EDITORIAL: It's time to put aside differences and modernize government in Indiana

The News-Dispatch

Reorganizing government in Indiana has been thrust center stage by the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, headed by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard.

It's 27 recommendations unveiled Tuesday will be debated, and it will be very difficult to persuade the public and members of the General Assembly to make all the changes.

Yet many of the changes would streamline government, and modernizing government and the way it delivers services in Indiana, its counties and cities, is overdue.

This latest attempt to make government in Indiana more efficient got a big push from the property tax mess that has emerged in the last year. And while some key provisions, including scrapping township level property assessors, are included in the recommendations, the proposal goes much farther, addressing county offices and schools.

Among the most sweeping change would be replacing the three county commissioners with one county executive, who would then appoint a cabinet of administrators, replacing the elected sheriff, auditor, treasurer and other county officers. This idea has a lot of merit, but plenty of debate will ensue.

With so many changes proposed, and because some require constitutional changes that can take several years, this revamping of government isn't going to happen at once, nor should it.

It deserves open debate - by open minds. Many organizations, particularly those representing townships, will present arguments against it.

And the proposal to combine schools systems into a minimum school corporation of 2,000 students is going to threaten a lot of traditions and the sentimental attachments that have historically gone along with many of the smaller schools.

But sometimes change is needed, and Indiana is at a point where modernizing the system is overdue.

Will it make government more efficient and cost-effective? That is the goal, but while some structural changes in government will save a dollars here and there, only by containing the growth of government can we truly save taxpayers money.