- All righty y'all. Welcome in. Welcome in. Welcome to the public forum for the candidates Matt Pierce
- and Liliana Young for Indiana House 61. I'm your moderator Pearl Vernard. I'm a grad student at IU and
- I work with the League of Women Voters. So they asked me to be here today to be your moderator. The
- forum is hosted by the League of Women Voters of Bloomington Monroe County. We are pleased to have
- A few co-sponsors, IU Pace, Political and Civic Engagement, Monroe County branch of the NAACP, Monroe
- County NOW, and South Central Indiana Citizens Climate Lobby. Thanks to Katz for recording the event.
- I will take a moment to review the ground rules with the candidates who the candidates have accepted.
- Each candidate will have one minute to make opening statement.
- Candidates respond in turn to questions posed by myself rotating with which each candidate will go first.
- Responses are limited to 90 seconds unless I say a different time. Audience members are invited to submit
- questions on the cards provided. Please raise your hand if you need a card or have one directly to the
- stage. I think Ralph has some if we need some, if anyone needs cards.
- I'll choose those questions. I'll review them. If you guys have any, let me know. Each candidate will
- be asked to make a closing statement, which is also one minute. And then the candidates have agreed
- to a civil discourse. So let's get started. Liliana, would you mind getting us started with your opening
- remarks and everything? And then Matt, if you don't mind going after her. Thank you.
- Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. Thank you to the League for hosting this. I'm Liliana
- Young. I'm very proud to have already been serving Bloomington for the last few years as a city commissioner
- and a leader in the LGBTQ community. And I'm running for a very simple reason. We have a state government
- filled with people who are monied and insulated from the problems
- that the actual working people of this state have to contend with every day. I am a working class person.
- I do not come from a background of money. I know what it's like to sweat and cry and bleed trying to
- eke out a small life for yourself and your family. And I do firmly believe that it is people like us
- who are the ones that have to take up the responsibility of government to repair the damage to this state
- that is broken down so badly. Thank you. Matt, if you don't mind. Thank you. I'm asking for your vote
- in the upcoming May primary because I want to continue being a progressive voice for our community and
- our community's values at the State House. And that means treating everyone with dignity and respect
- and not attacking and trying to marginalize communities.
- Creating an economy that works for everyone. Affordable housing, which we know is a big issue. Accessible
- and affordable healthcare is another thing people are crying out for. We need to support our public
- schools, not private schools. We shouldn't be diverting our money away from our public schools. We need
- to defend academic freedom and free speech on the
- IU campus and our other institutions of higher education and the other thing we have to do is we have
- to protect democracy. That's a sad thing to say and so that means fighting things like attempts to redistrict
- in the middle of the decade. I've had amendments to unmask ICE. I oppose the governor's military police
- bill and the ICE compliance as well. Thank you both of you. I appreciate it and both of you have kind
- of touched on this
- in your opening statements, but to limit it just to three, what are our three legislative priorities
- that you both think are the most important and why? Matt, if you don't mind starting. Okay, again, as
- I was saying broadly, it's just this whole basket of issues surrounding preservation of democracy, and
- that means fighting off voter suppression and these attempts to kind of militarize the
- Law enforcement, that's a key thing. I think the next, one of the other key things is the economy. We
- cannot have a system where some people have fabulous wealth while a significant number of people are
- struggling just to get by. And you have the middle class shrinking in the middle. And so that's a key
- thing. And you know, the housing and healthcare and all that kind of fits into that affordability kind
- of issue. And I think also,
- Academic freedom and free speech on our campus. I mean, it's really sad what you see happening at IU
- having protesters in Dunmeto being arrested, faculty members dismissed and punished without due process.
- These are all things that I think we need to push back on. Thank you. Go ahead. I feel like the three
- most dire problems facing the state right now are
- First, state government accountability, which we have zero of. I have ideas for legislation that will
- expand that state government's accountability to all Hoosiers. The second thing is wages. They are entirely
- too low. The $7.25 an hour minimum wage in the state is crippling
- uh... families and working-class people uh... you know you have a state that allows businesses to get
- away with paying ten or eleven dollars an hour and they claim it's competitive but i think everybody
- in here knows that that's a joke if you're actually in the workforce anything under seventeen or eighteen
- an hour does not pay for anything in this state anymore and the third uh...
- dire problem we're facing, I believe, is access to health care. My research finds 27% of people in the
- state are on one version or another of the state Medicaid program, and with things like the big, beautiful
- bill that has put some federal restrictions on that, and we have state-level restrictions like work
- requirements and income limits. I want to repeal all of those.
- Thank you so much. So our next question is, what steps would you take to ensure transparency
- and accountability in the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, and how would these efforts translate
- into better wages and economic opportunities for Hoosiers? Thank you, Liliana. I apologize. Could you
- repeat the question? Yes. What steps would you take to ensure transparency
- accountability in the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, and how would those efforts translate
- into better wages and economic opportunities for Hoosiers? Like any of the state agencies, I believe
- that what we are going to have to do is put down hard legislation that the governor or other agency
- heads can't weasel their way around.
- which is a huge problem we have. And once we actually introduce some hard-coded legislation to set bare
- minimum standards, this will give us higher wages and better worker protections and less corporate control
- over the state.
