Indiana Property Tax System Under Fire as Rod Bray and Lawmakers Face Backlash Over Assessments and Referendums

I have seen the amount of waste in local governments and I am sure is infinitely greater than it was ten years ago when I last served. And one of the things that I hated about being a local elected official is that you can’t just rule by fiat. You can’t rule by waving a magic wand. You can’t rule by force. You, as an elected official, especially one where you’re a governing board, you’re not a mayor. You can only get a fraction of what you want. If you’re a local elected official, and this is, I’m sure, true at the state level as well, you got to really hone in on a handful of things that you want, a handful of things that you say, these are my top priorities and everything else. Look, there’s just not enough hours in the day to get it all. There’s just not enough hours in the day to get it all.

Indiana Homeowners Continue to Face Rising Property Taxes Despite Reform Promises

By the way, there is so much waste in local government. That’s why I was so pissed off last year when these local government people, the mayors, the township trustees were coming to these Senate hearings, these House hearings. Oh, it’s going to be all over. Oh, it’s gonna be so bad if anybody gets any property bill. So I’ve always rejected like, well, if you didn’t have this tax, how would you do it? There’s always ways to do things. Government, local governments can do with less. They can. They don’t want to. The state has to make them because local governments are always going to take as much as they possibly can and spend it. And then when they don’t get it, they’re going to lie, they’re going to exaggerate, they’re going to fib. They’re going to use, in the case of schools, kids as human shields. Remember last year, I think it was the superintendent at Mooresville was claiming the lights would get turned out if you guys got property tax relief. Do you guys remember that? Remember the, I forget what the trustee was from, he was a trustee and he was saying, we’re going to have to let go seven firefighters. And one of the state reps was like, you’re gonna fire seven firefighters? That doesn’t. Your math doesn’t add up. And then finally the guy was like, no, no, no, I don’t mean fire. I mean, just like, we’re not gonna be able to hire seven new ones. Okay, well, that’s not letting somebody go. So the point is, I am against property taxes altogether. The government didn’t buy your house. The government didn’t have anything to do with you making the mortgage payment. That’s your house. You own it. Government shouldn’t have any claim to it. And by the way, the plan that is currently out there to get rid of property taxes, this is it, 1288, I can’t remember what the bill number is, the J.D. Prescott plan, that’s a dumpster fire. The plan to replace property, not that it’s going to move anywhere, but the plan to replace property taxes to get rid of them involves a 7% tax on services. It’s way too high. The government’s going to end up with more money out of this deal. And anybody tells you that it’s a good deal, they’re full of shit. That plan at one point will start having property taxes and the sales tax on services at the same time. The plan, and I told Prescott to his face about this last year. I met with him at his office. I don’t think that’s going to happen again anytime soon after he voted for the property tax bill, stabbed us all in the back. But I told him, I said, your problem here is you’re trying to replace the revenue. The problem is the revenue. The local governments have too much money. And for some reason, nobody in that Statehouse will say it out loud. The schools, the cities, the towns, the counties, they have too much money. They’re incentivized to not work smarter. Now, there are some things that are screwed up, like the school funding formula is a dumpster fire. But the issue is not total revenue. The issue is disbursement of monies, and then the way the local governments handle the money that they’re given. Look, in my town where I live, they’ve spent over $1 million designing swimming pools, rec centers and little league fields, none of which have come to fruition. $1 million that could have fixed a lot of roads and sidewalks and done a lot of good stuff. There is not a lack of revenue. Carmel has so much money they have fake people on the streets, fake bison. Not hurting for money.

