Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1886 — County Taxes and County Revenue. [ARTICLE]

County Taxes and County Revenue.

‘ The editor of the Message is engaged in a frantic attempt to induce the people of Jasper county to believe that they are being subjected to a taxation that is inordinately iuid disproportionately high; and at the time he is trying to convince them that one man, the present auditor of the county, is almost solely responsible for such high taxation. This latter part of the scheme is so palpably malicious, ho evidently and absurdly false, that there is not the slightest danger of any person of sense being misled by it. Even were it possible to establish the fact that taxes are too high «in this county, the people an* too well informed not to know that the county auditor is not', froffi the nature of his, official-functions, in any important responsible for such a state of affairs- The county commissioners, the trustees of the townships, the judge and other officers of the circuit court, and in a less degree the township assessors are the functionaries who Eave discretionary power in expending, or are causing to be expended, the public moneys, and if taxes are too high some or all of the occupants of these offices and chiefly the county commissioners are responsible. The assertion made by the nondescript sheet above mentioned that the auditor “runs” tlie Board of Commissioners and for that reason is responsible for the .county taxes, is not only a silly and absurd falsehood but an outrageous insult to those honorable" and conscientious public servants, Hie present count-y commissioned. Beyond making certain false and malicious assertions and insinuations regarding the county auditor, and. an indefinite allusion to the amount expended in the county for the relief of the poor the Jjfess.-q/r makes no attempt to show that any public money, is squandered, embezzled On, misapplied Iman way, but upon the one point of the rate per cent of taxation alone, and especially as compared with certain other co unties, it relies for arguments to convince its readers.- f Now we propose, in this and perhaps some subsequent articles .to establish in as brief a manner as possible the following propositions: Ist. That a comparatively high rate per-eent. of taxation upon the assessed valuation of a county is not alone conclusive proof that the taxes of such county are inordinately high. 2nd. That no honest comparison can be made between the rates of taxation in different counties unless the rates of assessments, and the amounts of the county revenues derived from sucli taxation are also compared. 3rd. That the cssage has been intentionally misleading, dishonest and altogether untruthful and unjust in the comparisons it has made between this-and other counties, in the matter of taxation. Now we take it for granted that no person possessed of any degree of common sense and common honesty will deny that in a county like Jasper, poor in wealth and sparse in population, with many expensive bridges to build, many difficult loads to maintain, a comparatively large number of poor people to support, an excellent but necessarily expensive school system to raise money for, the heavy expenses of four terms of circuit court to meet every year; that the expenses of tire county government and the consequent taxes are necessarily higher in comparison,than -in—more, wealthy and; populous counties; In other words, is it not evident that in counties having ten, twenty or thirty millions of taxable property the rate per cent, of taxation ought to lie less than in countie^-havingimlythree or four milliofis of valuation? In counties like Wabash or. Hendricks, for instance, a tax of 50 cents on the hundred dollars will yield a revenue of 850,000, while the same rate of taxation inJas- : per county would yield less than 815,000. . \Ve w ill now proceed to make a fair comparison betfreeu Jasper and other counties, in respect not only to the rate per cent of the taxation but to the amount of revenue derived, and the comparative highness or lowness of the-assess-ments. In the oflice of the county treasurer are printed tables showing the rate of taxation for the various purposes, from thirty different j including our own, for the year 1885. In the ls ossoor of last week was a statement giving or pretending to give the. rate of taxation for county purposes in 26 of these, jnclnding Jasper. With characteristic dishonesty only those epunties in which the rate, was either lower, or could he made to

appear so, were mentioned; and no comparison at all was made between the total amounts of the revenues the counties mentioned would; derive from their county tax. T|ie Message is much in the habit of stating alleged propositions in. italics. We will imitate the example, for once, with the great difference that our proposition shill be absolutely true. Of the 80 con lilies irith which the Message might hare com 1 / >ared Jasper countg, four tcere not. mentioned because their cbuutg fares were, higher, and of the 25 mentioned 18 tcere- more or less misrepresented. In Jasper county the tax for 1885 was 85 cents one.the §IOO assessed valuation. The counties which were left out intentionally, with their rate of taxation are: While, cehts on the 8100, and 15 cents extra to pay interest on county bonds; Crawford 81.00 on the hundred; Stark 81.10 on the hundred, and Adams 90 cents on the hundred. Of the 18 counties misrepresented 15 have a poll tax for county revenue, which Jaspercounty has not, and from which they derive from 82,000 to 86,000 annually and of- this poll tax the Message makes no mention. In six there are special taxes for county - purposes which should have been given in a fair coinparion. In five of these, especially, there are bridge taxes of from 8 to 25 cents on the hundred, that ought, by all means, to have been included because in Jasper county, as most of our readers know, thejroad and bridges are paid for out of the general county revenue. _