- smaller businesses and companies will also have a better opportunity to thrive in the state with that
- loosening of the corporate grip. Well, the root of the problem goes all the way back to when the Daniels
- administration decided that having a regular agency, the Department of Commerce, was not good enough
- for economic development because
- open door laws and other transparency requirements applied to that agency. So they decided to create
- and spin off this economic development corporation. And the idea was they needed to have these kind
- of secret negotiations and deals. And what happened is over time, that just spun out into corruption
- basically. What you had is self-dealing within the IEDC.
- And you had these crazy things like the LEAP project. They went out and paid outrageous sums of money
- for land up there. And they didn't even do their due diligence to figure out whether they had enough
- water for the things they wanted to do there. And all that was at the expense of the taxpayers. And
- it was because there was not the kind of credibility or the transparency that they needed. A final one
- to throw in there is this foundation, which is an appendix of IEDC.
- that case what they would do is they would get these big contributions charitable contributions from
- uh... mostly utilities and that those then would be used for these worldwide junkets in the name of
- economic development they would go to the formula one race over in europe and the governor would go
- there and say i'm making deals you know here in the suites of the sports events and there really was
- no accountability for that so i voted for uh...
- a fuller investigation of what actually happened there. I think the current governor is trying to just
- blame it all on the last governor and move on. And I think we need to go back and really get to the
- bottom and the details of what happened there. And so I'm hopeful that that will happen. Awesome. Thank
- you both. Our next question is how will climate change impact your legislation decisions, particularly
- regarding flooding infrastructure and energy policy?
- Well, I think at this point, environmental issues and energy issues are inextricable. They're just wrapped
- together. And so I served for a long time on the Environmental Affairs Committee. And then I had an
- opportunity to become the ranking member, a Democratic member of the Utilities Committee. And I've been
- a relentless advocate for renewable energy and moving us to a clean energy economy. And one of the most
- frustrating and dispiriting
- things is just how there's no interest among the Republican Party to address the climate change problem.
- Despite the evidence that is confronting us with these abnormal weather events, flooding, real significant
- economic impacts, and longer term impacts that are gonna cause people's grandchildren, future generations
- to have real problems. And it's really outrageous that this
- current people in charge are not willing to do something to try to save the future generations. And
- so I'm doing everything I can to push us to promote solar, rooftop solar. I fought the net metering
- law that kind of destroyed the economics of people being able to afford rooftop solar and become more
- independent and save money on their own energy bills on top of it. I've tried to create more
- Competition with energy. So way back when I had several years in rail I put in what was called a feed-in
- tariff bill was based on what happened what Germany has where they basically allowed anybody to plug
- in if you had renewable energy Wind or solar you had a right to sell that into the utilities grid and
- that really boosted up the amount of renewables they had there Thank you
- Yeah, I'm a huge proponent of green energy, specifically wind and solar. I want to push initiatives
- to further develop wind and solar farms, as long as it does not infringe on land that's suitable for
- farming. I think that's important to safeguard as well. I also think we're going to have to push initiatives
- to put solar paneling on just about every
- home and apartment complex as a standard part of construction moving forward. Theoretically, we could
- free ourselves from ever having to pay Duke Energy another thing ever again. Aside from that, I also
- believe that we need to also have a set of legislation that will put a hard
- limit of foundational powers and staffing for the Indiana Environmental Agency. I apologize, I'm forgetting
- the exact acronym, but I know that our governor has rolled back its
- powers saying that they can't be any more strict than the federal EPA, which as lax as they've become,
- is only setting us up for having no kind of oversight or accountability in the state at all with our
- environmental protections. All righty. Switching gears just a little bit, what is our top
- priority in supporting women, LGBTQ plus folk and marginalized genders in the state of Indiana? What
- are your top priorities in supporting women, LGBTQ plus and marginalized genders in the state of Indiana?
- I believe Lily. Yeah, I believe so. My ultimate goal is to
- codify as much as possible into the state constitution, specifically on a human rights level. I believe
- in bodily autonomy for everybody, women, LGBTQ people, even just run-of-the-mill people here in this
- room. I also believe in codifying things like marriage equality, both interracial and same-sex marriage,
- and gender identity protections.
- if we can achieve that, and I know it's gonna be a difficult process, but if we can achieve that goal
- of putting it into the state constitution, then that makes it almost impossible to further infringe
- upon, you know, when we have the nothing that we do right now, or even state-level laws would certainly
- be an improvement, but even with that, there could still be ways to try and weasel around it. So that
- is my biggest goal,
- put that into the state constitution itself. I haven't seen any politics more cynical and hateful than
- the Republicans at the State House when it comes to the LGBTQ plus community. You know this all goes
- back to 2004. George Bush was in trouble because of his wars going into the election. He needed something
- to drive his base out to the polls and so they cynically said let's make
- marriage equality the big issue and the same thing happened at the state house and we went through year
- after year of having to fight off this effort to take the so-called defense of marriage act and put
- it in the state constitution and I'm proud that at the time the Democrats are in the majority I was
- the chair of the courts and criminal code committee and that
- Constitutional amendment passed out of the Senate was sent to my committee and I killed it I said I'm
- not giving this bill a hearing. I'm not participating in the cynical hateful process since then They
- moved on because people actually the issue turned on them right and it no longer had the political power
- to attack marriage equality so now they're attacking trans people and it's sad I fought off those efforts to
- to basically marginalize that community. And I've authored, co-authored several bills with Representative
- Campbell from Lafayette that attempts to at least begin to claw back this attack on parents' rights
- to decide what kind of health care their kids could get when they need gender-affirming care. And so
- I'll continue to work on those issues. Thank you both. How do you plan to reach out to the other side in order
- to make progress. We know the Indiana House is majority or Republican House. They have a super majority.
