Four referendums would be considered a lot by Indiana history for any county or single election.
Then consider that this year was to be a municipal election only, and that Johnson County’s voters have a history of mostly rejecting tax increases requested at the ballot box.
At one point, residents faced the possibility of four referendum questions on the ballot this year.
Three of the four notices that initially were filed at the Johnson County Clerk’s Office were for school-related capital projects or improvements. One request was for the county library system to relocate its Whiteland branch. If all four had ended up on the ballot, some residents who wouldn’t normally vote in city and town elections would have been heading to the polls this year to decide if the projects being proposed were worth raising their property taxes.
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That may still happen, but no referendums have been added to the ballot just yet. At least two won’t be, because voters did not file a petition requesting a vote.
Once each proposal goes through the required public hearing process, a meeting or meetings where taxpayers and voters have the opportunity to ask questions and share their concerns, the notice is filed with the county clerk’s office and published in the Daily Journal. All four were. One requested that a public question be added to the ballot; others were simply notices that a referendum could be necessary if enough voters came forward and said they wanted a public vote.
The county’s voter registration office reviews each, and the county election board has to approve a public question for it to be sent on to the State Department of Local Government Finance for review. Finally, the county auditor must sign off on the language for it to be added to the ballot.
Franklin Schools proposed a referendum be added to the ballot, and that a special election be conducted during this year’s primary election in two months. The school district wants to raise teacher pay and add mental health counselors at its eight schools. It would have to be considered a special election because not everyone who lives in the school district lives in the city of Franklin, but would still be asked to vote.
Also this year, the Johnson County Public Library plans to raise property taxes by about 2.5 cents for every $100 of assessed value for everyone who lives in the library’s district to build a new, much larger Clark-Pleasant branch at a more visible location in Whiteland. Greenwood and Edinburgh have their own library systems and would not be affected by this.
Voters have a 30-day window from the time that the notices are issued to file a petition. For the library, that deadline was the end of the day Friday, and as of noon Friday, Library Director Lisa Lintner was not aware of any petitions being filed, she said.
Center Grove High School could have been required to add a public question to the ballot in White River Township regarding its high school expansion project. The $45 million project would have had to go to a vote if at least 525 registered voters signed a petition, but that deadline has passed and there will not be a referendum, said Stacy Conrad, spokeswoman for the school.
And Clark-Pleasant Schools could have been required to impose yet another referendum, this time for a new elementary school which is needed to keep up with rapid growth in the area. A new school would have had to go to a vote if enough registered voters signed a petition, but that deadline has also passed and there will not be a referendum, Superintendent Patrick Spray said.
If voters had taken it to a vote, their property taxes could have been raised again.
Taxpayers in Clark and Pleasant townships just approved a referendum in November that raised their property taxes by 10 cents for every $100 of assessed value, in an effort to improve safety and security in their schools. It passed with 57 percent of voters in those two townships approving it.
It was the first referendum to pass in Johnson County after years of trial and error.
Now, Franklin Schools is following suit.
The county is following a statewide trend, said Larry DeBoer, a Purdue professor and tax expert who has been studying referendums for several years. Schools are getting really good at getting referendums through to the voters, and then getting them passed, and once that starts, it’s really up to the voter to say when enough is enough.
Other entities have not been as successful, he said.
The number of referendums around the state that have passed in the last decade has increased significantly, to 83 percent last year, up from just 10 percent in 2009.
Throughout the state, most public questions that made it onto a ballot were school referendums — 118 of 188 have been approved by the voters. Fewer than 10 other referendums made it to a vote.
Some have come back to try again, and history shows they stand a better chance the second time around, DeBoer said.
He studied 16 referendums that failed on first attempt. Those same 16 referendums were added to the same ballots within two years of failing, and nine out of the 16 passed.
“Nothing much else probably changed. They probably ran a better campaign and adjusted the ask to better reflect their taxpayers and voters,” DeBoer said.
Johnson County has a history of rejecting or withdrawing referendums, he said.
Since state lawmakers approved this process for governments to borrow large sums of money a decade ago, Johnson County residents have said no in nearly all referendums.
First, it was building projects at Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson schools, a jail expansion, more money for Center Grove schools and a new Franklin library. Local voters said no to all of those.
In 2011, a project to build a pool and city building in Greenwood was slated to go on ballots but was removed before the election.
This isn’t the first time the library has tried to raise property taxes for a project.
In 2012, voters voted no in a referendum to help build a $30 million Franklin branch. Three quarters of voters said no to that project.
But library leaders are being more strategic about it this time around.
They spent the last few years coming up with a long-term plan that includes three separate projects, the first of which falls below the $10 million threshold that would require it to be approved by voters. This time, they need about $7.4 million to build an $8.8 million facility.
If it had enough petitioners to take it to a vote, many residents who wouldn’t normally vote in a municipal would have been asked to head to the polls.
"An (almost) county-wide referendum for a library is very unusual. Basically, they’re going to have to rev up county-wide machinery to do that one question, and I think that’s one of the reasons why the state is trying to limit it," DeBoer said.
Legislation that’s been proposed this year would limit referendums to November elections and county-wide elections, unless those who would vote on it are entirely within one city or town, he said.
When a public question is on the ballot makes a difference, too.
Franklin Schools likely wants its public question on the ballot in May because, traditionally, referendums stand a better chance of passing in May than in November, DeBoer said.
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Here is a look at what percent of referendums were approved each year over the last decade in Indiana:
2018;83%
2017;89%
2016;85%
2015;67%
2014;75%
2013;55%
2012;70%
2011;55%
2010;41%
2009;10%
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