This article is the second in a series about recent changes to property taxes and revenue streams enacted in the 2007 Indiana General Assembly. We thank Buddy Downs, Lisa Lee and Karen Arland from Ice Miller LLP for their research and insights.

Senate Enrolled Act 287 amended the current petition and remonstrance process to include registered voters as well as owners of real property on petitions to support or oppose projects financed by bonds. The new process applies to any controlled project with a preliminary determination date of May 11 or after. A controlled project is defined as any capital project with a cost greater than $2 million to be paid from property taxes.

Applications and forms will now be distributed by the county voter registration office. In most counties that will be a board of registration. For counties without a board of registration, it will be the office of the circuit court clerk.

The petition process can be initiated within 30 days of notice of a preliminary determination to issue bonds when the lesser of five percent of registered voters or 100 voters or property owners petition to have the petition and remonstrance process apply. If you are both a registered voter and property owner, your signature counts just once.

When the application is turned in, the county voter registration office has 15 business days to determine if signers are registered voters and provide the county auditor with copies of the form. The county auditor then has 10 business days to determine if the remaining signers are qualified property owners. Finally, the county voter registration office has 10 days to file certified application forms with the body authorizing the bond or lease. This lengthens the certification process to as much as 35 business days.

If the voter registration office receives application petitions within 35 days before an election, they may defer acting until five days after the election.

Similar to the previous process, if sufficient signatures are certified, the political subdivision must publish notice of the ensuing petition and remonstrance race. That is followed by a 30-day quiet period and a 30-day time when both sides collect signatures.

Both registered voters and owners of real property are eligible to sign the petitions for and against, and again each signature counts only as one or the other.

The same time frame and process for the first 100 signatures apply to certifying the petition signatures, with additional time allowed if more than 10,000 signatures are collected. Again, the voter registration office may defer action if petitions are turned in just prior to an election.

If you have questions regarding these changes or would like additional information, please feel free to contact us at footnotes@umbaugh.com. In the next issue of Footnotes, we'll summarize changes to the Circuit Breaker.