- So how do we plan on reaching out to them? Well, what I have found during my time in the legislature
- that you have to demand respect from the majority party. You can't just be kind of the go along nice
- guy junior partner.
- You've got to really get up in their face sometimes, but you have to balance it out because if you get
- in their face too much, you end up getting marginalized yourself. And so what I found just, you know,
- one example is the speaker went too far one day and he ruled out, we had an amendment to expand voting
- rights to an election bill called various elections matters. And the speaker said that our amendment
- was not germane, it violated the rules and could not be voted upon.
- which was insane because this bill had like 50 different election provisions of all types in it. And
- so we appealed the ruling of the chair and we debated it. And I basically told the other people like,
- my fellow Democrats, stand back. I'm taking this one. And I really went after the speaker full bore.
- And I went through every single provision in that bill. I pointed out that it said various elections
- matters for the title. And I said what the speaker just did here today is an abuse of power. And I challenged
- them to say why are you afraid to vote on these bills? Why are you hiding behind the rules to prevent
- yourself from being held accountable to the voters? And I said it's got to stop. Now the interesting
- thing is for about the next week or so,
- there is not a single ruling by the Speaker that our amendments are out of order on stuff that I think
- probably was stretching it a little bit. So you got to learn how to push hard and command respect.
- You know, I'm old enough to have watched Republicans in Indiana, in Texas, where I was born, and the
- national level, and other states.
- become increasingly less interested in compromise, in discussion, in debate. They have, especially in
- the last decade, become the my way or the highway party. And I, as a matter of principle, don't believe
- in trying to reach across the aisle because I don't believe you can anymore. My goal is to do everything possible
- to organize the Democrats in the state house as a formal obstruction party, which is something Republicans
- are extremely good at in the times when they are a minority party. They never let being a minority party
- stop them from achieving anything or playing a longer game to claw back power later. And that is actually
- my goal in the state house. All righty.
- We are again going to shift gears again. What actions, if any, would you take to address the need for
- affordable housing in Bloomington and in the state of Indiana? One of the big things that I want to
- push for is initiatives on establishing public housing options for our homeless residents.
- We have a severe homelessness epidemic in this state. It's only growing worse every year. You can't
- help people rebuild their life until you give them that base level stability. You give them that, they
- can get back into the workforce. They can get healthcare treatments that they need. So that's a part
- of the overall plan. As far as addressing other things, rental costs, housing costs,
- There's a myriad of things that the state can do. One of the things that I have in mind is punishing
- landlords who sit on properties that go unused. We have properties all over this city that are vacant
- for years at a time sometimes. I think anything six months or more of the year that goes unused, those
- landlords need to be fined heavily
- for sitting on property that's too expensive for people to move into. We certainly do lack enough housing,
- but we can start solving the problem by lowering housing costs of what we already have available and
- moving people into those places. And these are parts of the plans that I have.
- The affordable housing issue is kind of one of the more complex issues that I've come across, because
- you have so many variables and factors impacting it. Everything from interest rates to housing supply.
- We now have hedge funds coming in and buying up homes competing with average buyers. And they have endless
- funds to come in. And so we're seeing kind of the housing corporatized. And so you've got to approach
- it from a lot of different
- angles and so we need to do a better job and this is probably Congress's job on Section 8 vouchers.
- The wait lists are too long for that. We have to do more to try to get more housing and you know I was
- excited when in this session the Republicans said that they were actually going to start addressing
- affordability issues and one of the things they said they were going to address was housing.
- What they ended up doing is they had a homebuilder spearhead the bill and the homebuilder said the big
- problem is we have too many regulations. And so by the time this affordable housing bill actually got
- before us for in its final form after it had gone through both houses it was like a joke. It essentially
- outlawed two safety items because the homebuilder said they were too expensive.
- They had to deal with keeping your house and burning down. And it also limited what kind of flood mitigation
- they could do for these retention ponds and things. And and then finally it just told every local community
- you have to have a hearing to discuss how your zoning laws might be impacting building which I think
- we've already had those debates in our community here and we continue to have them.
- Maybe turning on the mic would be helpful here. We've both answered that question, yes. Do we both answer
- that? Yeah, I believe so. Sorry, it's been a long day. Let's see, what policies would you support to
- improve public safety while maintaining community trust and law enforcement? Yeah, so I'm pleased that
- When we had the Black Lives Matters protests and that issue was forefront, one of the things I did is
- I called up the Republican person I'd worked with on criminal code reform and I said, look, we cannot
- allow this moment to pass without doing something about police brutality and making clear that we have
- to have a different way forward. And I was pleased that we were able to get a bill put together
- that prohibited things like chokeholds, some things that were resulting in people being injured or killed
- and stress de-escalation and put into the training rubrics for people at the law enforcement academy
- processes to try to avoid getting into the situations that we've just seen happen over and over again.
