The reason for high property taxes is low income taxes.
The states with low property taxes and low income taxes are, frankly, on a road to bankruptcy. Wyoming's going to be the first; it's depending on oil and coal extraction revenue to balance its budget.
Washington State is the weird one; it's been coasting on the economic boom from Microsoft and the tech business, and will be in serious trouble if there's a local bust.
Most of the other "low tax" states are engaged in the suburban land development pyramid scheme, and this takes a while to blow up; Florida has had it blow up several times, though. This is a bit more complicated to explain, but basically new development is funded by incoming people with no thought to long-term maintenance funding. They therefore have artificially low taxes. The state and cities engage in deferred maintenance. After a while, they end up with collapsing roads, sewers, electric lines, etc., and need to raise some sort of taxes in order to repair them. This is why the states with older large cities tend to have significant taxes; they have to repair that 100-year-old infrastructure. This is particularly difficult if the population is shrinking (perhaps because people are going to new places with artificially low, doesn't-cover-maintenance tax rates), and has put Michigan in a very difficult position. The same thing will catch up with Indiana; it's just a matter of time.
