By MEGGIE I. FOSTER
Assistant Editor

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — With the air-conditioning cranked on high, Indiana Farm Bureau (IFB) county delegates discussed and voted on hot topic policy issues such as property taxes and drainage laws during the IFB delegate session on Aug. 25.

“As a grassroots organization this is where it all begins and this is how we make our message and policies stronger in the coming year,” said IFB President Don Villwock.

Nearly 300 voting delegates from every county in the state joined for the annual policy session, hosted at the Adams Mark-Airport Hotel last weekend. The yearly session allows county delegates the opportunity to go through IFB’s policy book, the document that guides the organization throughout the year. Delegates listened, discussed and voted on policy recommendations from county Farm Bureaus, commodity advisory committees and the state resolutions committee.

Property tax policy

One of the hottest issues not only among Farm Bureau members, but with the entire state of Indiana is property tax, as many counties have seen a recent hike in taxes this summer.

Shortly after lunch, Farm Bureau’s Second Vice President Isabella Chism began to read the state fiscal policy section, with property tax at the top of the list. And even though IFB made only one minor language recommendation in this policy area, hands quickly flew up in the air as delegates prepared to debate the much-talked about tax relief.

The first amendment to the policy encouraged delegates to change the language from “We support the eventual elimination of property taxes,” to “We support the reduction and eventual elimination of property taxes.”

This obviously ensued much discussion among delegates, as the amendment could’ve changed the entire campaign Farm Bureau has so diligently enforced for years to “eliminate property taxes” in Indiana.

One delegate from Lake County asked, “Do we really want to eliminate property tax and rely solely on income and sales tax? Let’s think about this, and maybe consider getting rid of property tax more gradually.”

On the other end of the debate, a farmer from Clinton County stood up to add, “Doesn’t that sign outside this door say we want to eliminate property taxes. If we change that today, it’s a disservice to the 7,000 Hoosiers who signed our petition.”

John Hardin, a delegate from Hendricks County, added, “I’d hope we could move forward with a solid approach in eliminating property tax, otherwise we’re going to lose a lot of ground and momentum in our debate.”

Villwock quickly reminded the delegates that Farm Bureau’s property tax policy is not a staff-driven policy, but crafted and voted on by the delegates through grassroots leadership.

“If we push to eliminate property taxes all together, (legislators) will come up with ways to retrieve taxes in other ways,” said Katrina Hall, tax and local government specialist with IFB. “Think about what that will mean.”

As delegates continued discussion on the topic for over a hour, the final amendment came down to redrafting the language just as the petition that sat outside the door stated, “We support permanent and substantial measures to free Hoosiers from the burden of property taxes.”

“This is what we believe in and this is what four television stations came to hear about during our State Fair news conference on Aug. 15,” said Sheryl Seib, a Posey County delegate.

Drainage

An interesting hot topic that also arose at the delegate session came when the reader announced a quite noticeable recommendation in IFB’s drainage policy. The addition read, “Permission must be granted by tile owner before any new tile is connected.”

Delegate and drainage expert from Henry County, Jim Wenning, quickly made a motion to strike this statement from IFB policy as “it may keep someone from connecting to an existing tile.”

“If we adopt this policy, this will hurt production agriculture when we need to drain our soil,” added Wenning. “Where the land is tiled, the landowner should be able to let someone tie in if they want to.
Most tiles are sized to drain fields adequately anyways.”

An opposing delegate and landowner from Johnson County said,
“I’d hate to take away the rights of a landowner and have homeowners connecting to farmers’ tile without telling them. It’s not right”

After much discussion, this policy ended up passing and the new policy addition stayed in the books for Farm Bureau with a majority vote.

Other topics and policy changes included: providing access to a financial statement of how corn checkoff funds are distributed and reinstating Farm Bureau’s policy to encourage and support agricultural education and FFA programs in schools across the state.

This farm news was published in the Aug. 29, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.