By Bryan Corbin, Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS - Township trustees in Indiana have won a reprieve from an attempt to eliminate their jobs, their lobbying effort having blunted the lobbying of business groups pushing the Legislature to eliminate township government.
A bill that would have abolished township trustees and transferred their poor relief and fire protection duties to the county level was watered down in the state Senate, and now, Senate Bill 512 limps to the Indiana House.
In modified form, the bill would leave trustees intact, although it would eliminate the three-member township advisory boards, forbid trustees from employing relatives in township offices, and make trustees submit their budgets to the county council for review.
The bill is part of the Kernan-Shepard package of local government reform legislation; and as difficult as it was to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, its prospects for getting a hearing in the Democratic-controlled House appear more dim.
"I'm not optimistic," said Rep. Dan Stevenson, a House Democrat from Highland, Ind., who will be the House sponsor of the Senate bill and is bucking most of his party's leadership in supporting township elimination. "It makes it a rough road, but in the event it does find a hearing somewhere, I am definitely looking at trying to add some of the language back in (abolishing trustees) that was taken out in the Senate," Stevenson said.
The future of township trustees and other local government offices has pitted powerful lobbying groups against each other in the battle for lawmakers' attention and support in the Legislature.
A lobbying group called MySmartgov.org - funded by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Indiana Association of Realtors and other business groups - is pushing for the Kernan-Shepard proposal.
Its members contend township government is a relic of pioneer days, redundant in the modern era and a drain on taxpayers' dollars. They point to recent media reports showing that at the end of 2008, townships statewide were sitting on budget surpluses totaling $200 million and that poor relief is distributed inconsistently from township to township.
MySmartgov.org and Kernan-Shepard supporters want poor relief and fire protection administered countywide, taking townships out of the picture.
Vigorously opposing the changes is the Indiana Township Association, whose president is Mary Hart, the Pigeon Township trustee in Vanderburgh County.
"I think 80 percent of it was due to our lobbying effort," Hart said of the pressure that whittled the original township elimination proposal down to merely phasing out the three-member township boards that meet infrequently. Senate Bill 512 passed 28-22.
Hart said the scaled-down bill "is kind of a hollow victory," because if it became law, the trustees' budgets instead would be reviewed by the county council, which she said could lead to "party politics being played" in funding poor relief budgets for townships.
For his part, Daniels on Friday commended the 28 senators who voted "yes" on the bill. He added that "as a courtesy" to Senate President David Long, Daniels asked MySmartgov.org to pull radio ads that had criticized two Republican senators who had voted "no" on another Kernan-Shepard bill Feb. 18 - reasoning that the ads made it harder for Long to get a majority of senators to pass the township bill.
Daniels said it's "a very human, natural reason" for lawmakers to be reluctant to abolish trustees, since many of them previously served in township government or have political allies who do.
"We all know that change comes hard, particularly in a political system in which people have friends and old allegiances, maybe sentimental memories of their own days in these other jobs," Daniels said. "I just think the case that has been slowly and steadily built - most recently by the (Kernan-Shepard) commission - for these changes is irrefutable."
Stevenson, the House Democrat sponsoring Senate Bill 512, said it was understandable Senate Republicans did not pass a stronger township bill, in light of the opposition trustees could mount in the next election.
"It doesn't surprise me, knowing the power of the township association, the lobbying power they have, the fear they can put in there, as far as political retribution. I know that I have been the target of some political shots since I first filed the bill, campaign- and political-wise," Stevenson said.
Although MySmartgov.org is backed by the state Chamber of Commerce and other deep-pocketed business organizations, "the townships have more of a grassroots level, because in many areas of the state, townships (and their officials) are your political organizations," Stevenson said. "I'd much rather have grassroots support than have a high-financed campaign, because grassroots can overcome money, but money can't always overcome the grassroots; and I think that's where some of the fear (of passing the bill) is."
The fate of Senate Bill 512 and the other Kernan-Shepard bills now rests with the top Democrat in the House, Speaker Patrick Bauer. He ultimately decides if bills are summarily killed or have the chance to advance through the committee process or not.
Bauer, D-South Bend, says the House has more important bills to work on. Twice last week, Bauer made dismissive puns about Kernan-Shepard bills, comparing them to lambs without their shepherd and to sheep that had been sheared.
"I really believe this downturn in the economy ... has given (the township trustees) a more visible role," Bauer said, noting how trustees provided emergency relief to people who faced obstacles obtaining food stamps or Medicaid through the state's problem-plagued welfare-modernization system.
Trustees, he said, "probably increased their value, and maybe the reason so much consternation occurred in the Senate is because we did have a crash in our economy ... and (trustees) were there helping people."
Another Democrat, Rep. Dennis Avery of Evansville, was more blunt about the fate of Kernan-Shepard bills in the House: "From what I heard, it's dead on arrival," he said. But Avery and Stevenson noted that because the bills passed once in the Senate, even if they go nowhere in the House, they still could be amended onto other bills during House-Senate conference committees at session's end in April.
"I never say never. I've seen issues come back to life many times," Avery said.
Meanwhile, Daniels and MySmartgov.org both say they will ratchet up their efforts to drum up public support for Kernan-Shepard - to urge taxpayers to contact their legislators and tell them to vote for the bills.
"Don't underestimate the public's support for this," Daniels said.