Assessment-Based Property Taxes Criticized as Unfair and Unpredictable

All of that being said to say, if we’re going to have property taxes, if we’re going to have property taxes as the way that we are funding local governments, the assessment model is the worst possible way, the worst possible way imaginable. If you actually wanted consistency and you wanted protection and stability for the taxpayer. Now, of course, they don’t want stability. They don’t want to protect the taxpayer. They want as much money as possible to flow to these local governments. And the best way to do it is to have a totally unpredictable model in which while this person is elected, they’re not a fiscal agent. The assessor just pulls a number out of their ass and says, your house is worth this. Now, some assessors are going to hear this and get mad and go, we’re going by this table or that table and blah, blah, blah. Every year the number is different. Oh, your house went up $12,000 this year. Really? Really? Or your house went up 8000 or your house went up. And by the way, who sets these tables? It’s the state of Indiana. This is why when I hear people with some of these lawmakers go, well, your property taxes are a local issue. That idiot from Seymour, that’s always his thing. That’s a local issue. You got to take it up with your local. No. These local governments didn’t grow out of a local government farm. Someone didn’t plant a seed in the back of the Statehouse gym. Local governments operate under the rules and regulations set forth by the state of Indiana. The state legislature. The General Assembly could fix all of this tomorrow, and the system we have in place now is designed to ensure that property taxes keep going up. Many of you have gotten your bills. They went up. They’re higher than they were a couple of years ago, even with the quote unquote deduction. That only happens by design. And for years, people like me have been screaming that the assessments are the issue. It’s one of the primary reasons I supported Braun’s initial rollout on property taxes. Remember what the, it’s so far removed now, but remember what the initial tenant of that bill was? A reset of the bills to 2021 levels, which essentially wiped out the assessments. And then the bill capped how, the property tax bill capped how much bills could go up going forward. Remember those? Wasn’t it cut, cap and replace? He had a slogan for it and I think that was it. So it was cut the bill back to your 2021 level, which wipes out all the ridiculous assessment nonsense. And then we cap the amount your bill can go up every year. That was their way to get around the assessment nonsense. Which is why I said this is a pretty good idea. It’s a pretty good idea. Now again, we’ve laid this out. They went kicking and screaming on that. They screwed it up several times. I had to keep correcting them, but finally they, Braun and his people, got to something that was pretty decent. We live in a system in which you get punished for someone else making money. Why is that okay? We live in a system where you get punished because someone else made money. Can you tell me anywhere else where that happens? Where somebody else sells their stocks? If they cash out, do you get taxed for that? No, but that’s the way our property taxes work. Hey, your neighbor who has a house that’s pretty similar to yours, he sold and moved to Florida, and he sold his house for X amount of dollars. Now your house is worth that. Now you get taxed on that. And for years, we have just operated like the, or not we, not we. The General Assembly has operated standard operating procedure. This is fine. It’s like the little meme of the dog where everything’s burning around him, everything’s burning around the table, and the dog is sitting there and goes, this is fine. Everything’s fine.

