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Feb
4
Don’t Cut Spending – Raise Taxes?
Filed Under budget cut, East Chicago Indiana, Gary Indiana, Hammond Indiana, Income Tax, Lake County Council, local government reform, Miller Beach Indiana, property tax crisis, property tax reform, quality of life, tax revolt, tax sale, taxes | 2 Comments
A newspaper column explains why Northwest Indiana will never pare back government spending and will always look to raising taxes until the pain causes people to revolt a la Gary’s Miller residents and the anti- Lake Co. income tax rebellion.
Writes those rebellious folks at MCC Legal Defense fund set up by Gary’s Miller Citizens Corp.:
It has been said that if you want something to disappear, tax it. The MCC Legal Defense Fund certainly does not want homeowners to disappear …
Northwest Indiana Times columnist Janet Moran suggests cutting Lake County spending could result in dire effects — cuts in police and fire response — and suggests that the solution might be to raise taxes on property owners who are perceived to have more than others.
Writes Janet Moran:
Cutting local spending as the entire panacea to this whole property tax mess is a stick-your-head-in-the-sand, simplistic approach to Lake County’s predicament. Absolutely, there’s a critical need to comb unnecessary spending. But predicted revenue shortages go deeper than that. There’s no quick, one-size-fits-all utopian fix.
An appraiser in LaPorte County recently made an apt observation that to provide $58,000 in property taxes for local schools it took 140 average homes in Michigan City, but only five homes in the city’s upscale Sheridan Beach.
Janet Moran seems to suggest raising taxes on all of Lake County more to raise funds for Hammond, East Chicago and Gary.
Does is this the start of an opinion offensive to gather support for higher property taxes aimed at Gary’s lake front Miller Beach neighborhood and other places perceived to have wealth?
Could this be an effort to soften up voters as the proponents of higher taxes try to resuscitate the loathed Lake County income tax?
Jan
2
Federal Investigation Of Tax Sales
Filed Under federal investigations, tax sale | Comments Off
The Northwest Indiana Times reports that a federal investigation has been launched into Lake County tax sale properties in a story about properties that were taken off of the tax sale list in September 2006. The paper reports that 22,000 properties were certified for the October 2006 tax sale.
A Times investigation found that the initials of Faye Givens, the supervisor in the Lake County treasurer’s office at the time, were handwritten on the tax sale removal form dated Sept. 29, 2006.
Neither Givens nor anyone living at 2156 Lincoln St. responded to The Times’ request for comment.
Givens was fired last summer for her handling of bankruptcies pertaining to tax sale properties and now is under federal investigation for actions related to the tax sale list, county officials said.
(Kenneth) Smith’s case is just one of 67 that a Times investigation has uncovered in which federal bankruptcy cases — that either did not exist, had nothing to do with the properties in question or were invalid at the time — were used to shield from tax sale the homes of those delinquent in their property taxes.
