Lawmaker Plans New Effort To Reform Township Government

Rep. Cindy Ziemke (R-Batesville) says she’s going to take another crack at township government reform in the 2019 legislative term. 

Last session’s bill – House Bill 1005 – would have eliminated about 300 townships across the state. It cleared a House committee but died quietly before coming up on the floor for a vote.

Ziemke, the bill’s author, blamed its fate on politics and the Indiana Farm Bureau, which opposed the measure. But Ziemke says the results of her recent election give her a boost going into 2019.

“I got 78 percent of the vote in my townships that would have gone away under 1005,” Ziemke says.

Ziemke says she hasn’t written her new bill yet. But she says one provision she’s focused on would require townships to submit a capital improvement plan to the state or be barred from collecting property taxes for capital improvement funds.