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Speaker 1: Katy.

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Speaker 2: There's nothing that I love for than when other people

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Speaker 2: in the media agree with me. Yes, that's been happening

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Speaker 2: a lot too. Well, we've been ahead of the curve

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Speaker 2: for years. Here in this program, a new call about

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Speaker 2: a friend of the program saying something we've said for

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Speaker 2: a very long time. We got a lot of wasteful government.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Indianapolis has too much government. Indiana has too much government.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, old pal Jacobsuere from the Indie Star. Fabulous new

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Speaker 2: column out.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 2: This is specifically about township government as it relates to

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Speaker 2: Marion County, but I think you can extrapolate this across

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Speaker 2: the state and how much money it could save taxpayers

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Speaker 2: if we just got rid of the township government. Jacob

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Speaker 2: Stewart from Indi Star joins us now Jacob Stewart.

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Speaker 1: Hello, Yeah, thanks for having me on.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so you said the thing. I'll let you put

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Speaker 2: it in your own words. Township government, especially in Marion County.

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Speaker 2: But again, I think you can take it across the

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Speaker 2: entire state. Kind of seems wasteful, kind of seems redundant.

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Speaker 2: What's the word I'm looking for, redundant, redundive, wasteful, No, redundant, redundant. Redundant.

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Speaker 1: Thank you.

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Speaker 2: That's what I was like looking for redundant. There's so

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Speaker 2: many files in here. Cases sometimes in this brain they

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Speaker 2: sometimes just merge together in words that don't you know.

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Speaker 1: What file fall in the back of the capital redundant.

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Speaker 2: It seems redundant tell us about it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, no, exactly like you said. Township governments are

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Speaker 1: wasteful and duplicative. They provide services any other unit of

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Speaker 1: government could, and they're really just a leftover from a

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Speaker 1: time when people had horse drawn carriages and had to

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Speaker 1: you know, walk to the nearest government unit. And nowadays,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're they're way too small to provide. You know,

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Speaker 1: just look at fire departments. I mean, you've got to

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Speaker 1: spend so much money on equipment alone and just having

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Speaker 1: you know, the average township is, you know what, got

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Speaker 1: a couple thousand people. You know, Marion County is a

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Speaker 1: little bit bigger, but you know, that's a lot of

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Speaker 1: money for just a couple people in a small area

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Speaker 1: to have to bear, and Marion County even more so

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Speaker 1: because the Indianapolis City County government does most of everything already,

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Speaker 1: only I think three townships still have a fire department

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Speaker 1: for example, and then the rest, I mean most a

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Speaker 1: lot of them. I think some of their biggest expenses

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Speaker 1: are the small claims courts and for relief, and then

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Speaker 1: salaries on top of that, and pretty much all of

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Speaker 1: that could be absorbed by something the city county already does.

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Speaker 2: So, Jacob, you get into this in this article with

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Speaker 2: kind of specific dollar amounts to the amount that could

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Speaker 2: potentially be saved, money that could go to the taxpayers,

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Speaker 2: or at the very least in a tax cap world,

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Speaker 2: it could be disseminated to the other entities, which in

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Speaker 2: the end could save taxpayers money. It's a lot of

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Speaker 2: money we're talking about here.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah. So back in two thousand and seven, the governor,

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Speaker 1: Mitch Daniels at the time, commissioned this Kerse Shepherd Report,

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Speaker 1: and our good friend Michael Hicks from Indie Star and

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Speaker 1: one of his colleagues wrote a study following up on

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Speaker 1: that because it advocated for eliminating townships, and he quantified

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Speaker 1: exactly how much that the you know, the taxpayer would save,

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Speaker 1: and when it came to fire departments at the time,

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Speaker 1: it was like, I want to say, like thirteen bucks, no,

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Speaker 1: twelve bucks per person. And now with inflation, that's up

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Speaker 1: to like over eighteen bucks per person every year just

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Speaker 1: for emerging fire departments with the county.

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Speaker 2: And you start adding those up these little things, right like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: eighteen dollars, It doesn't sound like a lot, but if

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Speaker 2: it's eighteen with the fire and you know, it's twelve

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Speaker 2: dollars over here, and now you've got eventually before you

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Speaker 2: add it all up, fifty sixty bucks a person, Oh.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know there's very much reason

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Speaker 1: to believe it's even more in Marion County. I mean

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Speaker 1: I counted up the population of like Decatur and Wayne

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Speaker 1: townships and how much they spend on fire departments, and

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Speaker 1: they're spending hundreds of dollars more per person than the

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Speaker 1: Indianapolis Fire Department is. So that right there. I mean,

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Speaker 1: either they're not doing it as efficiently as they could.

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Speaker 1: I mean, certainly they aren't, but it just makes more

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Speaker 1: sense to merge with the county. Jacob, you had mentioned

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Speaker 1: in your article that residents of Speedway and Beach Grove

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Speaker 1: are triple taxed.

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Speaker 2: Talk more about that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so they're taxed by the city, the

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Speaker 1: excluded city that they're living. They're taxed by the township

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Speaker 1: and they're taxed by Marion County, so they're essentially subsidizing

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Speaker 1: some of the extra services county people get and the township.

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Speaker 1: And that's kind of the price of being in an

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Speaker 1: excluded city. You get a little bit more control over

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Speaker 1: your police departments and whatnot and zoning and road funding. So,

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Speaker 1: I mean that's a huge benefit right there to eliminating

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Speaker 1: townships is that you help those people out that are

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Speaker 1: living in an excluded city and being triple.

