Indiana Political Review

Governor Daniels has stated that he will propose an amendment to the Indiana constitution that deals with property taxes. While he has not as yet made such a proposal, it is hoped that the amendment will place a cap on property tax increases, year-over-year. However, the rest of the (scant-on-details) story leads one to suspect that the underlying cause of the massive tax increases will not be addressed by the amendment.

It appears that one of the proposals that has been offered is to have the state assume the burden of funding schools. For the life of me, I can’t see how that will make any difference at all. Except that the worst-run schools will be able to stick a wider set of taxpayers with the bill for their fiscal incompetence. Doing this will only obscure the problem for longer and will tend to negate any responsibility for local school boards’ budgets. This is a recipe for disaster. What possible incentive would the local school boards have, as they cast their eyes across the vast sea of taxpayers, to rein in spending? To the contrary, they will see this as an opportunity to increase their spending while spreading the costs over a much wider area. School expenditures will skyrocket, taxes will inch ever upward and eventually, we will be faced with a much thornier problem in that there will be no way that local populations will be able to support the schools within their districts.

The better way is to leave the schools to be controlled and funded by the communties that they serve, but to limit the amount that the overall tax budget is authorized to increase each year. Each recipient of the public largesse would then have to fight it out to see how big a slice of the pie they can grab. When the pie is gone, the pie is gone. AND WE WILL NOT MAKE MORE PIE! Only this way will there ever be spending restraint in government. A strong constitutional amendment is an excellent idea. Let us hope that it accomplishes the right result.