Daniels had to see crisis coming (07/24/07)

Mitch Daniels is a very smart guy.

At any given moment, he's often the smartest guy in the room.

So when he says - as he has on numerous occasions recently - "The cause of the problem is local" while referring to the uproar over residential property taxes, he has to know that he's being disingenuous at best and, at worst, outright dishonest.

For starters, the rules for funding local government and public school systems aren't established locally. The rules are made by the Indiana General Assembly.

So if there's a problem, part of the cause resides in the Statehouse.

Then there's the fact that while some folks have seen a jump in their property tax bills, there hasn't been an equivalent jump in local government spending.

The state has limited growth in local tax levies to modest percentages for more than 30 years. Keep in mind that the levy is the total number of dollars raised as opposed to one individual's tax burden. Some people might be paying more, but there's not been a huge increase in the total amount collected.

There's also the fact that the state initiated a phase-out of the inventory tax. It probably made good sense in terms of attracting new business to Indiana, but when those local tax dollars were lost, the burden of replacing them fell on other property owners.

On top of that came the shift to market-based reassessment, as ordered by the courts. Fair or not, it resulted in tax burdens being shifted around, sometimes painfully.

Finally, there's state government's movement away from providing property tax relief. Since the 1970s, Hoosiers have counted on state-collected revenues to soften the property tax bite with things like the Homestead Credit. In about a year and a half, unless changes are made, that relief is going to disappear.

So, governor, "The cause of the problem is local"?

Give us a break.

Locally, those running Jay County government for about the past 20 to 30 years have been good stewards of the public trust. They've played by the often-changing rules set by Indianapolis, and they've made it work.

School funding, often a whipping boy for tax critics, has been on a 60-40 basis with the bulk of the revenue coming from state taxes since the 1970s.

Have there been too many school construction projects, adding to the property tax burden? Probably. But as we've seen locally, there's a way to rein those in.

Our guess is you know all that, governor.

Our guess is you know that the line, "The cause of the problem is local," is a canard.

Our guess is that you even saw this coming, that you - the smartest guy in the room, after all - knew that when Marion County residential property tax bills arrived there would be an uproar.

And when faced with that uproar, the so-called "property tax crisis" that has dominated Indy headlines for two weeks, you'd find an opportunity to declare that local government is broken and needs to be fixed.

A pre-fabricated crisis, the finger pointed away from state government and toward local government, and state coffers full thanks to shifting burdens to the counties? Sounds pretty smart.

But maybe too smart. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]