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Speaker 2: Tax Jacob Stewart from Indie Star is our guest new

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Speaker 2: column out about how rotten casey those township governments are

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Speaker 2: and how much it's costing you the taxpayer. So do

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Speaker 2: you get a feeling on why nobody ever does anything

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Speaker 2: about this? Because you're right, Jacob, almost twenty years ago

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Speaker 2: a bipartisan commission put together by the governor said get

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Speaker 2: rid of these things, and they haven't done a darn

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Speaker 2: thing about it. Do you get an Do you get

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Speaker 2: a feeling on why everyone kind of acknowledges what's going

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Speaker 2: on here, but nobody will do anything about it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, township governments are pretty much obsolete, but

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Speaker 1: people like people like them. They don't have a huge

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Speaker 1: reason to hate them, besides the fact that it's very

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Speaker 1: obvious they're wasting money that people don't think like that.

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Speaker 1: But then the other two too that I've heard from

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Speaker 1: some local officials in Indianapolis specifically, is I mean, for

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Speaker 1: good reason, they want another layer of government in between

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Speaker 1: them and Mayor Joe hawk Set. You know, if they

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Speaker 1: hand the keys over to their fire department to Indianapolis,

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Speaker 1: what's to say that, you know, they don't get they

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Speaker 1: get like one one fireman patrolling their district or whatever,

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Speaker 1: or one fire department in their district, and you know,

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Speaker 1: as understaffed as the IMPD. And I think that's a

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Speaker 1: reasonable complaint. And that's why in the latter half of

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Speaker 1: my column I say that, you know, residents of township

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Speaker 1: should have the option to join an excluded city. That

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Speaker 1: way they have more control over things that you know,

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Speaker 1: actually matter, the policies that directly associate with the cost

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Speaker 1: of government. You know, like I said, excluded cities have

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Speaker 1: a little bit more control over their police departments, and

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Speaker 1: you know, that's that's been a great help in many cases,

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Speaker 1: you know, but as far as fire departments go, like

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Speaker 1: nobody's setting a policy in Indianapolis. That makes fire departments

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Speaker 1: less efficient. You could definitely argue that the prosecutor and

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Speaker 1: the judges are setting policies that make the IMPD more inefficient.

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Speaker 2: And you know, before we let you go, I wanted

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Speaker 2: to take a moment to get into this. You have

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Speaker 2: a second column out just came out today, in fact

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Speaker 2: about the data centers headline data centers are too big

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Speaker 2: for local officials to regulate. This is a huge fight

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Speaker 2: right now about what we're gonna do with these data

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Speaker 2: Who should be in charge of saying yes or no?

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Speaker 2: Tell us about this column about the data centers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure, So I attended a town hall in Decatur

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Speaker 1: Township about new data center, wanting to come in a

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Speaker 1: very unique circumstance. You don't often see town halls headed

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Speaker 1: by the data center company. Savy Corporations the one trying

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Speaker 1: to bring one in, and predictably, no one in the

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Speaker 1: community supported it. There was about four hundred people that

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Speaker 1: showed up, hundreds of which could not even enter the

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Speaker 1: room because it was just so chock full. And you know,

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Speaker 1: people were essentially just yelling at the data center rep

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Speaker 1: for like an hour or two, and so it really

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Speaker 1: you know, if you look at the state government. Kind

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Speaker 1: of the fine line that Governor Brown is trying to

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Speaker 1: walk is he wants these data centers, but he also

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Speaker 1: wants the lower rates for consumers, and he kind of

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Speaker 1: expects each local government official to like weigh the benefits

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Speaker 1: of each development, while at the same time they have

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Speaker 1: absolutely zero level ridge to do so because of how

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Speaker 1: weak our state's utility policies are.

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Speaker 2: So what should be done? I mean this is the

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Speaker 2: case you I gotta do this yesterday because of this,

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Speaker 2: you know, this massive amount of people that showed up

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Speaker 2: at this town hall and they were all against it

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Speaker 2: for the most part. Like what the I think that

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Speaker 2: you tell? These data center people do a horrible job

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Speaker 2: in the governments, the local government. State governments do a

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Speaker 2: horrible job of explaining what the benefit is and then

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Speaker 2: being honest about the risk. I think at rests there,

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Speaker 2: what say you?

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Speaker 1: Oh, and it's so convoluted to especially when you get

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Speaker 1: into electricity talk. Uh. You know, they kept pointing over

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Speaker 1: to aes throughout that whole town hall and saying, well,

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Speaker 1: you can talk to them. You know, they promised they're

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Speaker 1: not going to raise their rates, but the problem is

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Speaker 1: nobody trusts them and for good reason. Uh and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, one thing they keep saying is that, oh,

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Speaker 1: if we have more people buying electricity, that means more

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Speaker 1: data centers than rates can be stabilized because that's more

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Speaker 1: people paying for you know, these new energy generation facilities.

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Speaker 1: But the problem is that that totally ignores the state's

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Speaker 1: utility laws. You know, they haven't taken into account the

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Speaker 1: fact that data centers pay less for a unit of

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Speaker 1: electricity than residents, and and there's just so many other things.

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Speaker 1: And you know, that's why why I say that. You know,

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Speaker 1: if Governor Brown wants to lower electricity rates and he

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe he likes the data center, still he

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Speaker 1: needs to strengthen the i u r C and push

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Speaker 1: the legislature to get rid of some of these utility

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Speaker 1: policies that essentially give AES and the monopoly utilities whatever

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Speaker 1: they want.

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Speaker 2: All right, find him over at indiestar dot com. Columnist Extraordinaird,

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Speaker 2: Jacob Stewart, thank you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. It's Keviln Casey on ninety three w

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Speaker 1: ib C