- And so we have to keep after that because after a while kind of people forget
- and they maybe resort back to the old ways. But I think that the other thing that that bill did, which
- I thought was really important, is I believe the most police officers want to serve their community,
- they want to protect the community, and they're very public spirited. But we unfortunately have a few
- people who seem to have a different set of priorities. And what would happen is when someone would do something
- that violated the rules of the department, they would just resign and move to the next department, which
- was easy because there was a shortage of officers. This bill requires the last department to have to
- share all the information about their personal records with the new potential hires. I go against the
- grain of my fellow socialists a little bit on this in that I do believe
- a standing police force is necessary. But what I believe is a major part of the problem is how we rely
- on cops to solve every imaginable problem that pops up across the city. And I believe that the solution
- here is plugging in initiatives that lessen the need for uniformed armed officers
- and replace them in some situations with more trained social workers or other public service specialists.
- You know, we have situations where we need cops to try and handle mental health crises of people having
- some kind of a problem out in public. That's a social worker job.
- psychologist's job, not a cop's job, and you put this strain on cops day after day, you stretch them
- thin, you wear them down, and even some of the most well-intentioned officers can over time turn less
- than noble because of that pressure. And that's the kind of thing I want to see is expanding social
- workers and lessening the need for cops in all situations.
- All righty. How can we maintain a positive attitude in a time like this? I know it's difficult being
- the minority in the house. What's the best ways to stay positive? I have a lot of great music to listen
- to at home. I have an amazing daughter and I have a gorgeous wife and those things keep me really happy.
- Yeah, I have to admit there's some days where just things go so crazy up there. You just want to kind
- of drop your head on the desk and say, I surrender. I mean, what can you possibly do to talk any sense
- into people? Or the worst thing I hate is like, you made really good points in that bill, but I couldn't
- vote with you because my leadership would get mad at me or something. But you know, there are just enough
- victories to keep me going. And that's really what continues to motivate me. We had a tremendous victory
- by defeating redistricting.
- That was awesome. And there are lesser victories that people don't particularly hear about all the time
- one that I can think of we had last session was this crazy bill that wanted to move to firing squads
- for executions, which just like the nuttiest thing ever and You know, I really pushed back on that bill
- and it couldn't get enough votes within the house to actually move on to the Senate and I thought that
- was another
- you know opportunities. So I think that the worst thing we can do is think of ourselves as helpless
- and hopeless and not having an ability to impact the system. And so particularly right now I feel like
- coming up in this election in the fall we have an opportunity to really take back some power to change
- the direction of the country and the state. And I think that is the critical thing to keep people focused
- on is don't give up hope. It's frustrating. It's dispiriting. When you see this
- horrible legislation continue to come through the process, but we've had some victories and we can have
- more victories if we all work together and focus on basically gaining that political power at the ballot
- box. Continuing on the redistricting topic, is there any hope for a nonpartisan redistricting in Indiana?
- Yeah, this is really
- Tough because I've offered some amendments on that I've been kind of I think it's because I drew the
- short straw but it ended up being like the house Democrats point person on redistricting so I had to
- read all those grinding legal cases and everything and I Think that it is achievable. It's happened
- in other states, but it's gonna take a long-term movement You know, I think it's something like the
- women earning the right to vote I mean those were a multi-decade
- kinds of efforts, civil rights movement. I think it has to be something up to that level where it's
- almost a movement and you have to get people engaged enough to understand the impacts of redistricting.
- I think it's a root of a lot of our problems because when you pack all the Democrats together to delete
- their power and that then creates lopsided Republican districts, the primaries become the elections
- that matter.
- the general elections are really just kind of a rubber stamp kind of thing. And this reduces
- the accountability of the members. You know, there was a time when you had like a 52-48, 51-49 split
- in the House, even a 55-45 split, which considered a huge majority in those days, you could literally
- see people sweating as they were thinking about how to vote. They would see stuff like, oh, how am I
- people gonna explain this back home? And now with 70 members and these lopsided districts,
- There is no sweating in the General Assembly. People just vote how they want to. They pander to their
- most extreme bases, and there's no accountability because of that. So we definitely need to do something
- on redistricting. Well, I believe there's always hope. And working towards a nonpartisan solution like
- that is one of many things that I
- hope to work towards achieving it should I be elected. But it isn't just going to be about the people
- in the state legislature. It's also going to be about people like those of you gathered here helping
- adding your voices and your pressure from the ground level onto our legislators and other members of
- the state government to help make that, turn it from just something that we can hope for into an actual
- tangible solution.
- So that's something I hope you will all join me on, should I be elected. Talking about elections and
- voting, that's why we're here. What steps would you take to increase voter participation in Indiana,
- but especially in the Bloomington area with IU being a huge campus and being half of the population
- here in Bloomington? Indiana has
- the lowest voter turnout in the state. And something that I have found over the course of my own campaign
- here is there's a lot of people who seem to just be halfway checked out day in and day out. And I believe
- that's because a lot of people have just lost hope that anything better is possible in this state. But
- I have seen over the last year all across the country
- the most deep red districts and the most deep red states have been flipping blue including my former
- home state of Texas. And if you can flip districts in Texas or Florida you can flip anything as long
- as people show up to provide a challenge and try and give people an actual reason to want something
- different. You know you have to.
- make people understand that it is OK to still dream of a better Indiana. I dream of a better Indiana.
- It's why I'm running. I do believe that we can turn this state around if we just allow ourselves to
- actually want to put in that work and make it happen and not just check out all the time.
- Yeah, I think it's going to take a lot of education, particularly because, you know, over my objections,
- the Republicans adopted a law which took away the right of the student ID to be used as a voter ID,
- even though it met every exact, and I made the author of the bill for like 15 or 20 minutes. I led him
- through every single aspect of this, and he could not give a good reason why they were doing it. And
- so that makes it harder to vote. So you got to educate people what you needed to vote.
