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By BRIAN A. HOWEY
INDIANAPOLIS - The battle lines over government reform finally came out into the open during the Tuesday gubernatorial debate in Jasper. Last week, Gov. Mitch Daniels said that while he supports the Kernan-Shepard recommendations, he didn’t want to “politicize” them during his campaign with Democrat Jill Long Thompson.
“My opponent is just against it so we don’t have a contrast,” Daniels said of the campaign. “I have tried to discipline myself to stay with the original concept, which was to not make this a partisan proposal, but to make it a non-partisan or bipartisan commisson report to the people. I would hope we would arrive at the end of this year with consensus around many of these ideas. I’ve tried not to partisanize this debate.”
Daniels, Thompson and Horning at the Jasper debate Tuesday.
During the debate, the candidates were asked about eliminating township government. “I actually disagree with his approach. I do support township government.” Thompson said, adding that she likes “decentralized” government.
Daniels responded that Thompson has a “very backward point of view” and noted that she disagreed with former Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan, who chaired the Kernan-Shepard Commission that advised the elimination of township government. He described her as “isolated” on the issue. Daniels said that township government doesn’t even exist in most of the U.S. He said that with 11,000 elected officials, Indiana has more government than almost anywhere else. “There’s more duplication, more overlap, there’s waste everywhere. This is not my opinion. This is from people in both political parties.”
The politically safer position might be Thompson’s. In the Aug, 29-30 Howey-Gauge Poll, we asked: The Kernan-Shepard Commission made recommendations to reform and restructure local government in Indiana in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations and reduce its costs to Hoosier taxpayers. Which proposal, if any, of the Kernan-Shepard Commission do you support the most: Establish a single-person elected county chief executive, eliminate township government, reorganize school districts to achieve a minimum student population of 2,000, require all library and special district budgets be approved by a county fiscal body, or do you not support the Kernan-Shepard Commission?
The response that leaped out at us was the 40 percent who said they were “uncertain” about the Kernan-Shepard reforms. In the other categories, support was generally minuscule. On one that appears to have bipartisan support at the Statehouse - moving from the three county commissioners to an elected county chief executive - only 7 percent approved. Gov. Mitch Daniels is likely to support such a move and last Spring, House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer told Howey Politics Indiana that he would like to see that particular issue on the “frontburner.”
Only 14 percent favored elimination of township government. This comes after the Indiana General Assembly passed legislation that eliminated all but 44 township assessor positions. There have also been a spate of township fire department consolidations around the state. Both stories received a moderate amount of press, particularly when 964 township assessors were folded into county assessor offices on July 1. For the most part, this transition generated little controversy. Had there been much consternation and opposition, this would have generated more headlines.
Voters had much greater awareness on the issue of privatization, an issue that Thompson tries to work into just about every speech, every debate. On Tuesday, she vowed to end the “privatization madness.” Yet, in the August Howey/Gauge Poll on the question “Do you favor privatizing some functions?” 45 percent were in favor and 39 percent were opposed. Of those in favor, 67 percent favor Daniels’ re-election while 58 percent who responded “elect someone else” opposed. In a gender breakdown, 50 percent of males and 40 percent of females favored some privatization.
Daniels said he intends in the next legislative session to “move out of the 19th Century and into the 21st Century” by seeking to pass 24 of the 27 Kernan-Shepard Commission recommendations. Three were passed in 2008 by the legislature, including the assessor bill. Of the remaining recommendations, about 10 need legislative action.
Over the past couple of years, Gov. Daniels has asked local governments to “reform yourselves” before the state steps in. It’s ironic that two of the most Democratic counties - Lake and St. Joseph - have actually taken reform steps. Both have separated executive and legislative roles from their county commissioners and councils. Obviously St. Joseph is Speaker Bauer’s home turf, so he’s had a front row seat to this particular reform and it hasn’t been an acrimonious one.
Ditto for the moving of township assessor functions to the counties. There was a great deal of coverage across the state in newspapers regarding the conversion. While there were sporadic controversies, for the most part this change went smoothly. The key will be how future uniform assessing is conducted, as opposed to the independent assessing that had been performed by a patchwork of assessors in every county.
Phase II of the Assessor Reforms
Phase II of the township assessor sequence comes between now and the Nov. 4 election when the remaining 44 township assessors face ballot referendums in counties such as Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburgh, Lake, Porter and Allen counties. Several of these assessors are actively campaigning for a “No” vote on the referendum. In the Sept. 15 edition of the Indianapolis Star, Washington Township Assessor Joline Ohmart explained, “Assessors are the only elected officials required to be certified by the state. They must take additional classes to maintain their certification. Most of the people on the township assessors’ staffs have their certification, also. Our work has always been done according to state guidelines. When you vote this November on ‘Should the assessing duties of the township assessor in the township be transferred to the Marion County assessor?’ ask yourself whether you want your assessments to be done by experienced township assessors, or a county assessor with no assessing experience. We think you will vote ‘No.”‘
Mark Lawrence, senior vice president for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, is part of a consortium that includes the Indiana Association of REALTORS and the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership that is pushing a “yes” vote on the referendum. He said that coalition will have limited resources, though he expects some direct mail campaigns in the coming weeks. He called the assessor referendum “a bump on the road on the way to Kernan-Shepard.” The fact that the referendums come in each township, as opposed to countywide, means the “deck is stacked against us,” Lawrence said. The problem is that poor assessing in one township can impact property taxes for the entire county.
“We hope there will be enough interest in having fair assessments,” Lawrence said, noting that the Meridian-Kessler area was “ground zero” in the property tax crisis of 2007. “You want to make sure your house is assessed fairly as well as the neighbor’s down the street,” he said of what he called the current “fragmented system.”
“If people understand it under those terms, they’ll see it impacts their pocketbooks,” Lawrence said.
An influencing factor may be the recent Washington and Warren township fire mergers with Indianapolis. “That went very smoothly,” Lawerence said. “It is saving millions of dollars. There has been no decrease in services.”
Township officials as well as Jill Long Thompson repeatedly cite governemnt “closer to the people.” This reveals a lack of historical understanding of why townships were created in the 19th Century: to provide schools, cemeterys, fire protection and poor relief in close proximity. Since Indiana began its township system - designed to be a close walk or horse ride from home to public office - there has been a steady progression of ways in which government became closer to the people: telegraph, railroads, telephones, automobiles, public transit and now computers.
Gov. Daniels likes to say that most Hoosiers have no idea who their township trustee or assessor is. “I do believe it’s a good idea to move certain functions from township trustees to an elected county executive who is accountable,” Daniels said in response to a question from Thomas Estabrook, the Vigo Township trustee in Knox County on Tuesday. “Today, it is hard for taxpayers to know who to give credit to and who to assign blame.”
2009 Legislature
Last week, Daniels told HPI he will talk with legislative leaders about how to proceed on the 10 or 12 Kernan-Shepard recommendations that either need legislative approval or would fare better with legislative imprimatur.
As for whether he would prefer a package or piecemeal approach, Daniels said, “I don’t have a fixed view on that. My experience at this point tells me that packages are better because people can bring themselves to vote for a whole that has parts that they get weak in the knee on if it were all by itself.”
Lawrence said he would prefer the package approach should Daniels win re-election. “Besides budget, this is going to be a big issue,” Lawrence predicted. “This will be a very interesting legislative session. We hope Hoosiers look beyond the here and now and look to the future.”
Tags: Jill Long Thompson, Joline Ohmart, Mark Lawrence, Mitch Daniels, Pat Bauer
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This entry was written by and posted on September 25, 2008 at 11:53 am and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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