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Saturday, December 13, 2008
Ind. Gov.t - Cheryl Musgrave resigns state position as commissioner of the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance
Here is the July 13, 2007 ILB entry about Cheryl Musgrave's appointment as commissioner of the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance. At the time the ILB noted that in Vanderburgh County she had been "the first in the state to create an assessment and property sales Web site." See also this ILB followup on July 29, 2007, as well as these releated entries from Sept. 14, 2007 and Jan. 13, 2008.
In addition, don't miss this July 6, 2008 entry quoting from a long story by Bryan Corbin of the Evansville Courier & Press (the C&P story is still available online) headed "Musgrave's first year as Department of Local Government Finance marked by achievements and conflicts."
Today Thomas Langhorne reports in the C&P (oddly, an initial resignation announcement story is not available, this is the reaction story, an update). Some quotes:
Musgrave, a controversial political figure in Vanderburgh County before her appointment to the state job in July 2007, said she always had intended to serve for just 18 months. She said her resignation is voluntary and independent of any other changes Daniels may make."They even offered me some additional opportunities, but I've declined those," she said. "I believe the door is still open to state service, and that doesn't have to be in Indianapolis."
Musgrave said she told Daniels privately weeks ago that Friday would be her final day on the job. She pronounced herself "so delighted to be able to come home."
"I feel I've accomplished everything I came here to do," she said, citing Daniels' property tax restructuring package and government downsizing initiatives. * * *
Daniels appointed Musgrave commissioner of the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance at a time when homeowner anger over botched assessments in Marion County had erupted into taxpayer protests.
As commissioner of the Department of Local Government Finance, Musgrave was the final authority on budgets and tax rates for counties, cities and towns, libraries and school districts. Until earlier this year, she also got to approve or disapprove school construction projects, until a change in state law gave voters that authority through referendums.
Upon taking office, Musgrave discovered large disparities in reassessments, where valuations of homes had increased much more than those for commercial and industrial properties. In light of local assessment errors, she ordered partial new assessments in 21 counties to recalculate property values under the new rules.
The review found significant differences. As a result of Musgrave's orders that counties conduct "retrending" of their assessments, the state through June 2008 saw a net gain of $4.2 billion in assessed valuation on commercial property and $836.5 million in valuation on industrial property that otherwise would not have been counted.
By contrast, through June 2008, valuations of residential properties decreased by $109.4 million statewide, the amount by which homeowners had been overassessed.
During late summer and fall 2007, Musgrave was frequently in the news, announcing partial new reassessments in various counties. Her critics among some municipal government officials complained that the department under Musgrave was heavy-handed in its demands for assessing data and that township assessors were being cast unfairly as the scapegoats for botched assessments.
Daniels has "reluctantly" accepted Musgrave's resignation, the governor's press secretary, Jane Jankowski, said late Friday.
"And he said that there's no harder job in state government than the one that he asked Cheryl to take in the summer of 2007, and that Indiana taxpayers will probably not ever know the extent of the dollars that she helped save and the improvements that she made," Jankowski added.
The governor plans to name a replacement early next week, Jankowski said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 13, 2008 09:18 AM
Posted to Indiana Government