Few Ind. townships will keep assessors

DEANNA MARTIN
The Associated Press

November 06, 2008 01:20 pm

— INDIANAPOLIS — Most of Indiana’s township assessors could be out of a job after voters decided to shift their assessing duties to the county level.
Voters in 43 townships were asked Tuesday whether township assessing duties should be transferred to the county level, and in all but about a dozen townships they said yes.
Bev Zuber, the Wayne Township assessor in Allen County, was among those who kept their jobs. She said she and her staff worked hard to talk to voters and urge them to vote against consolidation.
“You would go from being one of 49,000 properties (in the township) to one of 150,000 properties (in the county),” Zuber said. “The real question is, where would you be served best?”
Others will join the hundreds who have already lost their assessing responsibilities. A bill passed by the General Assembly this year shifted assessment duties in 965 townships to county assessors on July 1. In the state’s 43 townships with more than 15,000 tax parcels each, however, the General Assembly left it up to voters to decide their assessor’s fate.
Voters in 12 townships in Allen, Elkhart, Howard, Lake, LaPorte, Porter, Vigo and Wayne counties voted against consolidation. St. Joseph County election officials originally reported that both Portage and Penn townships voted against consolidation — but when votes were separated by township, they discovered that Portage Township had voted for the proposal, the South Bend Tribune reported.
Locally, voters in Jeffersonville Township and New Albany Township voted to consolidate duties.
Township assessors losing their duties will retain their title and — in some cases — their paycheck until their elected term is completed, but they no longer have assessing duties.
Those who opposed consolidation say taxpayers like having a local, accessible official to hold accountable. They say township assessors know their neighborhoods best and that service at the township level is better because they have to deal with fewer tax parcels than county assessors.
Supporters of consolidation, including Gov. Mitch Daniels, say shifting assessing duties to the county level would bring more consistency and fairness to property tax assessments. Township governments made sense when they were created in the 1800s because traveling to county seats was more difficult, supporters argue, but it no longer makes sense to have 1,008 township officials doing assessments in 1,008 different ways.