Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article entitled State Tax Review Delays Area Projects. The background is that the Department of Local Government Finance has started taking a hard line in getting data that’s required from counties and, I believe, getting it in exactly the right form. To get it, the DLGF is holding up budgets and using whatever leverage it has. In the case of St. Joseph County, at least, there are allegations that the timing of some of the budget reviews are politically motivated to make sure tax bills go out at the politically least convenient time.
Regardless of whether any political gamesmanship is underway, the DLGF’s tactics are troublesome because they represent an abrupt shift from past practice of the Department and the punishments are often time not well correlated to the offense allegedly committed. Among other things, in the case of the Fort Wayne area, municipal projects are being made to suffer for data allegedly not submitted by county offices.
[tags]property taxes [/tags]
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