What to actually do about it

What to actually do about it

Being squeezed is a management problem, and the counties that get ahead of it come through fine. What separates them is timing and candor — modeling the hit before it lands, choosing on purpose, and being straight with the public about the numbers. Below is the playbook the strongest counties ran, then what it means for a household depending on what it owns.

For the county's offices — the next 24 months

• Model the county's own numbers now, not the state's averages. Every county's net assessed value, cap loss, and three-year gap are different. The counties making calm choices — Pike, Morgan, Hendricks — ran that model in 2024 and 2025. The ones cutting mid-year are the ones that waited for the first short budget to find out.
• Set a written reserve rule and hold to it. A cash floor under each fund — many target around 180 days of operating cash — turns a bad revenue year into a draw on the cushion instead of a mid-year cut or short-term borrowing. The spread shows in the records: Hendricks built its general fund to roughly a year of cash, while thinner counties like Knox have had to lean on their own Rainy Day funds. Reserves don't close the gap; they buy the time to close it on the county's terms.
• Make the levy decision on purpose. When net value is flat or falling, a county has three honest options — hold the levy and absorb it, cut, or let the rate rise. The healthy ones pick one openly and say why, in a public meeting, before the math decides by default.
• Open the city cost-sharing talks early. The income tax a county levies is split with its cities by formula, so a facility that serves everyone — usually a jail — can be funded lopsidedly for a few years. The share-back works best where one city holds most of the county's population and income-tax split: Howard and Kokomo signed the only such deal in the state, and the same structure fits pairs like Delaware–Muncie, Madison–Anderson, Vigo–Terre Haute, and Vanderburgh–Evansville. Thirty-five counties are talking; one has closed. The lever rewards whoever starts first.
• Inventory the one-time windows, with their closing dates. Two are worth checking now: an expiring bond rate the county can redirect instead of letting it lapse, the way Marshall kept about $7.1 million a year, and a bond it can still issue under the old rules before they tighten, the way Randolph locked in cheaper borrowing. Both are narrow legal windows that close quietly.
• Fund the assessor's office. The county's entire levy is spread across one number — the total net assessed value of the county — and the assessor produces it. The office doesn't re-price every parcel by hand each year: Indiana runs an annual adjustment toward recent sales and a four-year cycle in which about a quarter of parcels are physically reviewed, all on cost tables the state sets. What the office controls is the accuracy of that base and its ability to defend it. An understaffed office produces a weak roll, invites a wave of appeals, and every appeal it loses shrinks the base after the budget is already set — forcing a rate increase or a shortfall a year later. Paying for the staff and data to keep the roll accurate protects the number the whole budget divides across.
• Be clear about where the money actually sits. A county that has moved costs into income-tax funds should say so to its board, its rating agency, and its residents, so a thin general fund isn't read as a broke county. Thirteen counties have shifted costs this way, and most hold far more cash across all funds than the general fund alone shows.

If you live there — what to watch, by what you own

Two things on this year's ballot decide more than they'll get credit for. The first is the assessor, where a county has a contested race, because that office sets the value under every bill. The second is the school referendum — a record number of districts, 38 and counting, are asking voters this November.

The choice is concrete. A school's operations money — buses, utilities, building maintenance, support staff — comes from local property tax, and SEA 1 cuts into it. The caps erase any property tax a school tries to collect above the ceiling, with one exception the law carves out: a levy the voters approve directly, at a referendum. So a referendum is the only tool a district has to replace what it lost. A yes vote continues or adds that tax, and the school keeps the funding it has now. A no vote leaves the gap, and the district closes it the ways it can — putting off roof and bus repairs, running larger classes, and cutting what isn't legally required first: electives, arts and music, athletics, and some bus routes.