Porter County Commissioner President Robert Harper on Tuesday ramped up his plea for state lawmakers to solidify property tax caps in Indiana, by directly calling on fellow Democrat and Speaker of the House Patrick Bauer to “stop playing games.”

Harper, who has been outspoken in his support of adding the state’s new tax caps to the state constitution, said lawmakers can be against a constitutional amendment, but that they should at least take a vote on the issue. But he said Bauer, a South Bend Democrat who controls the House, has blocked that vote from occuring.

“The individual Democrats then go home and say it’s not their fault that they have not voted on this. They blame it on the party leader again game-playing,” Harper said in a statement read at Tuesday’s commissioner meeting.

“What we have now (are) representatives that won’t discuss nor vote on this particular issue so they can run and we won’t know where they stand. What could be more unfair and more indicative of taxation without representation?” Harper said.

The Indiana Legislature last year passed the tax caps and the first round of the amendment process to add the tax cap language to the state constitution. The tax caps will be phased in beginning this year; when the caps are fully in place in 2010, the caps will limit homeowners’ property taxes to no more than 1 percent of the assessed value, 2 percent for rental properties and agricultural lands, and 3 percent for business and industry.

In order to amend the state constitution, lawmakers must approve the pending resolution this session so that the matter can go before the voters in 2010.

The Porter County Commissioners and the Porter County Council have already gone on the record in support of the constitutional amendment. But on Tuesday, Harper and North Porter County Commissioner John Evans took a step further by both saying that the tax caps need to be more beneficial for businesses.

Evans, as he has done before, called for the tax cap formula to be the same, at 1 percent, for all classes of property.

Harper, who has largely talked about the tax caps in relation to the benefit for homeowners, on Tuesday noted the most recent concern over excessively high assessments on Porter County businesses. Once the tax cap constitutional language passes this session, he said the state needs to bring the caps on small businesses down to near what they will be for homes.

As he did at the last commissioner meeting, Harper said he’s frustrated that Democrats are being painted as being against the tax caps because of what’s happening in the Indiana Legislature.

Citing the loss of homes due to high taxes and the surge in assessments for businesses, Harper said Porter County and the state as a whole are in a tax crisis that threatens “the very fabric of our society.”

“I am angry and frustrated at the apparent failure of our elected representatives to take seriously the property tax crisis facing us,” Harper said.

As for the situation facing many Porter County businesses, Harper noted that many of those who have been hit with huge increases in their property taxes are long-time family-owned businesses that don’t make the income needed to keep up with the tax hikes.

“It is true that some of these businesses have been over-assessed,” he said of the most recent assessments. “However, even when this is corrected, the taxes will be too high.”

Posted 3/18/2009