Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1916 — SAYS INDIANA'S ROAD TAX IS STAGGERING BURDEN. [ARTICLE]

SAYS INDIANA'S ROAD TAX IS STAGGERING BURDEN.

Luke Ruffey Talks to Realty Men at Lafayette, Denouncing Present System. Lafayette, Ind., Feb. I.—Luke Duffey, a "good roads” candidate for the state legislature, addressed a meeting of the Indiana Real Estate association in Lafayette yesterday. The meeting was one of a series which the association is holding in each congressional district. ‘ The people of Indiana are demanding that the antiquated scum of wastefulness and coin percolation in our road system, which came with cur statehood, must disappear in the current of a modern, businesslike road department for our state,” I)!v_f'ey said in his address. "Progressive road legislation whereby results may be obtained commensurate with the time, money and labor expended is only opposed by the special interest fellows, who fight it in a spirit most humorously akin to the dog’s defense of the table under which he lies. “You many look the United States over and you will never find a state with a career of waste and inaptitude so checkered as that of our own Indiana. As a people we are filling our earning capacity too full of road obligations. It has become a matter of common knowledge that our road bonds have floated out on our chattel markets as a great dreadnought to realty ownership, and designed to pester and burden our township freeholders for a score of years after the benefits are gone.

“In this age of dollars and cents we find that a single road debt rides our Hoosier commercial pride in the staggering sum of sls per capita, or $3 an acre, which amounts rests against our land area solely as a preferred claim for traveling privileges. We are sufficiently rich to pay as we go, if a state unit could he created to direct the outlay of our annual payment of $18,000,000 for roads. I do not favor a topheavy commission, but in leaving many of the privileges with the people as now. I believe in the supplying of a fountain head for the gleaning and disseminating information to each county in the slate, no one of which could afford to employ the engineering skill needed. "The great volume of our roatl transactions is beginning to assume the appearance of a business proposition. The tax-tired people are paying $4,000,000 a year in interest nd retiring funds on road bonds. The remaining $14,000,000 vanishes as through a sieve, without any traceable direction. ’’