- One of the saddest things that I see and it happens every election cycle, if you go to the county election
- board when they meet about 10 days after the election, they go through their provisional ballots. There
- will be 60 or 80 students who showed up to vote and they're not registered. They're not registered in
- the county. They're not even from the state. They just showed up because they decided they wanted to
- vote and participate but they didn't understand that you have to get registered by a certain deadline.
- that you have to get to the right precinct. And what happened is, I don't know if they thought their
- provisional ballot would just magically count or what, but it didn't. And to think about all those votes
- that are not being accounted for is really bad. So education is a key thing. And then secondly, the
- other part of education is helping people to understand who is doing what to them. One reason why politicians
- are not held accountable when they don't
- address the needs of the people is because with this crazy media we have, social media, you can't figure
- out who's doing what to whom. And so we gotta work much harder for people to understand what votes,
- what parties are for their interests and against their interests. This is probably going to be our last
- question. And it's from the audience. And I ran out of questions, I'm sorry. Sorry.
- I just read the same one I just read in my head. Actually, what is your plan to support small businesses
- in Indiana? Well, I think if you get back to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, one of the
- biggest problems is they just got into this mindset of we're going to get the Fortune 500 company to
- come build a big factory here because we're going to give them these tremendous benefits. We will outbid
- the corporate welfare that we'll give to the people to get them here. And they ignored the ability of
- the small businesses, the startups right here. And so this is one thing where I agree with Governor
- Brown. He seems to be trying to redirect IEDC to be more focused toward something beyond just central
- Indiana and kind of the big corporations and the big kind of long bomb deals like the leap district.
- And so I think that we need to redirect our
- Efforts so that small businesses that business that is prospering and it needs to get to the next level
- but it needs some help to get there. How do we help them do that. And then we have to make sure that
- that assistance gets out.
- and across the state. And for Bloomington, it's particularly important that we support the tech sector,
- right? So we have a tech park here. We have a lot of people working really hard to build off of the
- industries we have now and to figure out how to get this kind of startup entrepreneurial economy going.
- And I think that if we put more effort into that, we have an opportunity to start some small businesses,
- some startups that could end up being quite substantial
- companies that would really help our community because we need better, higher paying jobs in our community.
- We don't have enough of those. You know, I am a pretty strong believer that one of the problems Indiana
- has is I've been watching the state court, the giant corporations year over year, bringing them in and these
- large national multinational corporations, they choke out smaller businesses that don't have the resources
- or the infrastructures available. And one of the things that I really believe we need to work at in
- the state house is putting a hard limit onto how many offices, branches, locations, what have you, that
- certain corporation can have operating in the state. We have to have room for our smaller companies,
- smaller businesses to thrive on their own without being overcrowded by companies that have 10 times
- the muscle that they do and 100 times the advertising budget. And aside from that, I'm also researching
- things like
- you know, initiatives to help smaller businesses get their better footing going forward in their first
- couple of years. You know, you're a new business owner, your first business. Maybe there is a way that
- we can have the state forgive or comp your rent for your business in your first location, help build
- a stronger foundation. Thank you both.
- I now ask that we start with closing remarks if you don't mind getting us started. We'll have about
- a minute and a half, 90 seconds, to give our closing remarks if that's okay. I think I'm up first. Okay.
- All right. You know, one of the things that I think is really important if you're serving as a legislator is
- to look around the hearing rooms and the hallways of the Capitol and ask yourself, who's not here? Because
- oftentimes you hear only from the interest groups that can afford to have paid lobbyists at the State
- House who are there constantly, who build the relationships, who become friendly with legislators. And
- their viewpoints always get across. But there are many average everyday Hoosiers who aren't organized
- in a way with the resources to have somebody
- on the scene at the State House every day working for their interests. And so that's where the responsibility
- of the legislators who represents all of the people within his or her district, that legislator has
- to be thinking about who's not here, who's getting left out of the conversation. And that's one thing
- that I really pride myself on. You know, so when the payday lenders show up and say, we need less regulation
- because we need to give people access to capital,
- I say, look guys, this is not Fortune 500 companies talking about. You're exploiting struggling people.
- So let's not come up with some phony excuses for why you need stuff. We know what's going on here. And
- so people need legislators who will call out those people who want to prey upon people who are struggling
- the most. And so that's why I very much would like to be returned to the legislature. I'm asking the
- voters to return me there for
- another two years so I can continue working on those issues and representing all the people of District
- 61. You know here in Indiana we elect the same people to tackle the same problems year after year and
- we expect different results every time but that falls in line with the definition of insanity and we've
- tried this same old same tactics every term
- It's very clearly not working, hasn't been working for the last 20 years. We need people with different
- perspectives, different backgrounds in the halls of power in the state government. And one thing that
- we have not tried is getting people from the working class into the state house to actually work on
- the working class problems.
- And that's what I'm here for. I'm here to break that cycle. I'm here to break that insanity. And I'm
- here to be that voice of working people who are struggling because I know what this is like. I feel
- this pinch, this sting every single day. And I very genuinely believe that it's people like me who are
- going to be the ones
- who actually understand how to solve these problems and make this a state that works for all working
- class people, not just the one percenters up on top. Thank you to our candidates for our discussion
- tonight. On behalf of all forum sponsors, remember to vote. Election day is Tuesday, May 5th. Early
- voting begins Tuesday, April 7th. Thank you again, guys.
