Secetary of State Todd Rokita Reduces Fees to Business, Rejects Mayor Ballard's Fee Raising Philosophy

I don't know about other fiscal conservatives, but I find it appalling when members of the administration of Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard justify every fee increase with the argument that the fee hasn't been increased in some time. For example, the primary argument for raising parking meter fees is simply that they haven't been raised for decades. It was the same thing several months ago when the Ballard administration proposed raising scores of business fees collected by the City. A good fiscal conservative, which Ballard is clearly not, would not start with the assumption that a fee needs to be increased because it hasn't been increased for awhile.

With the Mayor Ballard's approach to fee increases in mind, I chuckled when, in the course of navigating the Secretary of State's website looking for election information I ran across a recent press release announcing reduced fees on business. Here's a portion of the press release:

"The price of starting a business in Indiana is going down this November following Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s recent action to decrease the registration start-up fees new business owners pay to the Business Services Division – a unit of the Secretary of State’s office.

Beginning in early November, the new business registration enhanced access fee will decrease from $10 to $5. Additionally, the enhanced access fee paid when a business purchases a certificate of existence drops from $4 to $2. The statutory fees, controlled by the General Assembly, remain the same and are among the lowest in the nation.

“We should be taking all possible steps to help get businesses to the launching pad, and reduce governmental obstacles to economic growth, especially the start-up costs that are levied on businesses,” Secretary Rokita said. “Small business owners will notice these fee reductions most. Every dollar they don’t have to turn over to government is a dollar that can be invested for future growth.”

Granted the fee reductions aren't more than a few dollars, but they represent a philosophy that is 180 degrees from the alleged Republicans who occupy the 25th Floor. If Ballard were running the Secretary of State's office - an utterly frightening thought - his people would be scouring the list of fees and figuring out how to increase those fees so he would have more money to hand out to political insiders. If someone knows the difference between the Ballard and a big taxing, big spending liberal, would they please let me know.