We revisit Al Hornaday, a Morgan County township trustee trying to inject some common sense into local government. In today’s brief video, Hornaday explains there are some major discrepancies between the small amount of poor relief provided in some townships and the high costs of simply running the township office. Visit www.MySmartGov.org for more.

Why did Indiana and other states establish township government back in the 1850s? Because of the farming economy and the need for people to travel by horse and buggy to conduct government business. Why are elections held on Tuesday? Same reason.

The Indiana Chamber and its partners have repeatedly pointed out over the last six-plus years that township government needs to go — for a variety of reasons. Check some of them out at MySmartGov. Now, election reform advocates are saying Tuesday votes are a relic and at least one of the reasons the U.S. ranks a staggering 140th globally in voter participation.

Here’s part of a recent Governing article on making the switch to Saturday elections. It, combined with vote centers, might make sense. Thoughts?

“Voting on Tuesday is the No. 1 remaining burden to voter participation,” says Jacob Soboroff, executive director of Why Tuesday?, a national nonpartisan group that advocates weekend voting. “Moving Election Day to the weekend is the single biggest thing we can do in our country to get more people involved in the political process.”

When Congress was trying to establish a national Election Day in 1845, the biggest concern was accommodating an agrarian society. Farmers needed a day to travel to the county seat, a day to vote and a day to return home. Ruling out days of worship left Tuesday and Wednesday, but Wednesday was typically market day. So, Tuesday it was.

Few Americans still rely on a horse and buggy to get to the voting booth. In today’s urban society, reform advocates say, Tuesday voting is more a hassle than a convenience. In recent years, expanded early voting periods and no-excuse-needed absentee voting in many states have made it easier to cast a ballot without missing work. But what’s really needed, these reformers argue, is a full-out shift to Saturday voting.

Voters in one jurisdiction will get to experiment with weekend voting next year. Last month, San Francisco residents overwhelmingly approved a measure to open polls for the November 2011 election on Tuesday and the previous Saturday. “We’re trying to engage more people in the democratic process,” says Alex Tourk, a local political affairs consultant who spearheaded the effort. “It’s not rocket science to hold an election on a day when most people aren’t working.”

Still, there are complications. Since the San Francisco pilot project essentially establishes two full election days, there’s an added cost to the city. Tourk must cover those expenditures by raising funds from private sources — but establishing what those costs are will be tricky.

Saturday voting won’t be the norm anytime soon. But San Francisco’s experiment could provide some interesting insights into what happens when people don’t have to choose between voting and putting in a full day at the office. Weekend voting may ultimately not change anything, but given America’s bottom-of-the-barrel turnout rates, it sure can’t hurt. 

Al Hornaday is a former township trustee in Morgan County. As you will see, he is a hard-working Hoosier doing what he could to help people in his community. But in this short video – and several to come on budget numbers, emergency services and more – Al, who served for 12 years, says the office is simply no longer needed.

For more information, be sure to visit MySmartGov.org.

We’ve been on this train for quite a while, but now it looks like headway can finally be made for Hoosier taxpayers. The Indy Star asserts:

Daniels has supported the elimination of townships in the past, but he’s never had the votes needed to make it happen. Now, with outgoing House Speaker Pat Bauer reduced to irrelevancy, the governor needs to press hard to dissolve townships, a move that would save tax dollars, reduce corruption and improve the delivery of services.

However, on this issue, the governor can’t count on the Republican caucus to remain fully behind him. Some of the staunchest defenders of the status quo — state Sen. Dennis Kruse, for instance — hail from the GOP. Kruse, for one, contends that townships should be retained because they are a prime training ground for new politicians and political workers.

It’s a shaky argument, of course, given that a majority of states — 60 percent — operate just fine without townships. But it’s one advocates for change, including the governor, must address.

The need for reform became even more critical after Tuesday, when voters gave overwhelming approval to the constitutional amendment that caps property tax rates. Township officials have been serial hoarders of tax dollars; more than $200 million was tucked away in townships’ surplus accounts when last measured. Last month, a trustee in Johnson County acknowledged that White River Township had so much money in the bank that it didn’t need to collect any property tax dollars for at least the next year. That story could be repeated around the state if other trustees were as forthcoming.

Let’s see if we have this latest story of township ineptitude correct (kudos to 6News and reporter Kara Kenney for their continued fine work in detailing these unfortunately true stories that seem to be more suited to Ripley’s Believe It or Not):

• A Morgan County township trustee resigns because there’s no more money left for poor relief
• The trustee cites personal reasons and simply disconnects the township office phone, which happens to be in her house
• State Board of Accounts audits reveal recent problems with recordkeeping, overspending and more
• The only person seeking the office thus far is the former trustee’s daughter, who also happens to be a precinct chair and will be part of the caucus to choose the temporary replacement

Read the full story. And ask yourself, and more importantly ask your legislators, when they’re going to put an end to this abuse of your taxpayer dollars. It’s not a political issue; it’s simply time to do away with ineffective and inefficient township government.

