subscription services.
00:17:43 The Real Math on SEA 1’s “Savings”
Josh says he personally saved about $200 on his tax bill from SEA 1, against roughly $1.2 billion in business tax cuts statewide and a combined $750 million hole across Indiana school districts, many now turning to ballot referendums.
00:20:17 The Heart of Rural Communities
Scott and Josh argue these cuts gut schools, fire departments, and libraries — often a rural area’s largest employers — triggering a downward spiral as lost jobs shrink the tax base further; Josh connects it directly to rural hospital closures pushing uninsured patients toward costly ER visits and volunteer EMS runs.
00:22:17 Would Eliminating Townships Make It Worse?
Responding to a 2026 legislative proposal to eliminate townships, Josh warns that moving fire funding decisions from the township to the county level would centralize control, likely consolidate departments further, and push response times up even more.
00:24:53 Friends of the Library and the Summer Reading Program
Josh describes his role with the nonprofit Friends of the Library, which funds the library’s summer reading program and merchandise sales that the library itself, as a government entity, can’t easily run.
00:28:13 The Library Book-Banning Fight
Josh recounts a contentious library board meeting over children’s book displays — amid a broader moral panic Scott connects to Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith — where he and his father-in-law spoke up for the library, rallied 100-plus supporters to a follow-up meeting, and separately encountered an armed man photographing book displays and questioning staff about LGBTQ+ children’s titles.
Scott notes the irony of First Amendment advocates pushing to restrict what library patrons can read while elevating the Second Amendment above all else.
00:32:53 Rural Broadband and the Day Job at Mainstream Fiber
Josh details his work in business intelligence for Mainstream Fiber Networks, the state’s layered broadband-grant history (Indiana Next Level Connections program, federal BEAD program), and how remote work and tele-health depend on rural areas finally getting reliable internet.
00:39:33 Snow Days, Remote Learning, and Testing Pressure
Scott laments the lost whimsy of snow days in the remote-learning era; Josh ties the shift to statehouse-driven testing standards that threaten school funding if scores slip, turning snow days into mandatory remote-school days.
00:41:04 School Vouchers: Choice for Some, Not for Rural Districts
Scott and Josh discuss how Indiana’s “money follows the student” framing breaks down in rural areas with no real school choice, while the majority of voucher recipients statewide now come from families earning over $100,000 a year — a reversal of the program’s original low-income intent — and private schools raising tuition by exactly the voucher amount.
00:45:45 Breaking the Supermajority
Looking to a 2027 budget session, Josh names schools, fire departments, and libraries as his top three priorities. Scott posits that Democrats are likely to flip at least the four seats needed to break the House supermajority on November 3rd.
00:47:04 Lobbying Culture at the Statehouse
Josh recounts attending Renewable Energy Day with the Sierra Club and being stunned to learn statehouse hallways fill with competing lobbying groups daily during session — and argues that breaking the supermajority would let Democrats slow down bills pushed through, by his estimate, with half the chamber not having read them.
00:52:22 Data Centers and Renewable Energy
Asked what got missed, Josh raises data centers as a hot-button rural issue; his county recently closed a loophole letting them be rezoned as unremarkable “communication centers,” and he’d like to see future projects required to be net exporters of renewable energy so grid costs don’t get passed to ratepayers.
00:53:37 Flock Cameras and Surveillance Without Guardrails
Josh describes rigging his own truck to count how often he passes Flock license-plate cameras, and warns Indiana has no warrant or data-retention requirements governing a privately owned surveillance network that’s been used to track interstate marijuana purchases and people seeking out-of-state reproductive health care.
00:56:11 Closing Pitch and Where to Find Josh Burbrink
Josh makes his closing case, noting 2026 marks the country’s 250th anniversary, and directs voters to VoteBurbrink.com, Facebook, and ActBlue for donations.
00:57:21 Show Outro
