Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 19, Number 31, DeMotte, Jasper County, 1 July 1949 — Watch Budgets Is Warning Of State Group [ARTICLE]

Watch Budgets Is Warning Of State Group

Taxpayers Are Urged To Familiarize Selves With Contents Of Local Budgets With city and town taxes running 23 per cent above 1948, Indiana taxpayers yesterday were warned to watch carefully the preparation of local budgets next few weeks. Harry Miesse, chairman of the! Indiana Taxpayers’ Association ( declared: “If the people fail to attend| public hearings at which they, could insist upon reductions they! will have nobody but themselves to blame when the higher bills j are presented in 1950.” The average Indiana tax rate now is $3.84, ‘a figure that | would have startled the people a I decade or so ago,” Miesse said. I Indiana’s city, town and county ■ taxes have risen steadily since; 1947, Miesse said. This year the total bill to Hoosiers for property and poll taxes amounts to 814, 056, an increase of approxi-' mately $24,000,000 over 1948. ( Of this the public school sys- ■ tern is due to receive the largest, slice, $87,863,187 an increase of I approximately $7,000,000 over 1 1948, Miesse said.

“The next largest distribution' is $48,257,008 to defray the cost : of civil government in cities and towns,” he continued. “And then come the counties with demand for $39,055,829. Township levies amount to $9,056,141, and $8,591,707 goes to the state largely for distrubution to various local government projects.” He noted that city and town taxes are approximately 23 per cent higher than in 1948 and the county levy about 20 per cent higher. Township levies increased about eight per cent and state levy about five per cent. “There has been ft tendency on the part of the public to blame the state’s all time high levy of taxes on some mysterious agency that, operates in the State House,” he went on. “Taxpayers have been saying that the state must reduce its expenses. If they will examine the record, however, they will realize that extravagance begins at home. “There have been numerous instances where local officals lacked the courage to sponsor the higher costs for city and town operation. In these cases they went to the General Assembly and got mandatory laws increasing local salaries and establishing pensions funds. Then when the people complaine,d they were told' that a state law made it impossible to escape the increased expenditures.