Evansville Courier & Press
The sneaky decision of local elected officials to take away homestead tax breaks from Vanderburgh County homeowners may not have been illegal, but it surely wasn't right.
Just ask the homeowners who were ambushed by higher property tax bills than expected this year. That may be the worst part - that taxpayers had no warning it was coming.
At the very least, taxpayers should have been told back in April 2008 that elected city and county officials were considering not asking for a renewal of local homestead credits. But they weren't. And that flies in the face of Indiana's open records and open meetings laws, which are based on the theory of transparency, on the presumption that Indiana citizens should have access not only to public records, but to the deliberations of their elected officials - whether or not they take a vote.
In this case, representatives of city and county governments and of the city and county councils met without legal advertisement, but took no affirmative action to renew homestead credits for another year. Therefore, in the opinion of official Indiana, no public notice was required.
However, because their lack of action cost Vanderburgh County taxpayers perhaps millions in tax savings, they should have had the decency to make a public announcement.
That may be the most curious thing about this whole shameful episode. Why didn't even one of these publicity conscious politicians say something to their constituents?
As best we can tell, the meeting included, at least, two representatives of the city and county councils each, one county commissioner, Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel of the city and County Auditor Bill Fluty Jr. Surely the council and commission members related the no-decision to fellow board members. These groups included both Democrats and Republicans. Why didn't any one of them get the word out? Did they think that no one would ever find out - an impossibility once tax bills were mailed out?
And, we were wondering, did they think that by limiting those in attendance that they would be avoiding quorum requirements and the need to advertise? In other words, was there a deviousness to their meeting plan.
The hot-potato reaction of various officials who were questioned last week by the Courier & Press about the meeting, and who seemed less than certain about exactly who said what suggests this is one decision some were hoping would never come to light.
Local taxpayers should have been told in April 2008 why they would be the only ones in the entire state who would be denied this tax break. To date, all other counties renewed the credits.
Our public officials should be embarrassed.
This mess traces back to 2007 when a new property assessment system saw property tax bills in some Indiana counties skyrocket. That was the year, also, that saw the business inventory tax phased out, shifting more of the load to residential taxpayers.
In 2008, the tax protest pushed the legislature and Gov. Mitch Daniels to act aggressively. They came up with a tax relief package that saw caps on taxes and new limitations on local government spending. The state took over some local government responsibilities and increased the state sales tax by one cent. Because of these and other changes, a lot of taxpayers saw their tax bills go down in 2008.
But the very limitations that brought relief to homeowners created crushing challenges for local government officials. Weinzapfel was one who had campaigned openly against property tax caps, contending that based on projections, local governments would lose millions in tax revenue. He said it could lead to devastating cuts in police and fire protection.
But the statewide property tax relief package passed into law, limiting the options of local government officials.
And then, we learned last week what our city and county officials did to compensate for those new spending limits.
Instead, they should have trusted those who put them in office. Their constituents may not have liked it, but some might have understood the challenge of paying for public safety with shrinking revenues.
As it is, now those officials have to explain why they didn't trust those who voted them into office.
Local attorney/radio/television host Les Shively suggested last week that this mess might have been avoided with a unified city-county government. Good thought.
Taxpayers riled by the confusion and the pass-the-buck excuse-making that followed public disclosure last week might think about this: If we had unified city-county government with one executive branch and one council, there might well have been less confusion about just who decided what. There would have been fewer places for officials to hide within our multilayered local bureaucracy.
Also, with unified government, it might be easier to enact cost-saving efficiencies caused by property tax limitations than with our present bureaucracy.
Keep that in mind as this shameful story continues to unfold.