The next point we wish to call atfehtion to is the total amount of revenue for county purposes which some of the counties, mentioned by the Message, derive from their rate of taxation, and the great unfairness of that paper in seeking to make it appear that the rate of taxation is the sole-standird for determining whether taxes are comparatively high or low. At present we have, no documents from which we can give the exact

amounts of county revenue- in the year* 1885, for any of the counties mentioned by the Message, but if we take the rates per hundred for that year and the property valuation for 1886, as just returned by the state board o of equalization, the results will be near enough for comparison, although not fair so Jasper county, from the reason that the state board has just increased the assessments on realestate in this county 10 per cent, xvliile in most other counties it is less than in 1885. The rate of taxation of 1885 on the property valuation of 1886, then would give in round numbers the following county revenues: jasper county $25,024 White . ‘ .49,700 Cass 71,075 Carroll 30.304 Fountain 64,571 Orange. .21,287 Sullivan. 36,672 Knox ..................... .54,725 Pike . 2.6,544 Wells 30,890 Parke 43,560 Pulaski 21,839 Clay.... ....27,372 Marshall . ........ .30,438 Howard 29,250 Morgan. .30,429 Elkhart ’ .. 50,129 Huntington 32,732 TfankTm......... ........ .46,192 J ackson 19,823 Ripley 18,985 Newton .....16,197 ' Hancock .......... , [ St. Joseph -. 39,280 :Noble.. ..:: ...41,347 | In addition to these sums fifteen lof these counties levied a poll tax for county purposes of from 50c. to $1.50 on each poll. In the above list we have given the county revenue for each of the counties mentioned by the J/essage as showing that Jasper countypeople paid more taxes than the ; people of these counties. In the light of these facts how false, mis-leadingand-malicious appear these • ’words from the Message: ■ I With what proud majestic mien the . plucky people of Jasper county may ' boast that they pay more taxes and • have poorer roads and meaner public improvements than one-fourth of the people of the State of Indiana- ' These sums, as we remarked i above, are obtained by using the I tax rate of 1885 and the assessed ; valuation, of 1886. They are ap- ■ proximately correct, but are much j more unjust' to Jasper county than to any other because the asses sed t v-.ludiion of Jasper county, a& just .adjusted by the State Board of Equalization; is considerably greater now than if was last year while in nearly every one of the counties compared with Jasper, the valuation is lower than it was last year. It is further unjust to our county in that the value of the railroads are not included in the

values on which the above revenues are computetf, and in nearly all the counties mentioned the Value of the railroads is much greater than in Jasper county. The above figures prose- the 'remarkable fact that, in 26 counties, selected and cited by the Message in its unfair attempts to prove thAt taxes here are comparatively in 20 of them the county revenues are greater than in Jasper county. . In 1884 the county tax in Jasper county was §1.20 on the hundred dollars valuation, or 35 cents higher lhan in 1885 and 46 cents higher than in 1886. There was also a county jailtax of 10 cents on the hundred dollars. The county revenue for that year was unusually large. Large enough to pay all outstanding county orders; large, enough to meet all the current expenses of the county government; large enough to pay more than §B,OOO for bridges in the county; large enough to pay to the state a deficit of several thousand dollars in School money; large enough to liquidate about 85,000 of indebtedness on the county jail and still to increase the balance of county revenue in the treasury by about §5,000. And yet in that yeai? notwithstanding the fact that county taxes were abnormally nigh, higher than at any time since the war, in 48 of the 79 counties of the state the countg reveniics tcere greater thdn in Jasper ebuntg, and among those were 12 of the- loic ta.r counties above cited by the Message. This article is already too long, and further discussion of the subject must be deferred until next week, at which time we shall, have something to say about the very of real property, in Jasper county, and the effect such assessments have in making taxes appear comparatively much higher than they really are. We shall also compare the financial management of Jasper county with two or three of our neighboring ’counties, which the Message has macle an especial point of citing.