Their circumstances are different, but the effect on taxpayers may well be the same.

The Whitley County assessor plans to be out of the office for six months this year. The Huntertown clerk-treasurer is ill, having suffered a stroke, and has been unable to perform his duties since October. Unless plans change, taxpayers will be paying both their salaries as well as paying employees hired to do their work.

While Indiana law sets plenty of rules for government workers, elected officials fall into their own category, largely to preserve their independence. As Whitley County Commissioner Don Amber explained, “Unfortunately for taxpayers, once a person is elected, that person can hold office for one day and not have to show up for the rest of the year.

“It’s a travesty.”

The case of Whitley County Assessor Angela Adams Heath, if not a travesty, is indefensible. She has informed county officials she plans to be out of the office from May through October, when she would return to finish the county’s reassessment. Her plan is to work until May 2013, then resign. She has asked the county to hire another employee to help with the workload in her absence. Though she offered to give up her pay during the period she is gone, state law directed toward protecting the independence of elected officials prohibits that.

Clearly, Adams Heath should resign.

The issue is a bit more difficult in Huntertown, because Clerk-Treasurer David Rudolph may well recover and return to work.

A bill that failed to get a hearing in this year’s legislative session would have required the county assessor and certain other elected officials to be in their offices at least 20 hours a week. But such a law could have the unintended consequence of justifying those officials working no more than 20-hour weeks.

A more appropriate law might allow an officeholder to step down temporarily. But that causes its own problems. Who appoints the successor? What if the appointed successor changes policies of the elected official?

Indiana law does offer citizens an acceptable option. Indiana Code 5-8-1-35 allows anyone to file an accusation in a county circuit court alleging that an officeholder is failing to perform his or her duties. The court must hear evidence and the officeholder’s defense.

If the accusation is sustained, the circuit court judge has the power to remove the officeholder.

This approach isn’t perfect. Circuit judges in Indiana are elected on partisan ballots, and concerns of conflicts could arise.

But removing an elected officeholder is a serious move, one judges will probably take very seriously. Judges can also hear the circumstances of the case and determine, for example, whether an illness is a valid reason to remove someone from office.

Asking a judge to consider whether an officeholder’s absence amounts to official neglect of duties is certainly appropriate in the Adams Heath case, and perhaps in Rudolph’s case as well.