Ballard's Spokesman's Twisted Logic On Elimination Of The Homestead Credit

Whenever Mayor Greg Ballard's spokesman, Marc Lotter, opens up his mouth, there's a good chance he's lying since the ability to lie without a conscience seems to be the principal attribute of  most spokespersons for politicians. WTHR in yet another of their ongoing biased news reports supporting Ballard's call for higher taxes, discusses another council committee vote tonight on a proposal to eliminate the homestead property tax credit to fund his absurd plan to make funding of pre-K education a permanent funding obligation of city government despite the fact that education is NOT the responsibility of municipal government. It is undisputed that elimination of the credit will cost other units of government, particularly schools, millions of dollars in lost revenues annually, as well as higher property taxes for many homeowners. Leave it to Lotter to argue otherwise:

"There's not a single school district in Marion County that's going to lose money, property tax revenue, regardless of whether the homestead tax is eliminated or not," said Marc Lotter, spokesman for Ballard's office. "All of the school districts are going to split about $17 million in revenue because the auditor and treasurer identified these incorrect homestead deductions being claimed."

So let's make sure we understand this. The auditor's office discovers thousands of homeowners who were claiming more than one homestead exemption, allowing those homeowners to collectively pay less in property taxes than they were legally required to pay. The auditor's office disallows the improper homestead exemptions and, according to Lotter, schools won't lose any money because they will now be receiving property tax revenues they were legally allowed to collect already but for the non-enforcement of the homestead exemption law. It's funny how I don't recall Lotter arguing that the windfall the city-county government is receiving from stepped up enforcement negated the argument for raising our local income taxes this year or expanding the IMPD taxing district last year to other areas of the county. It's incredible the arguments that come out of the mouths of an administration which is supposedly led by a man who used an anti-tax message that promised to cut spending and tax less to get elected in the first place and who now blames taxpayers for paying too little in taxes for every spending wish his heart desires.