Election Shows Voter Appetite For Government Reform

By: Marilyn Schultz - Executive Director, MySmartGov.org

As legislators convened for Organization Day last week, the meaning of the November elections was analyzed and debated in the halls of the Statehouse. Voters in record numbers endorsed “change” – a concept that means many different things to many different people.

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Here in Indiana, though, one message was loud and clear: Voters welcome change when it comes to reforming the state’s antiquated system of local government. Hoosiers overwhelmingly supported merging the duties of their township assessors into their county assessors’ offices, taking another step toward more consistent property tax assessment and effective, efficient government.

By approving 70% of the township assessor referenda, voters across Indiana spoke clearly on behalf of fairness, accuracy and accountability. They spoke out against a system of local government designed in the 1800s that forces Hoosier taxpayers to support more than 3,000 units of government and 10,000 elected officials.

Because of these referenda, most property assessing will now take place under the umbrella of county government. These elections weren’t about the township assessors themselves; they are dedicated public servants, many of whom ran their offices with high standards of professionalism and ethics. But they were trapped in a system that’s broken. When more than a thousand separate officeholders were empowered to assess property in Indiana, inconsistency and unfair tax bills were inevitable.

And property assessment is only one part of the larger puzzle. Last year, Governor Daniels convened the Kernan-Shepard Commission on Local Government Efficiency, which has unveiled a broad bipartisan blueprint for modernizing government. More sweeping changes are needed, including the elimination of township government and the separation of policymaking and administrative roles at the county level.

This kind of reform would streamline budgets and allow local government to do more with less. It would also mean greater accountability: Voters participated in huge numbers in this year’s elections because they truly believed they had a stake in the outcome. But in Marion County, for example, we have 60+ units of government and dozens of unelected boards and commissions with the power to tax and spend. The same is true to some degree or another across the state, and that means voters remain frustrated in their efforts to assign accountability for out-of-control property taxes and unresponsive government.

Under the Kernan-Shepard Commission plan, an elected county executive would appoint professionals to administrative offices such as the clerk, surveyor and coroner. After all, is there really a Republican or Democratic way to record deeds or survey land? This county executive’s authority would be balanced by an elected county council with full legislative and fiscal authority. And without township offices and the multitude of unelected authorities that turn local government into today’s confusing maze, more tax dollars could be devoted to actually providing public services.

With such a system, to paraphrase Harry Truman’s famous adage, it would be clear to voters where the buck stops – and fewer of these bucks would be wasted on duplicative bureaucracies.

The positive response to the township assessor referenda demonstrates an appetite from the voters for more efficiency, modernization and accountability. The voters have spoken; now it’s time for their voices to be amplified at the General Assembly, time for our elected officials to listen and take action on government reform.

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