Friday, February 27, 2009

OUR SHRINKING LOCAL GOVERNMENT

I was very upset about the recent Indiana Senate vote to eliminate local township advisory boards. These three member boards are the fiscal and legislative body and adopt the township budget. These duties are to be transferred to the county council.

This is just another step Gov. Daniels is taking to eliminate or severly limit our local government. He is trying to eliminate townships all together. Per the Tribune article dated 2/25/09 the government found sloppy bookkeeping in townships and consolidation would be more efficient. Would not some counties have sloppy bookkeeping also?

What is Gov. Daniels trying to do? He wants to reduce the number of county commissioners from three to one and change several local elected positions to appointed positions. Can you say nepotism ? If a county executive appoints the county assessor, treasurer, recorder, surveyor and coroner, would not this person have just a little too much power?

We need to speak with our votes in the next election. Gov. Daniels is not a king and we are not his subjects. Please vote to keep our local elected positions as they are, how else are the voters going to have their say?

2 comments:

Christopher D said...

How could we expect anything less from Gov. Daniels?
Yeah, sure, we are saving some money here and there by selling our assets to foriegn investors, but at what costs?
Dissolving crucial aspects of local government, in a time when we NEED more fiscal oversight is reckless.
But then again, look what his administration did to HIP, look at the over $50 million he took away from municipal hospitals to cover indigent healthcare insurance (money he stated was coming from new tobacco taxes, and that tax did not go into that)
He cut the budgets to our state parks, places hoosiers could have gone to get away without spending a lot of money...
We are just starting to feel the burn of the property tax "reform", and yeah we're gonna save some money on the taxes for our home, but get slapped harder now with the excise tax on our cars.
Smoke and Mirrors...

Anonymous said...

We need to be worrying about King Doug more than Governor Daniels.