Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apartments
Classifieds
Shopping
An Indiana Senate panel has done something really difficult: giving Hoosiers a chance to make their county government structure even worse.
The legislature is considering several bills that would change local government in several ways. And the Senate Local Government Committee last week took up one of the most important proposals: replacing the county commissioners with a single county executive and transferring legislative duties from the commissioners to the County Council.
In the current structure, the commissioners are both the legislative – lawmaking – board, as well as the county executive, a sort of three-headed mayor. The dual role ignores the separation of powers that works well on the federal, state and city levels. Among the reasons the Commission on Local Government Reform, co-chaired by former Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard, recommended this and other changes: Increase accountability in county government.
Instead, the Senate panel gave Hoosiers the chance to actually diffuse accountability even further and create a seven-headed mayor.
The committee amended the bill to require that each county change to one of two structures: the single executive, as originally proposed, or a seven-member board of supervisors with the executive, legislative and fiscal powers of both the existing commissioners and the County Council.
To further muddy the waters, the bill would allow the current county commissioners to decide which model to follow or to decide to place the choice before voters in a referendum.
The reasoning for allowing the board of supervisors model was supposedly to give counties the choice between following a citylike model, with an elected executive, or a townlike model, with the supervisors having duties similar to a town council.
For an idea on how well this would work, consider a company operating with seven CEOs, all with equal power. Some decisions would require four votes; others, five.
In addition, the bill would create two entirely different county government structures throughout Indiana. (In fact, it would be four. Marion County would keep its UniGov structure, and Lake County would be exempt.)
The full Senate should see how ludicrous this proposal is and return the bill to a form closer to its original language, establishing the single elected executive in each county and throwing away the board of supervisors idea.
