The title's not original, but it is apropos.
Got home rather late to find that my spouse had received a mailing from the "Indiana Democratic State Committee, Daniel Parker, Chair."
Seems the staties want Doug England returned to office.
Point one in the flyer is telling. It reads:
Doug England knows property taxes are too high, and hea has a plan to make them fair and affordable.
Really, Doug? Property taxes are too high? Property tax collections cannot rise more than 4.4% per year under DLGF guidelines. A decently growing economy ought to provide an natural inflation of 3% and new investment ought to generate the remaining 1.4%. Perhaps there has been no new investment in New Albany over the past year. Perhaps property values aren't rising at least at the level of the CPI or the Social Security cost-of-living bump.
But all of that is unlikely. It's a safe assumption that property taxes did not rise over the past year. So who is Doug England trying to cuddle up to?
The fact is that all those who are howling about "property taxes [being] too high" are the ones who have been underpaying for years. "Trending" has finally caught up to them and now they are paying their fair share. You don't hear howls from people whose taxes went down because of trending. You don't hear howls from people who have, logically speaking, been overpaying for years to make up for the underpaying segment of the population. Only those WHO CAN AFFORD IT because their property VALUE has risen are complaining.
In other words, the lucky are screaming because they have been relying on the luckless to pay for them. Now that the tables have turned, they scream that property taxes are too high. And Doug England wants them to know he sympathizes with the lucky, not the luckless.
Or is he merely posturing and pandering to avoid discussing reality? Republican opponent Randy Hubbard mouths similar sentiments, but his campaign literature didn't assault me at home tonight. So Doug England gets the dart tonight.
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3 comments:
If it's pandering, you need to add the names Sipes and Cochran to the list of bears. Their recent mailings are even more focused on the property tax "crisis".
Agreed. I like to think that Connie and Bill are friends, but I too have bristled at their recent literature.
Won't someone, at long last, cry out the truth?
With rare exception, the investment of tax dollars is the only thing that makes real estate financially viable anyway.
What's a property worth with no roads, no utilities, no protection, and no schools in proximity?
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