Lawmakers Accused of Delaying Real Property Tax Reform Through Study Committees

So finally yesterday, and the Indiana Capital Chronicle has an article about this, finally, they’re going to have a summer study committee to take a look at assessments. Now, any of you who have been around the Statehouse for any length of time, you know almost nothing ever happens with summer study committees. Not always, but most of the time, certainly in the immediate future. Summer study committee is where they do something and then they go, look, we’re looking at it. Look, we’re looking into it. What the hell else do you want from us? What do you guys want from us? We’re looking into it. There’s a study committee. We’re studying it. A lot of times these things go on for years. A lot of times there’s no immediate action out of anything that comes out of the study committee. Sometimes there’s no action at all. So I don’t want anybody to get their hopes up like, oh, they’re finally going to really dig into assessments. But according to the Capital Chronicle, the bipartisan Legislative Council approved on Tuesday this year’s interim study committee topics. So that means over the next several months, they’re going to meet and look into this with the Fiscal Policy Committee directed to review the process of determining property values for tax purposes. See, I could just make all this so simple for them. Stop taxing people based on what someone else sold their home for. Look, this is very simple. You should not be punished for someone else making money. The most simplistic way, if you’re going to have property taxes, to solve this issue is to say you bought your house, you bought it for X amount of dollars. You sell it five years later, ten years later, 20 years later, you made X amount of dollars. You pay your taxes on that. The same way it works with the stock market. You know, you buy a stock at $100 and you hold on to it for ten years, and you sell it for $130. You pay the taxes on the $30 on each stock that you made. This is not rocket science. We already do this. If the goal was actually to protect people, that’s what we would do. No more paying every year. No more paying on not monetizing something. No more paying on being a stable, reliable, consistent member of your community who cuts their grass and trims their weeds and grows their flowers. This is not that hard, guys. Last year, I think the video is still up. It’s one of the few things they didn’t erase on the WIBC YouTube feed. I did a, what, a four minute video where I said, I will solve the property tax issue in four minutes. And I did it. I think somebody forgot to delete it or something. It’s still up there. Maybe not after today, but this is not hard, guys. As long as the system is set up to fail, as long as you’re going to have assessments as the way you tax people, you can never get meaningful property tax reform. As long as assessments. And by the way, you know what one of the other dirty little secrets is? Business assessments don’t go up like home values do, home assessments. Why? Because there’s fewer sales and business property doesn’t move, it doesn’t fluctuate. So it’s another example of the General Assembly putting their big business friends who donate to their campaigns ahead of us. I thought this was interesting. They asked Rod Bray, he’s the leader of the Senate, at least for now, about assessments in this summer study committee and this thing getting quote unquote studied. Now, again, this is the equivalent of running the four corners offense. They’re running the clock out. They want you to think, oh, they’re studying it. Oh, they’re looking into it. They’re not looking into anything they’re going to do. According to Capital Chronicle, the study should include reports submitted by the Department of Local Government Finance, such as the report on automated valuation models and a study of deductions and exemptions. Nothing, nothing. They’re buying time. Remember in The Sandlot when the kid hits the baseball, the Babe Ruth autographed baseball over the fence into Mr. Mertle’s yard with the dog, and they’re trying to figure out what to do, and they go to the store and their plan is to, they’ll buy a baseball. They’re going to sign it and put it back in their dad’s room and hope he doesn’t notice that it’s different. And they get the, they go get the baseball, and Benny, the main character, he’s signing the baseball. And the one kid goes, I don’t know, Benny. That looks pretty crappy because of course, his signature looks absolutely nothing like Babe Ruth’s signature. But he just looks at the guy and goes, this is just to buy us some time, you idiots. That’s what the General Assembly is doing here. They know the assessments came out. They know everyone is outraged. They know Rob Kendall was right again. They know that people know their taxes are going to keep going up. And so this is them, they’re Benny in The Sandlot with the horrible attempt to sign their name like Babe Ruth going, this is just to buy some time, you idiots. Nothing’s going to change. Here’s what Bray said about this. And again, there is no sense of urgency from these people. There is none. Quote, it’s hard to get everyone’s taxes to drop. That was the first thing he said. Hey, hey, Rod. Everyone’s really angry because you guys said you were going to fix the property taxes and you didn’t do anything. Would you like to comment on the issue about the summer study committee? Well, you know, it’s really hard to get everyone’s taxes to drop. I can assure you, as someone who cut property tax rates all four years that I was in elected office and I was just a local peon, it is not. It’s really not. It’s just math. It’s just math. It’s the least teensy bit of desire. Like if you have just a little bit of desire. And then, you know, the formula is pretty simple. You just spend less than you bring in. I mean, it’s really not hard to get everyone’s taxes to drop. It’s hard to get everyone’s taxes to drop, though, because lots of different circumstances around the state. And then he gets asked about the, he’s referring to the property tax bill. But we’re also pleased with that. He’s pleased with what’s going on in our state. He said it right there. But we’re also pleased with that. Who’s we, by the way? Does Bray speak for the rest of the General Assembly? Does Bray speak for the rest of the Senate? Who is we? Rod Bray, do you have a mouse in your pocket? Would have liked that to have been even a little better, but we’re going to continue to have the conversation about property taxes. Gee, gee, if only someone, anyone had said, this bill is crap and it’s not going to help anyone. Damn it. If there was just someone. If there was just someone who at the very loud platform, a very large platform, had just been screaming, screaming last year during the legislative session, hey, this isn’t helping anybody, don’t sign this. If only. Damn it. You know, hindsight’s 2020, right? If only somebody had had a big old event in the Statehouse where all of the state lawmakers, they came, right. If they just come right to the lawmakers and said, hey, this system is really crappy. If only someone could have let them know. And I get that the lawmakers are busy. So someone should have probably just gone right to Rod Bray’s door, if only on his birthday when there was a mariachi band playing. Someone had brought a bunch of people, like a thousand people, all wearing green shirts, saying this current system is a dumpster fire. Then maybe Rod Bray would have known. Gosh, if we could only go back in time, if we could only find that time machine because clearly Rod didn’t know. And why would he be expected to know? He’s only the leader of the Senate. I mean, you can’t expect the leader of the Senate to know the bills that they’re signing into law, whether they’re going to work or not. I mean, let me read you this quote. I’m going to read it in its entirety here. It’s hard to get everyone’s taxes to drop, though, because lots of different circumstances around the state. But we’re also pleased with that. Would like that to been even a little bit better. But we’re going to continue to have a conversation about property taxes. Excuse my language here because I vowed to have a family friendly program. If you have small children, cover their ears and don’t hold this against me. I’m so fucking sick about the conversation. I had the conversation for 15 years and I know you are too. Every May when you open your assessment. I know you’re so sick of it too. I’m so over it every year. Yeah, we got to have a conversation about that. Yeah, yeah, we got to look into that. Yeah, we got to meet and discuss that. There’s nothing left to discuss. We told you guys last year everything you’re doing is not going to work. And it hasn’t worked. We’ve laid out how within 2 or 3 years with most people, any reduction goes away. We laid out last year, if you do this, there will be referendums all over the state. The estimate is there’s going to be 100 school referendums this fall. These people play stupid like, oh, how would I know? How would anyone have known? We would have liked that to have been a little bit better. But then last year they did nothing. We literally came right to them. You guys remember this? We went right to their door and said, hey, let’s meet. Let’s talk. How many of them came? Zero, other than the three reps that were speaking, and one of the reps ended up voting for that horrible bill, J.D. Prescott. People are over it. They know they’re getting used. They know they’re getting played. They know that they’re having their homes stolen from them. In some cases, people are being taxed into oblivion. The system, the way the money is disseminated, makes no sense. I mean, the whole system is broken, right. Like, let me give you an example of how stupid all of this is. So stupid, all of it is. I got to go to a meeting tonight at the Brownsburg Town Hall, where the school system is asking the town and the townships for money. And in exchange for that money, they won’t seek a school referendum. Now, as I’ve said many times, our public education systems have way too much money and that includes the Brownsburg school system. We have two football fields, we have four field houses. We have just city blocks of educational campuses. Everything is beautiful. They’re not hurting for money, but I’m in support of the town and the townships giving them the money they’re asking for. Why? Because our General Assembly gives the public school systems. They bitch and they bitch and they bitch about them, and then they give them all of these big giant sticks to whack the community with. Biggest among them the ability to put a school referendum on a ballot. Well, every two years now. And so, at least to the credit of the Brownsburg school system, unlike the hundred other ones, that’ll just go be lazy. By the way, referendums are never necessary. Referendums are the process of lazy, greedy school administrators and school boards who believe they’re entitled to unlimited amounts of your stuff. That’s what referendums are. Any school district that proposes a referendum, they are the product of lazy, greedy administrators and school board members who believe they’re entitled to unlimited amounts of your stuff. And at least to Brownsburg’s credit, they’ve said, we don’t really want to deal with Rob for six months, so we’ll ask for a small amount of money from the town and the townships in exchange for saying, we’re not going to do a school referendum this fall. And I have, in a very bizarre world, it’s Rob and the school system aligned up together because I have spoken in support of that.