- Welcome, everybody. Good to see you here. Try to keep the mic in position so you can hear me. Welcome
- to the public forum for candidates for Monroe County Commissioner. I'm your moderator, Steve Hinefeld,
- affiliated with Limestone Post Magazine, Bloomington Press Club, and other stuff, primarily here for
- Limestone Post Magazine, I guess, tonight. This forum is sponsored or hosted by the League of Women
- Voters of Bloomington, Monroe County.
- We're pleased to have as co-sponsors IU PACE, that's Political and Civic Engagement, Kappa Tau Omega
- Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the Monroe County branch of the NAACP, Monroe County NOW, and South Central
- Indiana Citizens Climate Lobby. Thanks to Katz for recording the event.
- I'll take a moment to review the ground rules so that everybody knows the candidates have received these
- in advance. I believe each candidate will have one minute to make an opening statement. The candidates
- will then respond in turn to questions posed by me, rotating which candidate will answer first. Responses
- are limited to 90 seconds unless I specify a different time
- It may be that some questions are more complicated than that or you don't have to go 90 seconds. You
- don't need to use your full time. Audience members are invited to submit questions on the cards that
- are provided. So please raise your hand if you need a card or if you have filled out a card and have
- one to be collected and brought up here to be read. I'll try to get to the questions that I can.
- I'm trying to avoid duplication if I can and try to cover a range of topics if we can hopefully. Each
- candidate after we go through the questions at the end of our 45 minute session, each candidate will
- be asked to make a closing statement for one minute. The candidates have agreed to have a civil discourse.
- Monica over there is keeping time.
- let the candidates know when they're approaching the one-minute mark and when they hit it and so candidates
- please try to agree to that. So our candidates are Trent Deckard and David Henry in the Democratic primary
- for county commissioner the one seat that's up this year or yes this year. So let's just go ahead
- go alphabetically and Trent you go first and then we'll rotate back and forth. Thank you very much and
- good evening friends. It is wonderful to be with you and I want to thank the league for hosting and
- Steve for moderating and that wonderful panel that we had before. My name is Trent Decker. Everybody
- hearing me okay? Awesome.
- My name is Trent Deckard. I am currently a member of the Monroe County Council I was caucused into my
- seat in 2019 and elected in Monroe County in 2020 and then again in 2024 and I'm very pleased to be
- running for Monroe County Commissioner for district one on a community of care platform and With this
- I build into this community of care building a little bit on some of the things that
- that I've done in my life. I've worked in this community for a long time in a variety of roles as a
- congressional aide for former representative Barron Hill, as an agency head and co-director of elections
- for the state of Indiana, and as a chief of staff for the Indiana House Democratic Caucus. And simply
- put, I believe the community of care means that we take experience, we take the elected officials that
- we have, and we work together in a collaborative fashion to get things done. And I look forward to getting
- into that this evening.
- Good evening and thank you. There we go. All right. We're green.
- Good evening and thank you to legal women voters and partners for hosting tonight's conversation. I
- am David Henry. I'm running to be your next Monroe County commissioner because too many people in Monroe
- County ask the same basic questions every primary every election cycle. Can I afford to live here. Can
- I find a career here. Can I build a future here. Am I safe from the decisions in Indianapolis and Washington
- here. And they are the same questions asked term after term.
- Monroe County is just not working for so many people in our community and the facts don't lie. When
- one out of every four of our friends and neighbors live in poverty, when half the kids that went to
- this school in the MCCSC this morning are on free and reduced lunches, and most people are struggling
- to make the rent, let alone a mortgage, we need a new direction in Monroe County. We've had conversations,
- we've had studies, we've had meetings, we've had plans, but families are still getting priced out and
- too many young people don't see a pathway to stay here. These are serious times that require courage,
- action, and results.
- That means a change not only in how we do business in the county government but in our county commission
- and how they see the community making it easier and not harder for people to live here and not just
- survive living in Monroe County but thrive living here too. I look forward to getting into the questions
- tonight. Thank you for being here. Thank you candidates. Please do take note of the time. So we have
- some starter questions that were submitted to the league in advance by sponsoring organizations.
- I'm gonna start with those, but whoever's gathering the cards, get them to me when you get them. So
- please give an example of how you've worked with people on opposing sides to accomplish something. Yeah,
- is it me first? Let's rotate. David, can you go first, please? Good question, and thank you for that.
- I had the privilege of being the only person up here that served as president of our local election
- board, which means I had to sit next to a Republican for over a year.
- and try to make local election decisions to benefit the whole community.
- election board was trying to move toward a vote anywhere center model for our community which would
- mean that making it easy to vote or buy groceries is driving a car. It's stopping to stopping the vote
- on the way home from work. That required a lot of work with our Republican colleagues. In fact we had
- the vote to move forward on vote centers for the county with the Republican vote on that committee.
- Judge Benkert was very much in favor of that as well as myself and my successor John Fernandez on the
- election board. That required a lot of negotiation. It required setting up a truly
- bipartisan committee of experts on both sides of the aisle and independent voters in the community including
- with the league to help inform that plan. And so it was about setting a goal, doing the work.
- doing the research and presenting that information to our community. Now I have to say while we had
- the Republican vote I didn't necessarily have the county council's vote at the time. The resolution
- was never brought forward by the council president. Maybe he'd like to explain that today as we're sitting
- here. But nonetheless working together working collaboratively bipartisanly is something that I've done
- in our community when we've needed to get stuff done of mutual concern. Thank you for the question.
