MySmartGov.org

Voters in 30 of the 43 townships decided they have had enough on Nov. 4!  Thirty township assessors will shift assessment duties from their to their respective county assessors starting January 1, 2009. 

Until recently, property in Indiana was assessed by 1,008 township assessors in 1,008 different ways. Some assessors’ work may have been impeccable, but the taxpayers in their townships still may have been paying more than their fair share of taxes because of the less competent job by an assessor down the road.

In fact, a 2005 study by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute found that 80 percent of the townships did not meet international standards for uniformity. The assessments were well outside the accepted error rate of plus or minus 15 percent – that is, international standards say it is acceptable for a $100,000 house to be assessed anywhere from $85,000 to $115,000.

The error rate in Indiana was 35 percent. In other words, houses that would sell for $100,000 were assessed for tax purposes anywhere from $65,000 to $135,000.

A more recent sampling compared two houses across the street from each other. House A sold in July 2006 for $101,000. House B sold four months later, in November 2006, for $99,900 -- $1,100 less. Yet 2006 taxes, payable in 2007, on House A were $1,467, while those on House B were $2,222 – 51 percent higher. Still another house in the same township sold for $102,000 in May 2006 and was taxed that year, payable in 2007, at $1,166 a year – a 91 percent discount compared to taxes on House B.

The institute’s study – like so many before – illuminated problems that leaders across Indiana have known for years existed. There were questions about the number of assessors – then called “listers” – almost as soon as the system was devised nearly 200 years ago. And there have been question and studies and reform efforts since then.

Still, not much changed.

In spring 2007, Gov. Mitch Daniels asked a group of leaders from across the state to study the issue. The Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, led by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Chief Justice Randall Shepard of the Indiana Supreme Court, issued a report in December 2007 that advanced 27 specific recommendations for streamlining local government. One recommendation was to shift assessing duties from the townships to the counties.

The 2008 General Assembly enacted several reforms recommended by the Kernan-Shepard Commission, as it came to be known. Among other things, lawmakers shifted assessing duties in 965 townships to their respective counties. That law went into effect July 1, 2008.

But the legislature decided that voters in the largest townships – those with 15,000 or more parcels of property – should decide the issue for themselves in a referendum that would be held in concert with the Nov. 4 election.  The voters decided in 30 of the 43 townships to transfer the duties of the township assessor to the county assessor.  Only 13 out of the original 1008 township assessors remain.

MySmartgov.org will continue its drive to find individual Hoosiers and civic organizations who are interested in common-sense government and who will urge their legislators to enact the rest of the Kernan-Shepard recommendations.