Can we say RECALL?

The LaPorte County property tax tussle continues to get more interesting by the day.  Thanks to the efforts of the Michigan City News Dispatch to obtain a copy of the deposition of Assessor Carol McDaniel and the story by reporter Laurie Wink,  http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=8633 it is probably safe to say that many LaPorte County residents are now questioning the competency and qualifications of the LaPorte County Assessor. At the property tax forum held at the Blue Chip last month, Attorney Mark Phillips made citizens aware of the deposition of Assessor McDaniel that had occurred.  As a property taxpayer, I  was pretty disgusted when I heard about some of the answers she provided during that deposition.  After 6 years on the job, I would tend to believe that Assessor McDaniel should have known every line item term on a property tax card with her eyes closed - wearing dark glasses shouldn’t have been either a problem or an excuse.

But I am a bit amused by Attorney Friedman’s recent media comments. Hopefully,  he will go ahead and “try the case in public.”  In this case, I think that “in public” is exactly where it should be tried. Personally, I have always enjoyed a good debate and as an interested taxpaying bystander, I would welcome the opportunity to watch  Mr. Phillips do his job for his client in the glare of the public spotlight.  From what I have seen, he certainly does seem to have a very good handle on the problem with property taxes in LaPorte County. And it surely would be fascinating to watch Mr. Phillips have Assessor McDaniel do a property by property assessment analysis of properties owned by all LaPorte County elected officials. 

 The deposition disclosure pretty much cuts right to the heart of the question about the qualifications of those we have elected to office.  Especially at the local level, there often is very little information available about the qualifications of people who are running for these offices.  It is even more unfortunate that once elected,  Indiana does not have any provision to recall those elected officials who we discover may lack the qualifications to do the job they were elected to do.  Citizens have little recourse to make any change between elections while significant damage can be inflicted by rogue politicians while they remain in office.

For far too long, PUNCH 10 happy LaPorte County has been electing some political hacks who may be less than qualified to do the jobs they were elected to do.  As many property taxpayers are now discovering, that can have some devastating consequences for them personally.  But if there is a silver lining to this cloud, hopefully it may be more citizens will finally recognize just how broken the current system is and new faces with new ideas will step forward and get involved to fix it.             

This entry was posted on 14. January 2008 at and is filed under Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.