def create_fips_ref(fips_df):
    """
        Sets all the state names in the fips_df to lowercase for easier 
        comparisons and makes a dict reference with the FIPS code as 
        the key to shorten code instead of having to match/query the 
        DataFrame repeatedly.
    """
    fips_state_ref = dict(zip(fips_df["fips_code"],
                              [x.lower() for x in fips_df["state_name"]]))

    return fips_state_ref