It looks like Taxpayer’s Party Gubernatorial candidate John Waterman is out before he was ever really in. My good friend Brian Howey is reporting that Waterman was far from the 33,000 signatures he needed to get on the ballot.
Waterman ran on a platform of repealing property taxes.
Oh well.
As Marion County residents line up this week to pay their property tax reconciliation bills , I spoke to some area officials to get their take on the subject…
Governor Mitch Daniels
The reassessment was more fair than what homeowners were paying before. Homeowners would have been paying what businesses should have been paying. People make mistakes and he doesn’t doubt that many individual assessments need further corrections.
Reassessments are just part of the overall tax reform and as caps come in Marion County residents will see much lower property tax bills. They can expect a reduction in 2009 to 1½ percent cap and 2010 when the 1 percent cap kicks in.
Marion County Treasurer Mike Rodman
People have been in relatively good spirits paying their bills. The rebate checks have helped somewhat. Rodman says he will go back to the Legislature and ask for an option monthly installment plan for all property taxes. Rodman says paying your property tax bill monthly would be like paying your other monthly utilities. He says he and the Ballard administration will be approaching the General Assembly about implementing such a plan.
Shirley Mizen, Deputy Auditor Marion County
More than 3,000 property tax rebate checks have come back to the Marion County Auditor’s office. Mizen says some of the checks have come back because of bad addresses , the homeowner has moved and the checks can’t be forwarded or the property owner was on vacation and had their mail held so it came back to the Auditor as required by law.
Mizen says as the checks come back they will review whether it should have gone out in the first place and those that should have will be resent. In the event a check is returned another time, if it is over $10 it will be valid for two years and then go into the Attorney General’s Unclaimed Property Fund .
More than 255,000 property tax rebate checks have been sent out to residential homeowners.
I’ll have more tales for you tomorrow.
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita says nearly two-thirds of the state’s mortgage brokers didn’t bother to take a standardized license exam as required by law.
The General Assembly passed the law last year to toughen requirement for brokers.
Rokita says out of the 950 licensed brokers, 639 never bothered to take the exam so they’re facing license revocation.
They have until August 5 to take the exam.
It’s also not like it’s a hard test. Out of the 300 brokers who’ve already taken the test, only 46 never passed.
And please note, 67-percent of Indiana’s real estate business is done through mortgage brokers so is anyone surprised that this state is in its current foreclosure crisis?
We’ve added a new link here at Indiana Barrister to help you guys and gals make more informed decisions in this year’s Presidential election. In the links column we’ve added the website FactCheck.Org.
FactCheck.Org does a very good job at keeping everyone honest at the national level.
It’s a pretty useful tool, so I suggest you use it.
Last year more than 400 people showed up to protest their property taxes in front of the Governor’s residence on north Meridian. This year it was 50.
Some of the organizers blame the weather. I think the climate had something to do with it, but not the one outside. I think for some people what the state legislature did was enough for them to believe the problem was solved.
But for others, I think the revolution has changed. Instead of protesting with signs, the masses are protesting with their pens and appealing their tax bills, much to the detriment of the Marion County Assessor’s office.
However the greatest “shot” in the revolution may have yet to be fired. I’m hearing because of the assessments were so out of whack, including the reassessments, that there is a class action litigation out there just waiting to be filed.
I’m of the mindset that paper is a much more effective weapon than a placard.
Time to turn your plowshares into briefcases.
Another day, another murder. This one was last night at 40th and Keystone. A 24-year old man was found dead from gunshot wounds. To date there have been about 60 homicides in Indianapolis, and while overall crime is down, particularly aggravated assault, it doesn’t help when the public picks up a newspaper or turns on the radio or television and hears about another murder.
It also doesn’t help when citizens read about their elected officials getting arrested on either public corruption or public intoxication charges. And it’s insult added to injury when members of the police department disgrace their badges and violate the public trust.
And when you throw property taxes into the mix, and the fact that efforts to pay them on an installment plan failed because some of your elected officials think the government needs your money more than you do, this all seems that Indianapolis has become a pretty jacked up place.
Not yet.
There is good news in all this. A majority of the homicides involve someone with a felony conviction, so it’s not like we’re losing productive members of society here. Unfortunately when the bad guys engage in gun play it’s the citizenry who tend to get hurt. Luckily, staying off the corner at 38th Post Road at 2 a.m. on a weekend is one sure way to not become a victim.
Also we’re lucky that when it comes to public corruption, people are being held accountable, not as many as I would like to see, but it’s a start. And even the people who hate law enforcement have to admit that it was other IMPD officers who turned in the ones who went astray. That tells me the atmosphere has changed and officers are now more willing to turn in bad actors than they were under previous administrations.
Is all perfect in Indianapolis, not by a long shot, but it’s also not Detroit. But I do think the right people are finally in place to turn this situation around. Changing a city is like turning an aircraft carrier, it takes a while but it gets done. And if you still think things are bad, imagine how worse they would be if other people were still in charge?
That would be totally jacked up!
Have a good 4th of July. Remember as we celebrate America’s birthday that it’s alright to disagree, just try not to be too disagreeable in the process.
Indiana Republicans are hailing a new poll of 1,000 likely voters showing incumbent Governor Mitch Daniels with a 14-point lead over Democratic challenger Jill Long Thompson. Here are some of the highlights…
The poll was conducted by Bellwether Research and Consulting between June 22-29. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
My own thoughts on this is that while you never put out a poll that doesn’t work for you, it does show that JLT has a lot of work to do to reach beyond her core base of the 30-35 percent of the voters who just can’t stand Mitch Daniels.
And while November is still a long way off, for every day JLT does not move ahead, she ends up further behind.
There is another story of another IMPD officer getting in trouble. This story is on the heals of another IMPD officer who got in trouble and three other IMPD officers who got in trouble. And they are not to be confused with the former Public Safety Advisor turned Marion County Sheriff employee who is also in trouble.
While it is important to know that these handful of bad apples are not representative of the other 2,000 or so men and women of law enforcement who go to work everyday to protect us and keep our streets safe, they do give cops a bad name. Of course it doesn’t help that all this bad news comes at one time.
While the officers are ultimately responsible for their actions, you can’t ignore another individual who also bears some responsibility for this, Sheriff Frank Anderson. When Anderson ran IMPD, the department ended its polygraph practices, which some top officials in the department tell me could have been a deterrent to some of this behavior. Anderson was also in charge when another one of these officers was reportedly kicked out of the Police Academy and rehired under IMPD. And it was Anderson who hired Jerry McCorry.
It was Anderson’s leadership that set the atomosphere that allowed this type of bahavior to grow and now Mayor Greg Ballard is cleaning up his mess and cleansing the air he left behind.
My recent post on crime in this town has apparently caused quite a little stir. Some friends have asked me if I’m going to respond to what’s been written in the blogosphere? Not really.
The way I figure it, if someone doesn’t have enough synaptic activity to understand sarcasm and satire when they read it, then what would be the point of trying to explain it to them?
I would probably have an easier time convincing R. Kelly to date someone his own age.
