At a glance
In 2007, the bipartisan Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform came up with a list of recommendations for how the Indiana General Assembly could streamline local government and improve accountability among elected officials. Only about one-third of those recommendations have been acted on.
Accomplished:
- Property tax assessments shifted from townships to counties in much of the state.
- More consolidation of emergency public-safety dispatch systems.
- Child welfare funding moved from counties to the state.
- Local referendums required for major school construction projects.
- More joint purchasing opportunities for schools, libraries and local governments.
- School board elections moved to November to coincide with state/federal elections.
- Budgets and levies of non-elected library boards and special districts must be approved by local elected officials.
- Local government employees barred from serving as elected officials of the same government unit.
- Statewide benchmarking system established to provide public information about local government productivity.
No action yet:
- Establish a single, elected chief executive in every county.
- Establish a single, unified legislative body for county government.
- Transfer duties of the auditor, treasurer, recorder, assessor, surveyor and sheriff to a single elected county executive. Transfer county clerk duties to the county election board and county executive.
- Create a countywide body to oversee public safety.
- Shift funding of trial courts, probation and public defender to the state.
- Shift township duties of poor relief, fire protection, emergency medical services and cemeteries to the county executive. Establish a countywide poor-relief levy.
- Reorganize school districts so each district has a minimum of 2,000 students.
- Require city councils in most Indiana cities to appoint city clerks.
- Move all local elections to even-year cycle, to coincide with state/federal elections.
- Transfer responsibilities of local health departments to county health departments.
- Strengthen current joint-purchasing infrastructure for libraries.
- Reorganize library systems by county and provide permanent library services for all citizens.
- Strengthen powers of voters to compel consolidation of schools and townships.
- Allow local governments to establish service districts with differentiated levels of service and corresponding tax rates.
- Assign the Indiana Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations to monitor and report progress of recommendations; designate state office to provide technical assistance to local governments.
INDIANAPOLIS — Getting property tax bills out on time may not seem like a headline-grabber, but for supporters of a sweeping government reform effort, it’s big news.
Four years ago, not a single county in Indiana hit the deadline for sending out tax bills that generate revenues needed to keep the gears of local government moving. The following year, only two did.
Last year, 90 of Indiana’s 92 counties made the deadline.
The difference has saved cities and schools millions in interest payments on tax anticipation loans while waiting for their counties to collect and hand over tax dollars.
State finance officials credit the dollars saved to a recommendation made in December 2007 by the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform.
The bipartisan commission spent months coming up with a road map to streamline local government. In a report that called for sweeping changes, it issued 27 recommendations — including the one that led to the consolidation of township assessors under the county and a shift to more professional assessment standards.
But only about one-third of those 27 recommendations have come to fruition since.
That’s not enough for Gov. Mitch Daniels, who created the commission. Talking to reporters Monday — just two days after the Indiana General Assembly closed Daniels’ last legislative session — the governor bemoaned the fact that much of the bipartisan commission’s recommendations have met a bipartisan wall in the Legislature.
“I continue to be disappointed that we didn’t get more than one-third done,” Daniels said.
That’s not how one of the men who headed the commission’s work sees it, though.
Retiring Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard is the Republican who co-chaired what became known as the “Kernan-Shepard commission” with former Gov. Joe Kernan, a Democrat.
He thinks progress on local government reform has been impressive, given the resistance to change a system put largely in place before Indiana became a state.
Shepard recalls a conversation with commission members just as they were getting ready to release the 2007 report that called for virtually eliminating township government while consolidating hundreds of school and library districts and imposing new rules for financial accountability.
One member said it would be a “miracle” if everything in the report got done. Shepard said the response from another commission member was: “‘It’ll be a miracle if anything gets done.’”
So in Shepard’s estimation, getting one-third done “is a pretty good outcome.”
In the session that just ended, lawmakers passed a bill with roots in the Kernan-Shepard recommendations: Aimed at eliminating conflicts of interest and reducing nepotism in local government, it bars a local government employee from taking office as an elected official of the government he or she works for. It also bans a local government employee from supervising a relative in a local government job.
Similar legislation failed in past sessions.
Many of the recommendations made by the Kernan-Shepard commission in its 2007 “Streamlining Local Government” report have been met with resistance by local officials.
The report, subtitled “We’ve Got to Stop Governing Like This,” was based on the commission’s belief that there was too much local government and too little accountability for how local officials were spending taxpayer dollars.
It detailed Indiana’s cornucopia of local government units: almost 3,000 cities, towns, counties, townships and school corporations. And nearly 11,000 local officials to oversee it all. It found that only nine states had more local government than Indiana.
State Rep. Mike Karickhoff (of Kokomo), one of 19 freshman Republicans in the House, won his seat in 2010 after he was critical of his opponent’s efforts to help House Democrats block the Kernan-Shepard reforms.
Karickhoff said the Kernan-Shepard recommendations are worthy of more effort by the Legislature, but he’s not a wholesale believer in the reforms.
He said efforts to eliminate township government, for example, ignore the fact that many Hoosiers see local government as more responsive to their needs than state and federal government.
“In some sections of Indiana, township government is the cornerstone of the community,” Karickhoff said. That seems especially so in rural areas that depend on volunteer fire departments in their townships for public safety. In urban areas, township trustees are known as the providers of “poor relief” for people in need.
The Kernan-Shepard report questioned the efficiency of the delivery of public safety and poor relief at the township level and it identified a myriad of problems, including little public reporting of how public money is spent.
Karickhoff says that’s why the Kernan-Shepard report has value beyond legislation that emerges from it: He said it’s pushed some forward-thinking local government units to look for ways to consolidate their services, before the state steps in to force them to do so.
In Howard County, where he lives, the township trustees are talking about redrawing township boundaries to better match up with school district boundaries. The goal, he said, is more efficient delivery of services.
For Shepard, that marks progress. He’s pleased the commission’s report continues to generate legislative proposals four years after it was issued, rather than being shelved.
“There are very substantial changes that have been made (to local government),” he said. “I really see the glass as half full.”
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