Published: January 04, 2008 07:15 pm            

TRIBUNE-STAR EDITORIAL: An outdated system of local government

Change is needed to improve effectiveness

Part one of a series

• This is the first in a series of three editorials concerning Indiana’s need to reform its property tax and local government system. The series is a collaboration of Indiana newspapers owned by CNHI, a national newspaper ownership group. The editorial series was created by the Tribune-Star, Kokomo Tribune and Anderson Herald Bulletin. Today’s editorial is by the Herald Bulletin.



Hoosiers are renowned for their application of the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The problem is that tools, even if unbroken, lose their utility after time brings a new set of challenges and, ultimately, innovations.

It used to be that a 20-year-old tractor, for instance, was still relatively new. You could still use it to pull that same plow you’d had for the past 20 years. Now the scope of agriculture and developing best practices make 20-year-old tractors obsolete. Same thing goes for computers. If you’re still hanging onto that 1995 model, you’ve got no USB ports, outdated software and too little memory to access graphic-heavy Web sites and to open recent versions of software attachments.

Indiana has been hanging on to the same system of government, pretty much, since the new state constitution was approved in 1851. The system served the state well while the economy was based on agriculture.

While farming is still important to the health of our state, there were just 11,000 jobs (of the state’s 2.8 million total) in the agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing category in Indiana in 2006, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. Indiana may still be a largely rural state, but the vast majority of its people spend exactly zero percent of their lives working on farms.

The only thing you need to know about township government to know that the system is outdated is that, according to legend, the borders of Indiana’s 1,008 townships were formed to enable someone riding on horseback to get from one township to another within a day.

The postal service. The telegraph. Railways. The horseless carriage (known more recently as “the car”). The telephone. The Internet. All these modes of transporting communication have been developed to replace horseback delivery. But yet we still have townships.

The Commission on Local Government Reform, chaired by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard, has recommended sweeping changes to Indiana’s system of government to improve efficiency, promote uniformity and eliminate duplication of services.

Each point of the commission’s recommendations requires careful dissection and extensive public discussion. The end goal: A constitution and system of taxation and government that uses taxpayer dollars in the best possible ways to provide necessary government services.

It’s hard to say, exactly, what the new model should look like. But it’s easy to see that the effectiveness of the governmental system history has given Indiana has been eroded by the passing of time.

Contrary to our Hoosier inclinations, it needs serious changing.

        

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