Fishers officials are working to find out why Fishers received $600,000 less in County Option Income Tax (COIT) money than had originally been projected. Mike Reuter has done the income projections for Fishers local government over a number of years. His projections are usually very accurate.
But during this budget cycle, Reuter’s estimate was off by about $600,000, meaning the city’s distribution of COIT money from the state will be less than projected. That resulted in a city council committee recommending a reduction in the support nonprofit organizations will receive from the City of Fishers during 2018, in order to bring next year’s spending plan into balance with a small surplus.
During the budget process, the Fishers City Council Finance Committee learned that even though Fishers and Carmel have similar population numbers, Carmel is expected to receive millions more in their COIT distribution from the state compared to Fishers.
Now Fishers is trying to determine how this happened.
“Mike Reuter . . . because he doesn’t do Carmel’s (budget) work, he has to reconstruct all of Carmel’s financial models to figure out what it is they did to be able to get so much income tax revenue,” Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness told a City Council work session Monday.
In a work session meeting with State Representative Todd Huston in October of 2016, the mayor and city councilors raised the issue of how Carmel collects so much more money from COIT distributions than Fishers. Huston promised to look into it. In a podcast with LarryInFishers in December of 2016, Huston said changing the COIT formula is “candidly, not an easy lift” in the General Assembly.