Floyd County Council votes on first reading for judicial local income tax

Brooke McAfee, The Evening News and the Tribune, Jeffersonville, Ind.
·4 min read

Oct. 11—FLOYD COUNTY — The Floyd County Council voted in favor of the judicial local income tax (LIT) on the first reading this week.

The council voted 4-3 to replace the judicial LIT at Tuesday's special meeting, and the second and final reading will take place at next Monday's meeting. The tax is meant to help the county address a projected budget shortfall.

In the past month, the Floyd County Council has moved to restart the process of adopting the judicial LIT after previously approving the tax ordinance in July. The council began revisiting the ordinance after a complaint was filed related to the process used to pass the initial ordinance.

If the council gives final approval, the previous ordinance will be repealed and replaced by a new one.

Council members Denise Konkle, Tony Toran, Brad Striegel and Dale Bagshaw voted in favor of the tax, and Connie Moon, Danny Short and Jim Freiberger voted against.

Bagshaw moved to reduce the proposed tax from .07% to .04%, bringing it to the same rate that the council approved in July.

Konkle, the council president, said the county is projected to face a budget shortfall of nearly $1.5 million for 2023 and a $2 million shortfall for 2024, as previously reported in the News and Tribune.

During Tuesday's public hearing, several community members voiced their opposition to the new tax. Floyds Knobs resident Diana Mayfield expressed concerns about tax increases in Floyd County.

"It's like in Floyd County, you all are taxing us to death," she said. "It's time for somebody to stand up, put their big girl panties on and stop it."

Georgetown resident Dale Mann also criticized the judicial LIT and called for an efficiency study to find other ways to address the budget issues.

"I've heard several of our leaders say this is a hard decision to raise people's taxes," he said. "It's the easiest decision you can make. The hard decision is to find out where the bleed is, and there is bleed, but nobody wants to find it. Because we've asked for efficiency studies for years. Nobody wants to do that."

The Floyd County Council will also consider implementing the cumulative capital development (CCD) tax, which was approved in May by the Floyd County Commissioners to fund the judicial center project.

The Indiana Department of Local Government Finance gave the commissioners approval last week to proceed with the CCD tax following a remonstrance process, but it will also need approval from the council.

At the special meeting for the judicial LIT, council members debated options to address the budget shortfall. Bagshaw said even with the new tax, the council will likely still need to make cuts, including layoffs.

"We're going to have to think about getting rid of people," he said. "Everybody knows our biggest expense is people, and I'm guessing 20 to 30 people we're going to have to get rid of in the next year or so in order to make budget balanced. And therefore, in my opinion, we start cutting people, and we're going to start cutting services. There's no other way to do it. "

He feels that "if we don't do something in the next year or two, we're going to be in serious straits."

Freiberger disagreed with Bagshaw, saying he believes the county can make budget cuts without laying anyone off.

"We have a lot of things to be looked at that can be cut without eliminating services, so I absolutely disagree with that," he said.

Freiberger noted that the county is looking to provide raises for certain employees, which he does not support at this time.

"We seem to continue to give raises to move people up to this external mid-range," he said. "I continue to vote against that. I don't know why we keep doing it, but these are things that can be done, yet no one was willing to make those cuts for some reason — or at least the majority [of the council]."

Moon said she does not support the judicial LIT, and she does not feel there is a need to cut staff.

"We don't need to cut people, but we do need to quit adding people," she said. "We also need to quit allowing for the special negotiations on certain segments. We agreed with the salary study, what we were going to do, but [there have] been several departments that have negotiated for additional salaries."