The multimillion-dollar budget for the Calumet Township trustee has been a fat target for critics from Griffith Town Hall to the statehouse in Indianapolis.
Trustee Mary Elgin wants to knock that bulls eye off her back. She argues critics have used skewed statistics when analyzing her township's spending habits.
"The figures that the state and the town of Griffith have been using were all wrong," she said. "It's unfair, and I would like to get that settled, once and for all."
Elgin was referring to state-generated annual reports indicating the trustee's office spent a total of at least $360 million since 2003, including a $57.2 million glut of disbursements in 2008 alone.
The Calumet Township trustee's office was cited in the General Assembly last year for spending about $100 per resident -- many times larger than the state average -- according to the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance.
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Elgin said even after removing the "noise" of fund transfers, her present budget is more like a fun-house mirror than a true reflection of her office's spending.
"I'm not sure we actually spent $11 million in our budget because we may only have gotten $5 million because of low tax collections and the tax caps. But we have to publish and approve an $11 million budget just to get that $5 million to operate," Elgin said.
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Even that $5 million in expenses dwarfs all but eight of the 1,007 other township trustees in the state, according to Gateway, the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance's database.
The only comparable budget in the region is Lake County's North Township, which plans to spend $6.8 million, or $41.75 per resident, on services in East Chicago, Hammond, Highland, Munster and Whiting. North's population is 36 percent larger than Calumet's.
However, the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance reports that Calumet Township is now spending $98.08 per resident.
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Township records show annual spending has fallen from an annual high of $14.3 million in 2006, but much of the reduction was forced on the unit of government by state-mandated limits on the township's primary source of revenues: property taxes.
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