NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WDRB) — A new committee tasked with recommending how local income tax dollars are divided is creating disagreement between Floyd County leaders and the city of New Albany.
Under a new state law, Floyd County is putting together a Municipal Unit Strategic Taskforce, or MUST. County and city leaders will work together on a recommendation for how local income tax dollars should be divided before sending it to the state.
New Albany is one of the local governments invited to participate, but Mayor Jeff Gahan's office said the task force appears to be about more than taxes.
In a statement posted online, the mayor's office said while New Albany will "continue participating in the process," the city believes the task force "increasingly appears to be an attempt to move Floyd County toward a UNIGOV-style consolidation and merger of city and county services, all without the approval or consent of local voters."
"It’s clear that mergers like this do not work, and they typically result in decreased services for cities, and increased taxes for everyone," Gahan said. "That’s why we cannot support this."
Floyd County Council President Danny Short, however, said that's not what the committee is meant to do.
"As far as the task force goes, they are certainly making it more difficult than it needs to be," Short said. "It's a non-binding task force that is offering ideas to the state legislature on how we think we're going to move forward."
Short said the committee gives local governments a chance to recommend how local income tax dollars should be divided instead of leaving those decisions entirely up to lawmakers.
"My thoughts are they've heard so much screaming that it's bad and they don't really know how to fix it," Short said. "So they're looking for ideas on how to tweak it to make it better."
Indiana lawmakers also delayed implementation of many of the tax changes by another year. That gives counties more time to develop a recommendation.
"Almost all of the major stuff, they pushed it off to implementation for another year," Short said.
Once Floyd County's task force reaches an agreement, the recommendation will be sent to the Indiana Finance Authority before heading to the General Assembly, where lawmakers will decide whether to move forward with it.
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