The present governments of Evansville and Vanderburgh County overlap and duplicate. The entire county has a government, which includes county commissioners, a county council and a sheriff's department for law enforcement.
Everyone who pays property taxes in the city and the county pays to support this government.
Overlapping much of the county is the Evansville city government, which includes a mayor, a city council, and a city police department for law enforcement.
Those who reside in the city pay property taxes to support the city government and, as we said above, also pay county taxes to support the county government.
Oversimplification? Yes, but stay with us, please.
The Vanderburgh County Commissioners and the Evansville City Council are currently in talks that could possibly lead to consolidating city and county governments, with one executive branch (a mayor) and one legislative branch (a common council). But as matters now stand, the new government would continue to have two separate police departments, not because it would be efficient — it wouldn't — but because politically and strategically, that may be the only way to achieve consolidation in others areas of local government.
We have supported that position, even knowing that it is unfair to city taxpayers who help pay for law enforcement outside the city. That's because passage of overall consolidation would likely serve the greater good now while delaying the merger of law enforcement until a later time.
We have long argued in this space that the current law enforcement setup is unfair to city taxpayers who support the sheriff's law enforcement in the non-city sections of the county, while non-city residents do not help pay for law enforcement within the city limits.
Residents in the city and the county do pay for the sheriff's operation of the jail and assistance in the courts, and that is fair.
From time to time, county residents from outside the city have suggested in letters to the editor that they do not need consolidation because, among other reasons, they already have good police protection, which overlooks the fact that city residents are helping them pay for it.
We bring it up today because at a meeting of city and county officials Thursday, Jennifer Hudson of the accounting firm of Crowe Horwarth presented figures which show that if current city residents no longer help pay for the law enforcement duties of the sheriff's office, property tax rates for non-city residents could rise.
According to a story in Friday's Courier & Press by staff writer Richard Gootee, in Center and Scott townships, property taxes could rise by more than 10 percent if only they pay for sheriff's department protection.
Meanwhile, if city residents pay only for protection from city police — and not help the county — they could see a tax savings of 6 percent.
And that's with both the city and county supporting the sheriff's management of the jail.
Those in the county outside the city who continue to suggest that they are just fine without the city and they don't need help from city residents in paying for the sheriff's protection need to think again.