Reading the Indianapolis Star today and yesterday, I got the impression of mass tax protests, sweeping the State. The Star told me that special sessions were routine. Some are using the opportunity to promote the idea of replacing property taxes with sales taxes. I get the idea that problems are substantially worse in Marion County than elsewhere and that some of the folks pushing hard on the sales tax are not just responding to this property tax crisis, but have been pushing the sales tax over other sorts of taxes for quite some time.
I’m just a small town lawyer, so what the heck do I know? But, I get a little edgy at the idea of panicked Marion County lawmakers joining forces with opportunistic sales tax promoters jumping into an impromptu special session to slap together wide-ranging property tax legislation. Makes me feel like checking my wallet every so often to make sure it’s still there.
Step one: Analyze the problem state wide to see how bad the problem is in, for example, counties that took advantage of the opportunity to adopt a county option income tax to offset the inventory taxes that were eliminated.
Step two: Take a breath, think it through.
Step three: Make changes in a regular session. This ensures the process is less arbitrary and reduces the pressure to do something just for the sake of doing something. Probably lawmakers should do something, but if they get into a special session and find that all of their alternatives are worse than the current situation, I’d hate to see them go ahead with one of those alternatives simply because they need to do anything.
Many will say “local government needs to spend less.” That’s a good idea. But, ask those who propose this as a solution to the current problem to identify which government services ought to be reduced or eliminated. Some will say that their property taxes impose too great a burden. And this may well be true. But ask them to identify those whose taxes should increase so that theirs might be reduced. Because these are your two options: 1) Cut or reduce specified government services; we need to know which ones. 2) Reduce the tax burden on one class of citizen and impose an additional tax burden on another class of citizen; we need to know who should gain and who should suffer.
[tags]property taxes[/tags]
Doug- As a benchmark, I think in any time of financial difficulty, municipal governments should redesign their budgets to include 90% of their original value. That means every department, so that you don’t have the chest pounding, fingerpointing, and turf wars that come with selected cuts. When the average family is pinched financially, the most responsible they can do is tighten the belt. Government should do the same. If you want to run people out of town, hike their taxes while they are pinched. There are reasons so many immigrants have come to the USA over the past 160 years or so.
Just look at the Indianapolis city government website for the lengthy list of departments:
http://www.indygov.org/eGov/
Are there departments that I think can be eliminated outright are pared dramatically, immediately? You bet. Start with these:
Arts. It just isn’t the job of government to foster the arts. Especially when public safety in Indy is a disaster.
Housing should be pared down drastically. I am not talking about eliminating public housing from people who are handicapped, physically or mentally, such that they cannot provide for themsleves. I’m talking about everyone else. Public housing needs to take a more stringent definition of ‘need’ than what it does.
Indy Parks – Golf. Sell the grounds immediately. Government does not belong in the business of golf.
That’s three. Much more is possible, and in my view, should be undertaken. Just scanning the list while saying to yourself, “is this a proper function of government?” will lead to the conclusion that a great deal is pure fluff, and purely a drain on the taxpayers.
Those are good suggestions for cuts or reductions, Mike.
I think there should also be more recognition of the burdens placed on municipalities by the state and federal governments. Expenses related to the Department of Children’s Services and juvenile detention are two significant ones identified in Senator Kenley’s proposals. Even if municipalities would like to tighten their belts in these areas, they aren’t permitted to do so.
I’d ask if township governments still serve any vital function in the scheme of county government today. Before school consolidation they were important to school operation and a few rural townships run volunteer fire departments, but I have been at a loss to see what they do where they overlap municipalities.
Does anyone remember 2004 when the only candidate for governor opposing property tax was the Libertarian?
Look at Art.1, sec.23 of the Indiana State Constitution and tell me Property Tax is constitutional. Does not property tax place property owners in that separate class? We pay for the schools and non-property owners don’t!
It’s not as if property ownership is an immutable condition. You are free to become a non-property owner if the taxes are too burdensome. But, then, presumably some or all of the cost of property taxes are presumably passed along to renters. So, I would also argue that non-property owners share the burden.