Veronica Pejril

Criminal Justice / Public Safety Community safety is more than the absence of crime, or the presence of police. It is also the well-being and sense of belonging of our families and neighbors. Community safety requires a holistic, integrated approach to law enforcement, corrections and mental health care. Drug Policy I will bring the urgency of my community’s voice to the Senate chamber to deliver state resources to District 24 for training and deploying professional recovery specialists in both Putnam and Hendricks Counties. Infrastructure / Transportation On Greencastle’s City Council, I fought to double the city’s investments in streets and sidewalks, while maintaining a balanced budget. We can responsibly rebuild our unsafe bridges and roads in Hendricks and Putnam County, through careful collaborations and good stewardship. I am ready to get to work on a comprehensive and data-driven infrastructure plan that actually takes the current “Next Level Roads” plan to the next level of responsible investment. Environment / Energy My dad was a municipal water engineer. I was raised to not take our precious air and water for granted. As we work to meet the needs to preserve agricultural land, forests and parks, we must take a critical look at funding blank-check projects like IEDC’s LEAP. Indiana’s water supply is an irreplaceable public resource, and not a commercial enterprise for a quasi-public state agency. Healthcare We must not criminalize the mentally-ill, and we must not clog our jails with patients. Until Indiana adequately invests in training a workforce to staff new CMHCs with professionals, mental health crisis care will fall short of the need. I will work in the Statehouse to deliver those needed resources to every one of Indiana’s 92 counties. Education Nearly 20 percent of Indiana’s third graders failed the 2023 state reading assessment. We have seen public education defunded and devalued by profit-driven interests over twelve years of one-party control in the Statehouse and Indiana now ranks 49th out of 50 states for investment per k-12 student. The state ranks dead-list for access to early-childhood education. As the daughter and parent of public school teachers, and as a career-long teacher at every level from pre-K to college, I will fight to ensure that every public school is fully-resourced. I will also fight for access to universal pre-K and eliminating wasteful Big-Government voucher expansion handouts to private schools that discriminate in employment and deny access to LGBTQ and special-needs students.