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INDIANAPOLIS — One Indiana state senator is pushing a bill that would make it more difficult for some Indiana cities to change their names if they ever wanted to consider doing so.

Under current state statute, cities and towns may change their names as they like as long as the people pushing for a name change get a petition of at least 500 signatures and the city’s council approves an ordinance for a name change based on that petition.

Republican State Sen. Jack Sandlin’s bill would make it so that that rule would not apply to any cities or towns named in the Indiana Constitution. That would, in essence, make so those cities would have to get approval from state lawmakers to change their name.

“If you look at what we have here in Indianapolis and invested in Indianapolis as an international designation, the question was ‘does it make sense?’,” said Sandlin to WISH-TV. “Not only for Indianapolis but for other cities to use a 500 signature petition to do that.”

Indianapolis, Clarksville, Vincennes, and Evansville are the only four cities that are named directly in the state’s constitution, with around 140 others that are named based on laws and amendments that have been added since the constitution was ratified in 1816.

“If you change the name of a city, whether it’s Indianapolis or another city, someone has to sweep through all those entries in our state statute and find them, and then change them,” said Sandlin.

His fellow senator from Indianapolis, Democrat Greg Taylor doesn’t like the bill.

“The only way that the constitution or the Indiana code is changed, is by the Indiana General Assembly. To take that privilege, that right from local government is flat out wrong,” said Taylor.

Right now there are no active plans to speak of in any of the aforementioned cities for their names to be changed.