Ted Boehm, Post-Tribune guest columnist
In 2007, a commission chartered by Gov. Mitch Daniels and chaired by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Chief Justice Randy Shepard issued a report calling for major overhaul of the way Indiana is organized. The commission called for elimination of unnecessarily duplicative and wasteful structures of local government. Since then we have had the usual battle between entrenched interests and forces of reform.
The current focus is the impending legislative effort to "abolish township government," as some put it. A better term is "modernize local government." The idea is not to eliminate services. It is to streamline the way government delivers poor relief, fire protection and the few other services now provided in most counties by township officials. Specifically, the goal is to reduce the overhead cost of government. The result will be lower taxes and more funds available. Recent experience in eliminating most township assessors shows low-hanging fruit is ready to be picked here. In the last year of township assessors, Marion County taxpayers spent $10 million on the several township offices. In the first year of administration by the county assessor, the same function cost $7.5 million, a 25 percent savings.
Statewide, the figures on poor relief and fire protection demonstrate that we are operating a system that no one starting with a clean sheet of paper would design. Hoosiers spent approximately $400 million on township government in 2008, the last year audited by the State Board of Accounts. Of that amount, roughly 15 percent went for poor relief, 40 percent for fire protection, and the vast bulk of the remaining 45 percent for overhead. It's easy to see why the folks who are on the payrolls supported by that 45 percent are resistant to change. But few of us would voluntarily contribute to a charity that spent nearly half of its receipts on its own staff. It's time for the legislature to stop forcing us to do that involuntarily.
When Indiana became a state in 1816, the government that mattered to most people was very, very local. If you were trying to hack a road through a forest or build a bridge over a creek, it didn't matter too much what went on in Washington, D.C. or Indianapolis (or Corydon, the first capital). Providing essential infrastructure and basic security were the major tasks of government, and these functions required knowledge of local conditions at a time when there was no Internet or cell communication. Indeed, there was no telephone or even telegraph for the first decades of our state's history.
So it is understandable why our early settlers designed our government to operate through units that were within one day's ride on horseback from the citizens they served. Almost two centuries later, we have interstate highways and Internet connections. We have government services largely funded by the state or federal government. Yet we still have much of the state chopped into minuscule units for some purposes. The result is townships that are far too small to be efficient providers of the services that remain in local hands, and provide uneven distribution of services where they are needed.
There is no reason to put up with these problems in today's world, where technology offers ample opportunities to provide better service at less cost. By making points of access available across the state, the administrative cost of programs can be dramatically reduced while at the same time permitting those who need help the ability to communicate at one point to all affected agencies and programs. In short, we can have more uniform and fair administration at less cost.
Ted Boehm is a former justice on the Indiana Supreme Court.