A post over at stAllio!’s way made me think of the property tax implications for the State generally of the Ballard victory over Peterson in the Indianapolis mayor’s race.
mayor peterson is perhaps the first major victim of the property tax crisis. he didn’t cause the problem; the governor and the legislature are the primary culprits there (and are surely quaking in their boots now that they’ve witnessed the fall of so many incumbents today). but the mayor and the city-county council weren’t proactive enough about preventing property taxes from going up, and so they went way up for some unlucky souls. in the end, the GOP did a better job motivating their people to get to the polls.
I hope we don’t take the wrong message away from that loss though. My fear is that Marion County’s almost uniquely bad handling of property taxes isn’t mistaken for the condition in the State generally. For example, Marion County did not do a think to mitigate the loss of the inventory tax when the State eliminated it. Elsewhere, a county option income tax was imposed to replace the lost inventory tax revenue. This was an option for Marion County, but it was not taken. Consequently, the tax burden shifted from inventory tax payers to property tax payers. That bill came due at the same time a few other property tax chickens were coming home to roost – e.g. the State balancing its budget on the backs of local government, reducing the homestead and property tax replacement credits homeowners have previously enjoyed; and State mandated trending valuations for residential property playing “catch up” when compared to business property.
Marion County was also the recipient of special dispensation from the State legislature to impose a county income tax for public safety funding without first imposing county option income taxes for property tax reduction as was required for the rest of the state. Probably foolishly, the Marion County Democrats voted for that tax at the worst possible time, when its citizens were reeling from property tax increases that were generally in excess of the still substantial property tax increases in the rest of the state.
Anyway, I hope this election is seen for what it is – a reaction to a difficult general situation compounded by really poor decision making at the local level. I’d hate to see the Eric Miller crowd win the day, claiming their overreactions are good policy and reflect the will of the people statewide.
I echo your comments in the last paragraph. I don’t believe that this reflects some right wing mandate across the state.
There seems to have been something of a blow out of Republican mayors in SW Indiana yesterday.
See:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/nov/07/sw-indiana-votersoust-5-gop-mayors/
Five towns were mentioned in the story, two in Perry County (Tell City and Cannelton), one in Dubois (Huntingburg), one in Daviess (Washington) and one in Knox (Vincennes). All of these counties petitioned to return to Eastern Time (and though Perry County’s petition was denied, I seem to recall that the Tell City mayor was strongly pro-Eastern). Given the Republican party’s identification with Eastern Time does anyone care to suggest that their losses in SW Indiana were related to the time zone issue?
I doubt the time issue helped, but I’d hesitate to put it up as a primary cause. I don’t really know one way or the other.
The Tell City mayoral election was a return to the status quo. I supported the Republican mayor because she was instrumental in the redevelopment plan that allowed me to stay in town once the county hospital terminated our lease. I thought she did a good job. But she had only been elected in a backlash against the several-term Mayor Goffinet. Now Tell City is back to just electing all Democrats. I don’t know the mayor-elect and try to stay out of the local politics. But voting a Democrat in is a return to form, and probably didn’t involve any particular issue.
Thing is, Doug, I don’t believe the county option tax business is on anybody’s radar in Indy. Those were anti-tax protests, plain and simple, centered on the well-off, and they were pretty clearly organized with a Get Peterson finger or two on the strings, if not a whole hand. (Questions: how many people actually receive property tax bills? How many homes in Meridian-Kessler are mortgage-free? Where were the protests two years ago?)
I can understand the urge to whistle past this particular graveyard, and I agree it’s a little far-fetched to imagine that even that collective insane asylum known as Statehouse Republicans will defund their own jobs, but I think the fact is that as things stand right now they could eliminate property taxes altogether, drop the whole resulting mess on localities, and sweep next November as a result. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Hello! We in Lake County invented this problem five years ago! I know we’re the evil step-sisters to Cindyrella, but its difficult for me to find sympathy for them when they refused to listen to us. This issue could have been on the way to resulution before Indy ran into the same problems we’re facing.
Living in Chicago now, I don’t follow these things quite as much as you all do. But it didn’t take a political expert to sense that Peterson was cooked, and that he had no idea he was. I was in Indianapolis over the weekend, and happened to catch a political call-in show on WTLC — presumably, an audience that would be part of Peterson’s base. Caller after caller railed about Peterson and said maybe Ballard should have a chance. Did Peterson have any idea people felt this way? If your base is shaky, then how are you supposed to when?
That said, the Republican Party in Indiana is as disorganized and problematic as it’s ever been, except now it can’t count on sweeping to victory just because people fear Democrats. By my count, every big city by Indianapolis went Democratic. The party couldn’t get legitimate candidates in Evansville and Fort Wayne, and Ballard won over its near-dead body. Mitch Daniels better look at what happened to Peterson very closely, because that could happen to him next year — voter backlash, as always, is alive and well in Indiana.
By the way, if any politician wants to figure out how you can do anything you want and still get elected, every if many people hate you, they should study James Brainerd in Carmel. All I know is, my dad has been calling him “Brain-Dead” for years. Maybe Brainerd succeeds because while he spends a lot of money, you can see where it’s going.