By Johnny Kincaid

Citizens are still struggling with the rise in property values last year that led to increased property tax bills, even with no change in the tax rate. Given that most complaints about taxes last year centered on these property tax bills, candidate Mike Braun pledged to provide tax relief to property owners, particularly farmers who faced higher appraisals for every acre they owned.

Now, as governor, Braun is advocating for property tax reductions via Senate Bill 01, causing local government entities to cry foul. Property taxes constitute a substantial portion of the revenues for cities, counties, and school corporations. Reducing property taxes diminishes local income without affecting state tax revenues.

Evansville and Vanderburgh County officials held a press conference earlier this week to draw attention to the impact that SB 01 will have on local revenue. The press conference was an exercise in hyperbole and worst-case scenarios. The fearmongering by the mayor, the school superintendent, and a county commissioner was hard to believe.

First, it was stated that the first year reduction in revenue for the city would amount to 12% of the property tax revenues collected, roughly about $7.6 million. This is not 12% of total city revenue; they chose to state it this way to make it seem more “devasting.” We asked a representative of the mayor what percentage of the total income this figure reflected and have not received an answer.

At the press conference, it was implied that the city and county would have to cut essential services; the police chief, fire chief, and sheriff were on hand to add to the fear that emergency response would suffer. If the first cuts will be police and fire protection, then the priorities are all wrong. In a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, aren’t there some other places where we can make cuts before impacting safety? In a worst-case scenario, couldn’t we tap into the $2.5 million in interest from the American Rescue Act funds to cover essentials instead of a new city website?

Everyone knew this tax plan was coming. Braun talked about it on the campaign trail and made it one of his first priorities as governor. Our leaders could have worked on some proactive belt tightening instead of reactive hand-wringing.

Perhaps our community leaders should examine the city’s current debt level and halt future high-ticket projects that will cost us money for generations to come.

FOOTNOTE:  This article was posted by the CCO without bias, opinion, or editing.

GAVEL GAMUT
By Jim Redwine
www.jamesmredwine.com

HONOR

Gentle Reader, I was recently invited to address a group of high school honor students. I
prepared the following remarks and hope they and you find them worthy of your interest. The theme given for the ceremony for the honor students was, “Write your own story”. I designed my remarks around that theme.

“Honor Students, as you write your life’s story you really only need to keep in mind a
few elemental rules.

First, remember you are fortunate to have your American birthright to always guide you.
When our son, Jim, first went to the old Soviet Union in 1992 he found complete strangers
would pick him and his fellow Americans out and ask them if they were Americans. Jim decided the Americans stood out because they were the ones always smiling.
Then, when I taught judges in Kiev, Ukraine and Volgograd, Russia and the country of
Georgia that had once been in the Soviet Union, people would stop my wife, Peg, and me on the street and ask us about America. We simply stood out from those around us. The reason was we were happy and smiling, but most of the natives were dour and stern. What we decided was that we were happy because we Americans had options; our freedom of choice was the difference.

So, Honor Students, as you write your life’s story never lose sight of the essence of being
an American, that is your freedom to choose your own path. Of course, your freedom of choice has always been part of your lives. You have learned it at home and in school.
While I learned countless lessons of immense value in high school, I will share just three
with you. The first involved the United States Constitution. Now you might think someone who had been to several colleges and even law school might know the Constitution through those schools. However, my most indelible lesson in the U.S. Constitution came from my high school American history teacher.

One cold autumn day our teacher came to class without his regular plaid sport coat. He
was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a flowery tie. He asked us in the class, “Why do I have the right to wear this short-sleeved shirt?” Naturally, none of us had a clue. He called on me, “Redwine! You should know the answer. The 2 nd Amendment, you know, the right to bare/bear arms”. And I never forgot the 2 nd Amendment after that.

Then there was our principal who taught me a lesson in sentencing. As a judge for more
than 40 years I have been called on to devise many sentences that are fair, follow the law and do good, not harm.

I have many times remembered the wisdom of my high school principal who devised a
“sentence” that perfectly fit the crime, that is, the football players including me who got into an out-of-control snowball fight during a lunch hour.

Our principal had us line up outside his office and ordered us not to move or talk while
we waited for him to deal with us one by one. We stood in line dreading our punishment for 2 hours until he came out of his office and said, “Alright boys, no more brawls, now go to
practice”. I have often thought back on this fair and imaginative “sentence” when I have had to make a sentence comply with the law but show mercy too.

Another lesson that helped guide me through several difficult sociological dilemmas
involving the fair and equal treatment of people who came before me in court, was taught to me by my two high school football coaches when we played a game against another high school in a nearby town.

After the game our coaches put us on the bus and we drove to a restaurant in that
downtown. Now, I realize to you Honor Students today, segregation is like something from a foreign country and a by-gone age. I assure you it was real.

I did not go to school with African American kids until after Brown vs. The Topeka,
Kansas Board of Education in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” in U.S. education may have been separate, but it was not equal and it was unconstitutional even though it was written to be the law.

My high school integrated my freshman year in 1957 and we had 3 black players, called
coloreds back then, on our football team. So, when we stopped at that restaurant after the game our whole team went in, but the restaurant owner refused to serve our black players. Our coaches said, “If you won’t serve our whole team, none of us will stay”. So, we all returned to the bus.

This lesson in choosing the harder right over the easier wrong made a life-time
impression on me as to what choices really matter. This experience made a better judge, and better person of me. It also helped me to recognize the major difference between American judges and the many foreign judges I have observed and taught. Foreign judges often refuse to devise a way around an unjust written law, but American judges will choose the harder right over the easier wrong and apply a legally acceptable but fair alternative to a tough case.

So, Honor Students, please write your own story knowing you have the right to choose
where you go and what you do, what you believe and what you find invalid.
As Professor Joseph Campbell who taught at Sarah Lawrence College said, there is only
one unpardonable sin, “To be unaware”. Therefore, pay attention as you write your story, do notn let your life pass you by.

Also, Socrates told the Honor Students of Athens 2,500 years ago, “The unexamined life
is not worth living”. In other words, be curious, challenge the status quo. As Alexander Pope cautioned in his poem, A Little Learning, “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring”. That is, do not be fooled by too little knowledge or those who espouse it.

The poet Robert Frost advised us to take the road less traveled, or as that great
philosopher Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”.
Honor Students, remember the sage advice of your mothers and “If you can’t say
something nice, say nothing at all”. And most importantly, as you write your own story, always “Choose the harder right over the easier wrong” and your life story will have a happy ending! If you follow these guideposts, I predict each of your life’s stories will be of great satisfaction to you and of great benefit to everyone else.

As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said in his poem, A Psalm of Life, “Lives of great
[people] all remind us, we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time”. Honor Students, write your own story your own way and keep smiling!”

For more Gavel Gamut articles go to www.jamesmredwine.com