State Decisions Starve Local Solutions

On Dec. 13, two days after Hoosier legislators resisted intense pressure from Washington, D.C. to redistrict mid-cycle, the Crawfordsville Chamber of Commerce hosted its first breakfast of this year’s shortened legislative session. State Senators Brian Buchanan and Spencer Deery and State Representatives Jeff Thompson and Matt Commons were there, and they received pointed but respectful feedback from local citizens and leaders about state-level decisions on taxes, child care and schools that are straining communities.​

The most urgent theme was the collapse of early childhood care, which residents described as an “infrastructure” issue every bit as crucial as roads and utilities. Kelly Taylor, CEO of the Montgomery County Community Foundation, noted that state actions to freeze and then cut CCDF reimbursement rates and eliminate support services for providers have thrown the state into a childcare crisis. Statewide, 40,000 children are waiting for vouchers — 145 in Montgomery County alone — while three local providers have closed in two months, wiping out roughly 200 seats for children.​

Additionally, Scott Feller, president of Wabash College, Jamie Peters, a mother and member of the workforce, and Beth Lindsay, a board member of First Christian’s Hand in Hand Center, warned that the community’s decade-long effort to build a strong child care system cannot keep pace with the speed of these state-level cuts.

“This is a strong community that has combined both government and private employers and philanthropy in a creative way to build a child care system, but at the rate of the fall, we just can’t move fast enough to fix this. Is there anything we can do this term?” asked Feller.

Peters pointed out that when providers close, families not on vouchers also lose options like infant care. This forces parents, usually mothers, out of the workforce. It cascades into increased dependence on other social safety nets. Both outcomes undermine economic development and family stability.​

Rep. Thompson, a key architect of state tax policy, framed the challenge as a delicate balance between the free market and government subsidy, noting that higher public reimbursement would certainly create more providers. He then turned his response toward free markets, reduced government intervention and better private-public solutions—perhaps he missed Feller’s point that our community has been an exemplar of this? Private partnerships haven’t saved Crawfordsville from the “rapid disintegration” Feller had mentioned.

Rep. Commons expressed empathy, stressing personal familiarity with early childhood education — his wife runs a preschool, and he served on a summer task force that led to a couple of bills to streamline regulations that increased costs for providers. While affirming that childcare is a workforce “infrastructure question,” he couldn’t promise that the bleed out would be addressed in the coming year’s short session.

Citizens pushed back, saying the situation is acute and that once infrastructure is lost, it takes years to recover it.

Buchanan and Deery said they would dig into recent financial changes that have mainly come from Braun’s executive orders.

No one spoke more bluntly than Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton, who used his time not for a question but for a pointed indictment of the state’s direction. Addressing the four lawmakers directly, Barton told them they were elected “to represent us, the communities and people who make up those communities,” not party caucuses or ideological agendas, and that voting in lockstep with party leadership “every time” is evidence that something “terribly wrong” is happening at the Statehouse.​

Barton focused his sharpest criticism on Senate Enrolled Act 1, the property-tax and local-income-tax overhaul that three of the four legislators who were present supported in the final vote last spring. He argued that it “spells disaster” for local governments and schools while shifting benefits to corporations through business personal property tax changes. Citing analyses from two independent financial firms, he said that by 2028 Crawfordsville will receive roughly $2.3 million less in property taxes and $3.4 million less in local income tax than in 2025 — a combined $5.7 million hit that, even after adopting new local taxes, still leaves a loss of about $2.5 million.​

Thompson did not dispute that local budgets will be under new pressure, but argued that the central constraint was imposed by voters themselves when they added the 3 percent constitutional property tax caps. “Fifteen years ago, the citizens in this state spoke,” he said, noting that in communities like Montgomery County, most parcels are already at the caps, so the “war now is among the different units on who gets the money, because the money is capped.”​

Buchanan defended the structure of SEA 1 with a different metaphor, saying the state is moving from a system where every local unit rushed to grab a slice from a single tax “cake” to one where “everybody has their own piece of cake.” He acknowledged the bill is not perfect — implementation was delayed precisely to allow corrections — and said fixes are already being drafted to address problems such as township fire funding, small-city “windfalls” and bonding rules tied to adopting local income taxes.​

Underlying the tax fight was a deeper anger about who actually governs local communities. County Commissioner Dan Guard argued that despite talk of “caps,” taxpayers are paying more than ever in property, sales and income taxes while counties are “not any better off” financially, with highway departments in deficit and cost of living for households rising across the board.​

Guard captured the frustration succinctly: State leaders, he said, want to dictate how local governments make decisions while forcing them to be the ones to raise local taxes to keep basic services afloat.

“You want to control our decision-making at the state level, but you want us to control the taxation at the local level,” he said, calling on state lawmakers to “make up your mind” and either truly embrace home rule or stop pushing fiscal burden downward.​

The breakfast also exposed growing unease about how state decisions are reshaping education at every level. In response to a question about the new diploma track from Chip Timmons, dean of enrollment at Wabash, Commons, a high school teacher, described his work on expanding work-based learning. The diploma tracks, which set students on either higher education enrollment, employment or military enlistment, do lock students onto a path difficult to change.

“At some point you’re on a track, and it’s going to be hard to kind of get off of that track,” especially once work-based learning hours are locked in, Commons said. He noted that somewhere between freshman and sophomore year (or about 13-15 years old) is when the track will be hard to change.

Several speakers challenged the General Assembly’s decision to spend precious time in a short session on issues like congressional redistricting and partisan school board elections rather than child care and local finance. One young voter thanked Deery and Buchanan for supporting “fair maps,” while the mayor chastised the legislature for appearing to prioritize “a congressional redistricting attempt that the vast majority of Hoosiers . . .  say they don’t want” over crises that Hoosiers are telling them to fix.​

Valley Health Professionals CEO J.T. Warren added another layer, warning that proposed cuts to community health center payment rates would undercut clinics that already serve tens of thousands of patients and save the state an estimated hundreds of millions by diverting people from emergency rooms.

Commons and Buchanan said Medicaid is consuming a growing share of the state budget, crowding out K–12 and higher education, yet local clinics argued that blunt reductions will only shift costs back onto hospitals and families.​

Beth Lindsay, Wabash College librarian put it, “where you spend your money reflects your values,” and the graph lawmakers brought — dominated by K–12, higher ed and Medicaid. She praised those efforts, followed up with a simple question: where, exactly, does early childhood education fit into that picture? On that, even the legislators had to admit they did not yet have a clear answer.​

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, multi-issue political organization which encourages informed and active participation in government. For information about the League, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org; or, visit the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, Indiana Facebook page.