INDIANA — The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has released its July 2026 Local Public Agency (LPA) Program update, detailing critical policy changes to federal-aid infrastructure invoicing and revealing the formal timeline for the upcoming round of municipal road funding.
The monthly brief contains administrative shifts impacting municipal engineering departments, regional safety stakeholders, and civil contractors handling local public works projects across the state.
Overhaul to LPA Invoice-Voucher Mandates
INDOT has launched a completely revised LPA Invoice-Voucher form, changing the billing layout and mandatory compliance tracking fields. To streamline data processing and maintain federal funding standards, municipal agencies and private consulting engineers must adjust to several new administrative rules:
- Strict Billing Cycles: Local Public Agencies must now submit exactly one billing to INDOT every 30 to 45 days. Concurrently, design and engineering consultants are required to submit exactly one invoice to their partner LPAs within that same 30-to-45-day window.
- Automatic Purchase Order Closures: INDOT issued a stern compliance warning regarding stagnant accounts. Purchase Orders (POs) that do not show regular, active billing are now categorized as non-compliant. INDOT will systematically close these inactive accounts without prior notification. Municipalities are urged to maintain continuous contact with their designated District Program Directors to prevent accidental closures.
- New Tracking Fields: The updated form layout mandates that local agencies manually input the INDOT LPA Contract Expiration Date and the specific Project End Date (PED) for each selected construction or preliminary engineering phase.
Submission Notice: The revised form and updated “Appendix E” instruction manual are currently live on the INDOT Local Public Agency portal. All standard billing and Countywide Bridge Inspection and Inventory Program projects must be submitted electronically to INVOICES@INDOT.IN.GOV.
Community Crossings Grant Call for Projects Set for September
Following recent legislative adjustments by the Indiana General Assembly, INDOT announced that the next official call for projects under the State Fiscal Year 2027 Community Crossings Matching Grant (CCMG) program will open on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.
Applications must be submitted electronically before the portal closes at 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. Moving forward, INDOT intends to permanently establish September as the annual open application window for the matching grant program.
Expanded Eligibility and Closeout Rules
Local administrators must satisfy stringent financial and project management benchmarks to participate in the upcoming cycle:
- Closeout Deadline: Localities face an absolute deadline of August 31, 2026, to completely close out all remaining road projects from the 2024-1 and 2024-2 grant cycles. No future matching funds will be awarded to any municipality that has an open, unresolved 2024 project on the books.
- Debt Repayment: If a local government unit currently owes outstanding or overpaid CCMG funds back to INDOT from previous grant cycles, those balances must be paid in full before September 1, 2026, to preserve eligibility.
- Funding Caps: For any LPA that received lane-mile distribution funding on June 30, 2026, application eligibility for the incoming cycle will be mathematically restricted to the exact difference between that specific June distribution and the program’s strict $1.0 million statutory cap.
Public Feedback Requested for 5-Year Highway Safety Plan
In tandem with local infrastructure funding updates, INDOT is actively soliciting input from traffic safety partners, city planners, and law enforcement for the state’s upcoming Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP).
The data-driven, multi-agency strategy will serve as the guiding blueprint for statewide traffic enforcement, safety engineering, and speed management initiatives for the next five years.
An active stakeholder survey is currently open online to help INDOT identify, rank, and prioritize localized safety issues—such as work zone hazards, vulnerable road user protections, and intersection designs. Stakeholders who complete the safety survey will also receive direct access to register for a pair of in-person development meetings scheduled to take place this September.
