By Mary Beth Schneider TheStatehouseFile.com INDIANAPOLIS–In 1935, an Indiana commission proposed streamlining government. It went nowhere. Not until 2007 was there another major effort. Gov. Mitch Daniels put together a bipartisan commission that unanimously backed 27 proposals, including the elimination of township government. Twelve years later, the chances of achieving that have gone from remote […]
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INDIANAPOLIS – In 1935, an Indiana commission proposed streamlining government. It went nowhere.
Not until 2007 was there another major effort. Gov. Mitch Daniels put together a bipartisan commission that unanimously backed 27 proposals, including the elimination of township government.
Twelve years later, the chances of achieving that have gone from remote to virtually non-existent.
While seven of Daniels’ commission’s recommendations were enacted, including a process that eliminated township assessors in all but 13 of Indiana’s townships, there are still 1,005 townships, each with a trustee, a board of three or more members and even constables in some.
Shifting the township duties to the county level is greeted by lawmakers with as much warmth as proposing we eliminate basketball.
Last week, Rep. Cindy Ziemke, a Batesville Republican who has filed bills to streamline government since she was elected in 2012, tried again. House Bill 1650 would have eliminated township boards and shifted oversight of trustees to the county. The bill, which passed out of committee 7-3, was watered down with an amendment requiring the change to be studied for a couple years before taking effect.
In the House debate, she cited the $359 million price tag of township government. She cited the costly 2,000 audits by the state, the civil and criminal actions for misuse of funds and a survey by one Indiana newspaper chain, CNHI, that found 70 percent of respondents thought townships should be eliminated.
The House crushed her bill, 75-19. Even six of the Republicans who voted for it in committee voted against it after a half-hour of impassioned speeches about the virtues of the government closest to the people.
Not that you can find many voters who have a clue who their trustee is, much less who is on the board.
Last year, Ziemke had a bill to consolidate townships with fewer than 1,200 residents. It sailed out of committee 10-0 and escaped the House Ways and Means Committee, 15-7. But after the House Republicans debated it behind closed doors, it was never heard from again.
Kevin Brinegar, as president of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, has pushed for the government reforms since the day the Daniels commission, led by former Gov. Joe Kernan and former Supreme Court Justice Randall Shepard, announced them. And he’s frustrated that even with the Statehouse firmly in the hands of the party that talks a good game on smaller government, eliminating townships is taboo.
“We are supposedly for good government and reducing government and all that, yet we let this horribly wasteful and inefficient layer of government continue to persist now well into the 21st century. When virtually every other state finds a way to get by without the township level of government, why do we hold it so near and dear in Indiana?” he said.
In fact, Indiana is one of only 13 states that has some form of township government in at least part of the state. And we have more units of government than all but 12 other states.
Brinegar points to Florida, noting it has three times Indiana’s population, twice our land mass, 67 counties compared to Indiana’s 92, 67 school districts rather than our 289 — and zero townships.
“What’s wrong with this picture?” he said.
The answer? Politics. Ziemke, Brinegar, Shepard and Daniels all note that many legislators either got their start in townships or depend on township officeholders for political support.
Daniels said he’d hoped that when most township assessors were eliminated — many via the ballot box — “it seemed logical that trustees would not be far behind.”
“That so many people who claim to be advocates of leaner, more limited government vote to preserve a layer we plainly don’t need … reflects personal history with these offices and/or relationships with those who hold them now,” he said. “The facts, and not-infrequent scandals catalogued by the Kernan-Shepard Commission, have never been rebutted or explained away.”
In fact, in a legislature where the parties are deeply divided on issues such as education funding and abortion, love of townships has them singing kumbaya.
Shepard is nonetheless optimistic. He notes the legislature in 2012 finally enacted the commission’s proposal eliminating most nepotism in local government offices. But he thinks another Daniels achievement, property tax caps, may force lawmakers to adopt the cost-saving reductions such as eliminating townships that has them recoiling in horror now.
Maybe. Because goodness knows nothing else has worked.
Mary Beth Schneider covered Indiana government and politics for The Indianapolis Star for more than 20 years. She now writes for the Statehouse File.
