On behalf of its farmer-members, Indiana Farm Bureau thanks the Senate Appropriations Committee for passing Senate Bill 319 out of committee yesterday by a vote of 12-0. We thank Committee Chair Sen. Luke Kenley and the bill’s author, Sen. Jean Leising, who presented it.
We also appreciate the efforts of Rep. Bob Cherry who presented House Bill 1114 in the House Ways & Means Committee, and Rep. Don Lehe, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, who offered supportive testimony. As is his practice, the committee chairman, Rep. Tim Brown, did not take a vote on the bill yesterday when it was presented.
Both pieces of legislation address the unreasonable increases in the state’s soil productivity factor proposed by the state’s Department of Local Government Finance. The soil productivity factor is one component in the complex formula used to assess property tax for farmland.
As Farm Bureau’s Katrina Hall pointed out in her testimony in both hearings, statewide property taxes for farmers could go up as much as 26 percent in the next year without a legislative fix. Such an increase would create an unfavorable business climate for agriculture and place unreasonable new financial burdens on the men and women who grow our food.
Source: Indiana Farm Bureau