School Referendums and State Funding Rules Add to Growing Taxpayer Frustration

And that’s how bad our system is. Now, let me tell you why they have to ask for the money to begin with. Brownsburg admits they have excess money. They have enough money to not have to ask for any more money. But because of the screwed up school funding formula and the way schools are funded now, different money can only be spent on specific things, and the school in one of their funds has excess money. I’m simplifying a complex thing here for you for the brevity and the purposes of this show. This is how screwed up the system that people like Rod Bray and Geoff Thompson and Mike Braun have created, and Todd Huston and the rest of the Republicans, because they are in charge, the Republicans are in charge. Brownsburg has all this excess money in their essentially their property tax fund, for lack of a better description. They said, hey, we’re having some issue paying our teachers. We want to be able to give them more money. Just let us move this money from the property tax fund over to this other fund over here. That’s all we want to do, state. We don’t want to ask for any more money. We don’t want to do a referendum. All we want to do is just move the money and everybody will be fine. You know what the state said? Kiss our butt cheeks. Nope. We’re not going to let you do that because we know better. And we have our formula. And it doesn’t matter what common sense would dictate. And so that left the school system, because of course they’re not going to do with less money, they said, well, we have two options. We can either go for referendum or we can ask the town and the townships for money, and that’s what they’re doing. So I, as a taxpayer, I’m like, well, I really don’t want them to have more money because I don’t think they’re great with the money they have. But if you ask me which one, I’m going to prefer another layer of government giving money, who also, I don’t think spends the money wisely, the town or a referendum in my taxes potentially go up, I’m going to take that every time. I’m going to take my taxes being lower every time. And again, there’s going to be 100 or more school systems likely who are just going to take the easy way out and go, we’ll just go for a tax increase. If it fails, well, we’ll come back in two years and try it again. This is the system we have. This is the system we’ve created and our lawmakers and the chief among them, Rod Bray, says, well, we’re pleased with that. Rod Bray says he’s pleased. Mike Braun said the same thing. Don’t just dump on Bray. Braun got asked about it earlier this year and he goes, oh no. People are happy with the property tax system. People like what’s going on. Weren’t they running ads last year telling people to call and thank Braun for this fabulous system he’s put in place? It’s all gross. It’s all broken, and it’s not going to get any better until we fix, until we stop, not fix, but stop taxing people based on what some other person sold their home for. And some summer study committee where they’re going to get a couple of reports from the DLGF, that is not going to change anything.