As if the property tax situation in Indiana weren't dysfunctional enough already, there's another wrinkle coming soon -- the general reassessment.

Officials in Lake County are already arguing about it.

Lake County has a county assessor and six remaining township assessors. Those six township assessors are evenly split on whether to do the reassessment work themselves or to hire a private contract to do the work.

There's a precedent for outsourcing the reassessment, which accounts for the mixed feelings. The 2002 reassessment by Ohio-based Cole Layer Trumble cost Lake County taxpayers $18 million and caused tax bills to be more than doubled for tens of thousands of property owners.

There were 27,800 appeals filed, and more than half resulted in reduced assessments.

But don't forget the reason the Indiana General Assembly ordered the reassessment work be done by an outside contractor was that the work done by some of the existing township assessors was unfairly generous to some property owners.

So how good of a job have those critics of the outsourcing done with the property tax assessments?

In Lake County, the final property tax bills to pay for government operations in 2008 went out in January 2009. That's awful, but Porter County is even worse.

Porter County's 2008 property tax bills began arriving only last week. Think of all the interest the local governments paid because the county did such a horrible job of administering the property tax system.

And then there's the hundreds of thousands of dollars Porter County spent on consultants to prevent what eventually happened.

If that's the best the county can do, why shouldn't Porter County consider outsourcing its reassessment work?

Lake County, too, should resolve this dispute over outsourcing its reassessment work.

In fact, why not consider outsourcing all assessment work in favor of a more efficient way to conduct this tedious but vital function of government? See if the work can be done more efficiently and for less cost.

And include performance penalties and rewards, the same as with construction contracts, to make sure the work isn't delayed as long as it has been by the elected officials overseeing the property tax assessments and collections.

Of course, there must be a set of criteria to be met by those wanting the work, to make sure they're truly capable, and there must be competitive bidding.

Get the job done right and at the best cost, but don't turn it into a way to dole out political favors.