- Well serving on the county council since 2019 it's one of the few bipartisan bodies that we have in
- Monroe County there is a Republican on that and counselor hawk will tell you that while I don't always
- agree with her a lot of the time she definitely is a commanding presence and you have to work with her
- in that role in a variety of different subjects I've done just that.
- Kind of going a little bit to what David spoke, I actually learned about working in a bipartisan fashion
- as an agency head. So I served as the Democrat co-director of the state election division, which is
- one Democrat co-director, one Republican co-director, and literally everything they do from paying the
- light bills to printing the manuals that some of our election administrative staff, some of them in
- the audience, everything they do has to be agreed upon.
- we every day coming into that office had to reach agreement. And sometimes we had to reach agreement
- on very critical things such as voterless maintenance. So when you hear things about voter purges, other
- things like that, we had to come to safety discussions about how you can have voterless maintenance
- that protects voters and moves voters forward. Speaking of which, when I was co-director, vote centers
- were first conceived and thought of.
- And I actually was the voice on that that talked to counties how we responsibly adopt those so that
- you can be guaranteed that your distance to a voting location is not extreme or burdensome. The Republicans
- at that time wanted to let vote centers run wild. So I support vote centers here as long as we're keeping
- existing polling places and access doesn't go away. We can't go back, friends. We got to go forward.
- I'm gonna give each of you another 20 seconds to talk about vote centers since the topic was raised.
- Trent, can you go first? Yeah, so a vote center allows you to vote at any voting location on election
- day. And if it's done well, you have ample locations to choose from. It means that when you go to vote
- anywhere in the county, you can vote at that location. If it's done extremely well, you have enough
- early vote
- so that folks can vote early, which is something that they like to do here. And you take pressure off
- election day vote, which can become like a pressure valve. And so theoretically, if you don't do that
- right, you make a huge mistake. If you do it really well, you make a voter convenience.
- Thank you. I will say and I appreciate the walkthrough and the commentary on the process. It just didn't
- happen here. We weren't going to be the first county the 10th of 25th or 50th in the state to adopt
- vote centers in the county. The requirement was our county commissioners and our county council needed
- to pass a resolution to move forward on it. We had the votes on the election board to pull it off. We
- had a 50 something page report from a bipartisan committee that answered all those questions and we
- never had the resolution from the county council president brought forward. I think that's unfortunate.
- Thank you.
- Okay, going back to the submitted questions. Who's going first this time? I've kind of lost track with
- the follow-up there. You went first last time. Okay, David, since you brought up affordable housing
- in your opening statement, what actions, if any, would you take as a commissioner, should the commissioners
- take, to address the need for affordable housing
- Keeping in mind that we have to talk about things that are that are feasible and affordable in itself
- and can be accomplished. I'm sorry you said feasible and affordable. That was your comment Steve. Yeah
- I just want to make sure I heard it.
- I'm sorry, what? You said feasible, that was the word you used? Actions that are feasible. Thank you,
- I appreciate the question. I have the good fortune of representing our county council on the Monroe
- County Plan Commission, and that's really the front line of the discussion between city and county and
- how we're going to grow as a community. Our community has not had a plan since 2012 on how to grow our
- community. The comprehensive plan of the county is antiquated. We have a development ordinance in the
- county that makes a lot of decisions about how we grow and develop in the community that's quite old,
- and quite antiquated in its thinking. The county needs to be a partner in how we grow as a region. And
- for too long, the county, the board of commissioners, the commissioner majority has treated that conversation
- as an either or.
- City verse county city or town verse gown Ellisville verse Bloomington and we need to move away from
- that because the truth is this as Each generation moves up as kids in this building that are in eighth
- grade now There will be seniors graduating high school at the end of this term look just try to stay
- in Monroe County They cannot find an affordable place to live. They cannot find it a career not a job
- But a career that will keep them here and make them a second third fourth eighth generation Monroe County
- resident This is a vital issue for our community now the steps that we need to take are having a commission
- commission majority
- that are looking ahead to those generations and starting to think through how we develop against a triple
- bottom line, what I call our triple bottom line. Are we taking care of our people? Are we taking care
- of the planet and the environment that we inhabit in Monroe County? And are we helping to build middle
- class prosperity that is becoming harder and harder for more people to reach? We need to revisit the
- county development ordinance and we need a plan for the county that attracts the 21st century jobs of
- this community, tech jobs, but also high paying labor jobs and wage jobs, whether you work on your feet
- or with your hands or with your heart. Thank you.
- Well, I agree with David on a lot around affordable housing in the county being an active partner. And
- the way that this gets done is something unique that we are going to try in politics for a change. We're
- going to actually say we're going to collaborate together and then we're going to actually lead people
- to collaboration. Too often, and some of the elected officials in the room, they know what I'm getting
- ready to say here. Too often we get in the room and somebody says, hi everybody, I've got a plan. And
- here's that plan.
