By VICKI URBANIK

First it was the Chesterton license branch, closed and merged with bigger branches.

Now, a few other consolidation proposals affecting local government are on the table. One, a possible consolidation of library systems, has already stirred outcry locally.

Another would do away with elected township assessors, replacing them with appointed people, either at the county or at a regional level.

“It’s more or less taking the decision away from the voter,” said Westchester Township Assessor Candy Crone. “It would be like taking their voice away.”

Gov. Mitch Daniels recently announced his property tax restructuring plan, which calls for replacing Indiana’s 1,008 elected township and county assessors with an assessing official in each county to be appointed by the county council.

The Indiana Assessor Association thinks that’s too drastic, and in turn has proposed an alternative plan calling for the formation of 10 regional assessing districts.

Porter County would be lumped in with Lake County under the association’s plan. The county assessors in both counties would be eliminated and replaced with an appointed, regional supervisor who would then appoint assessors at the township level.

Duneland’s four township assessors say both plans are disasters, but that if they had to say which was worse, it would probably be the association’s plan for regional districts.

“We especially don’t like being lumped in with Lake County,” said Liberty Township Assessor Jean Swanson.

Jackson Township Trustee/ Assessor Jan Meyers said that at least the governor’s plan would keep an assessor at the county level, not a regional one. But, because the new county assessor would be appointed, “it’s still going to be very political,” she said.

Would either plan save taxpayers money? The resounding answer from Duneland’s assessors is no.

“As long as there are property taxes, this function has to be done,” Crone said.

“There’s nothing that shows it’s going to save money by getting rid of us,” Swanson added, citing a study done in Michigan that found that a move in that state to eliminate assessing at the township level would have actually cost the state millions more.

Pine Township Trustee/Assessor Nancy Kolasa said she questions the caliber of the person who could fill the new assessing post, either at a county or regional level. She said with the added responsibilities, she would hope that the new assessors would have even more experience and more training than the current ones.

But, she said, to combine all the budgets for each of Porter County’s 12 township assessors would not be enough to cover the professional wages that the new, consolidated assessing staff would likely demand.

“I know he’s (the governor) trying to make it look like there’s this great savings, but where are the savings?” Meyers added.

Crone agreed. She said the governor may more more familiar with some central and southern Indiana counties, where the township trustee/assessors do not handle assessing but have turned that task over to their county assessor. But that’s not the case in Porter County, where even the part-time asessors, who also double as the township trustee, have the highest level of training and certification needed, she said.

So, she said, if someone needs even more experience, training, or degrees, then the new assessors would likely demand salaries and benefits far higher than what now exists, she said.

Crone said the governor’s plan is vague, but that one provision calls for the new assessors appointed at the county level to work under the authority of the Indiana Department of Revenue. She questioned if that means that if the counties would essentially turn over the budgets from each of the township assessors to the state, or if the state would pick up the added costs. “Where are the costs going to come from?” she said.

The local assessors are especially irked that they learned about the regional plan by the Indiana Assessors Association by reading about it in the newspaper.

Meyers said 80 percent of the people in Jackson Township know her as the assessor. So if they read the AP story about the association’s plan calling for new regional districts, as she did, they might get the wrong message that all assessors are on board with the idea.

“That was all done without any input or communication with the assessors from around the sate,” added Crone.

Kolasa said with a regional assessing district, the new office would likely be located in the more populated Lake County -- like in Merrillville or Crown Point -- making it difficult for local taxpayers to get to if they want to meet with an assessor or challenge their assessment. “I think accessibility would be too hard,” she said.

Still, Kolasa said she suspects that if the state is going to make any change related to property taxes, township assessors area an easy target. Many people blame assessors for the property tax problems, even though, she said, “we’re only following the rules that they (the state) set up in the first place.”

Meyers agreed that local assessors are being unfairly blamed for property tax problems. If any township assessor doesn’t know their township and can’t do the work, then voters should elect a new assessor. But eliminating the local assessor does nothing to solve the problem, she said.

Meyers said in some counties, the township assessors get very little pay and contract out for all their assessing work. But in other counties, like Porter County, the township assessors have already attained all the training and certification the state has required. “They want to lump everyone in together,” she said.

While the assessor plans are being promoted as way to increase efficiency, Crone said the details -- salary costs, staffing needs, location of offices, gas and mileage reimbursement for field workers, and storage of the massive amount of files -- aren’t being addressed. “It seems like there’s so much more involved than anyone’s talking about,” she said.

Posted 11/1/2007