By the numbers
What the 119 townships in northeast Indiana told the state Board of Accounts in their 2009 annual reports:
8 –Did not file electronically as required
102 – Paid someone with the same last name as the trustee
31 – Filed the legally required conflict-of-interest forms
37 – Had forms where figures matched in different areas of the report
76 – Had forms where figures matched or were within 10 percent of each other
$9.5 million – Amount townships had available for township assistance
$6.9 million – Amount townships reported spending on township assistance
$4.2 million – Amount spent on administrative costs
$2.7 million – Amount given out in township assistance
Source: State Board of Accounts files compiled by the Bloomington Herald-Times, analyzed by The Journal Gazette
FORT WAYNE – One might be able to make a case for or against keeping Indiana’s system of township government by looking at its financial performance.
But townships’ accounting of how they spent their money – despite state laws requiring transparency and the placement of annual reports on the Internet – makes it difficult or impossible to know which numbers to trust.
For example, townships are required to report in detail how they spent their time and money to help the poor, one of their most important functions and the one township defenders point to as sacrosanct when township elimination is debated.
But an analysis of annual township reports submitted to the State Board of Accounts for 2009, compiled by the Bloomington Herald-Times, shows that of the 119 townships in northeast Indiana, fewer than one in three had annual reports without basic accounting flaws.
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