I do not know Bob Anderson of Wonder Lake, Illinois. But Bob makes a lot of sense.

His comments in a recent letter to the editor to a suburban Chicago newspaper are right on target — whether one resides in his home state or back home in Indiana.

We’ve been saying the same thing in various forms for the past six years or so. And we’ll continue to say it, and with the help of Hoosiers who simply don’t understand how Indiana can afford a malfunctioning system of government.

For today, the floor is Bob Anderson’s. Let’s hold up our end of his argument (If they can do it, so can we). Here are his words:

Recently, House Speaker Michael Madigan introduced a Constitutional amendment to abolish the position of Illinois’ office of lieutenant governor.

Rep. Jack Franks has also called for the abolition of the office. Gov. Pat Quinn, a former lieutenant governor, states the position is useless.

Now, in the 21st century, the township form of government is also useless.

If Gov. Quinn, Speaker Madigan and Rep. Franks want to show real leadership they should work to introduce a Constitutional amendment to abolish obsolete township government in Illinois.

Illinois has 1,433 township governments in addition to 1,395 road districts that are outmoded, duplicative, inefficient, and most of all, costly.

Township government is an outdated vestige of a once useful government established in the 1800s to help farmers and settlers when 98 percent of the population lived in rural areas.

There is pending legislation in Indiana to abolish their townships. If they can do it, so can we.

Townships should be eliminated, with the transfer of their duties to general purpose governments – counties and municipalities. This would simplify the election process, improve services and reduce cost of local government.

Check out these words of New York Attorney General (and candidate for governor) Andrew Cuomo:

Our system of local government is broken … New York has more than 10,521 overlapping governments, including counties, towns, villages, school districts, special districts and public authorities. These entities impose layer upon layer of taxing structures — with citizens receiving multiple tax bills annually — resulting in the highest local property tax burden in the nation … To hold government to account the people must have a government they can understand. But what they have today instead at the local level is a ramshackle mess. The current local government system is the product of sheer historical accumulation — not logic, reason or common sense.

Well said. No, make that very well said. The Indiana Chamber and many, many others have put forth a strong case in recent years that township government in our state is beyond repair. Each new revelation of outlandish township reserves, unsightly administrative costs to deliver poor relief and outright criminal behavior further makes the point.

But like most challenges, it’s not just an Indiana problem. The Governing magazine article that featured the Cuomo quote also included the following. Maybe, just maybe, the momentum will grow, lawmakers will step up to the plate and all Hoosiers will benefit.

Rich Pahls, a Nebraska state senator from Omaha, has proposed merging many of his state’s 93 counties. The jurisdictions were designed for the days of the horse and buggy, he pointed out to the New York Times, not an era when “people will drive 100 miles to the grocery store.”

New Jersey, meanwhile, has some of the highest property taxes in the country, thanks in part to its 567 municipalities, a third of them with fewer than 5,000 residents, along with 611 school districts and 486 local authorities. Bergen County alone has 70 school districts and 76 superintendents.

New York State has more than 10,500 governmental entities that levy taxes and fees, and that depend on state largesse for any number of needs. This includes towns, villages and a multiplicity of water, sewer, lighting, school, 911 and other districts. Erie County, which is where Buffalo is located, has over 1,000 such local governing entities alone.

But while political leaders in the U.S. have been talking about local government rationalization, in Denmark, they’ve actually done it.

In 2007, Denmark shrunk the number of municipalities from 271 to 98. County government was completely eliminated. Fully 455,000 local government employees were involved in the restructuring; and 30,000 physically relocated to a new site. The government projects $274 million (1.6 billion DKK) in savings from the restructuring.

The implementation of this massive reform, which began in 2002, offers important lessons as other governments look to achieve big cost savings through rationalizing local government.

Anyone hoping to rationalize the delivery of services from the state level on down must first understand where the opportunities lie to eliminate duplication and inefficiency. Then, you need to lay the groundwork for public acceptance of the change. Both of these goals can be served by gathering hard data on what every unit of government does, how much it spends and what it gets for its money. Only after these goals have been achieved can you make that information readily available to the public.

This is not an easy task. The collection of data alone is enormous. But data gives you the ability to shine a light on what is taking place under the status quo, making the tough task of driving change a little easier.