The township already has plenty of money in the bank.
For those who choose to continue immersing themselves in the myths about township government representing government closest to the people, small government at its best, this decision to levy no taxes will no doubt further their arguments, specious as they might be.
For our own part, we'll hold any applause. The report about Dekalb County's Union Township more likely offers more damning evidence of a layer of government lacking purpose or function. In fact, in the exhaustive look statewide at the antiquated township functions in Indiana, it was demonstrated that a great many of them had accrued huge revenue surpluses in, of all things, poor relief funds at a time when the nation was undergoing a deep recession and Hoosier counties especially were looking at some of the steepest unemployment rates.
Go figure.
Union Township ended 2011 with $257,000 in operating fund reserves and about $157,000 in its poor relief fund, according to a report from The Associated Press. That, according to the township's trustee, Craig Bassett, is a sufficient cache to last more than five years without collecting taxes.
Huh? At a time when local governments have been squeezed by the nation's bad economy and shortchanged more than a half-billion dollars by the state's bad accounting, we have local governments running surpluses, surpluses so great that they can pledge no new taxes for the coming five years?
Gov. Mitch Daniels will likely leave office at the end of this second term scoring the state's failure to achieve township government reform as his most bitter defeat.
But it wasn't for lack of trying.
The Republican governor simply found that township interests were very entrenched and very intertwined with the political parties.
Only when taxpayers become as outraged by the status quo as they should be will there be any hope of serious reform.
...
http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012204270325
For those who choose to continue immersing themselves in the myths about township government representing government closest to the people, small government at its best, this decision to levy no taxes will no doubt further their arguments, specious as they might be.
For our own part, we'll hold any applause. The report about Dekalb County's Union Township more likely offers more damning evidence of a layer of government lacking purpose or function. In fact, in the exhaustive look statewide at the antiquated township functions in Indiana, it was demonstrated that a great many of them had accrued huge revenue surpluses in, of all things, poor relief funds at a time when the nation was undergoing a deep recession and Hoosier counties especially were looking at some of the steepest unemployment rates.
Go figure.
Union Township ended 2011 with $257,000 in operating fund reserves and about $157,000 in its poor relief fund, according to a report from The Associated Press. That, according to the township's trustee, Craig Bassett, is a sufficient cache to last more than five years without collecting taxes.
Huh? At a time when local governments have been squeezed by the nation's bad economy and shortchanged more than a half-billion dollars by the state's bad accounting, we have local governments running surpluses, surpluses so great that they can pledge no new taxes for the coming five years?
Gov. Mitch Daniels will likely leave office at the end of this second term scoring the state's failure to achieve township government reform as his most bitter defeat.
But it wasn't for lack of trying.
The Republican governor simply found that township interests were very entrenched and very intertwined with the political parties.
Only when taxpayers become as outraged by the status quo as they should be will there be any hope of serious reform.
...
http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012204270325