- And I just need you all to back that plan and then we'll have it. On an issue like housing, where we
- have a lot of diverse opinions on how that works, we need elected officials that can get people to the
- table to have the tough conversations. And when I say people to the table, I mean residents,
- business leaders, concerned parties, who can come to the table and then say, how do we do this and take
- care of your concerns? How do we do this and move forward versus what we've had friends
- And that is my way or the highway that leads to stalemate. You know, doing the same thing over and over
- again is continuing to put people into office that just hand us a plan and then the plan gets debated
- or they get defeated. Let's actually do something so that the west side of the county and beyond can
- actually look at growth that folks have meaningful input on and also for those generations who need a job
- and we need to track those jobs, they have a house that they can go to that we can begin to talk about
- child care, which is one of the giant headaches of anyone trying to bring a child up in this community.
- Thank you. How will you ensure that Monroe County prioritizes public safety and fiscal responsibility
- while protecting families and students in our public schools if local law enforcement is asked or forced
- to cooperate with ICE? A lot going on in that question. There is a lot. Is it me? I'm sorry. Yes. How
- will you ensure that Monroe County prioritizes public safety and fiscal responsibility while protecting
- families and students in our public schools if local law enforcement is asked
- or coerced to cooperate with ICE. So this is, I think, asking for kind of a statement of philosophy
- regarding that general topic, rather than necessarily specifics, if I may editorialize. You're doing great.
- So when I look at that question, I take it into two parts in my philosophy. Number one, we have a sheriff
- that is very publicly out and about and talking to people about how public safety works, as it should
- be. I'm not the sheriff, nor am I the judge, nor the prosecutor. We have very competent, qualified
- individuals doing that role. As commissioner, my job is to support them and encourage them in that public
- outreach. And also to start by simply focusing on individuals in this community.
- whoever they represent or whatever their background and say, what makes you feel safe? What makes you
- not feel safe? And I want to jump over to ICE on that very note. As a member of the IU Bloomington Faculty
- Council, I've been a loud voice about ICE encroachment on this campus. And frankly, friends, we said,
- hell no. We don't want that. Now, they've tried to gut the Faculty Council, but we still have our voices.
- under this constitution and in this country. And so ice and bullying is not welcome in this community
- as long as I'm a commissioner and I will work with any other elected official that will help me championing
- that. And it is our job to stand at the doors or any door that we need to to prevent a bully from getting
- either a child in this school or a child in this community or any person that wishes to make this home
- and otherwise has caused us no harm.
- That's who we are in Monroe County, and that's what I would do both on safety and when it comes to thinking
- about ICE encroachment. Every elected official, whether you're a commissioner, a county counselor, a
- prosecutor, a judge, a sheriff, has taken an oath of the Constitution. That oath for the Constitution
- has a Fourth Amendment in it. We do due process rights in Monroe County. I took an oath of the Constitution.
- I'm not going to violate it.
- for anybody, and as I've said in other candidate forums, this is the difference in changing the culture
- of the county courthouse, where a county commission has a county legal department that needs to frankly
- get prepared to get into the good trouble, because we're going to have to be dealing with, in very short
- order, Senate Bill 76 has been signed, a attorney general who is seeking to harm our community. And
- I think that's as basic as that. We took an oath. And to go beyond that, I will say this.
- Leadership is about more than just providing support to other elected officials. County commissioners
- don't just have their constitutional duties of zoning and planning and holding meetings on Thursdays
- at 10 o'clock, they actually lead in the community. And that means that if we do have other elected
- officials that are exercising their views locally, it's okay.
- for the board of commissioners to call out through leadership what needs to be done and not done in
- our community. There's Indiana code, which you must follow, but there's administrative rules locally,
- which are really up to other candidates like judges and prosecutors that run for office on their preferences
- on how they'll work or not work with ICE. We've been very fortunate that the only sheriff in Indiana
- in 92 counties, Ruben Martez, said no when it comes to working with administrative orders from ICE,
- which is not the same as a court bench order to cooperate.
- We need to get behind that sheriff. We need county commissioners that will say what I've said out loud
- and to remember their Fourth Amendment oath to defend the due process rights of people in this community.
- Thank you. So we have several questions about the jail issue. Not surprisingly, I'm going to read a
- couple of them and ask you to respond to those and then possibly a follow up as well. So submitted in
- advance, how will you ensure that Monroe County
- I'm sorry. How will you balance a new jail's civil rights compliance with calls for expanded incarceration,
- including state legislation, state laws, and also related, the county council voted down the pork,
- what is it, pork 46, the location between here and Ellisville for the jail. What have you done to advance
- the project since that time?
- to start with. David, I believe you go first this time. Sure. Thank you. That's a lot. There's a lot
- there. Well, let's start with civil rights because I think that's important for the sponsors of this
- event in the room. Once upon a time, I was on this side of the desk as the chairman of the Monroe County
- Democrats when, at a very critical moment, our
- County Commissioners and County Council were aiming toward building the very large justice center on
- North Park. I joined with organizations that state our party's values, that we wanted to see prevention
- and diversion and restorative justice policy inside whatever this quarter billion dollar facility would
- be. And after many meetings, the County Council made a call, they took a vote to move it to North Park
- at a time when we thought it'd be about $100 million. And between November of 2024 and February 2025,
- the price got up to $257 million, with no explanation from your current County Commissioners on how that
- happened I think I was wrong and so when I got into office imagine when you take office say congratulations
- you're here by the way this this price of this project doubled and organizations like
- Now in the NAACP in this room, we're still concerned about the disparate impact of filling a jail with
- people that are of color in our community. But now we've built a potentially or building facilities
- much larger. I had a problem with that. I had no problem leading that charge with my colleagues to cancel
- the project at North Park because it was too big. It was overwrought. It did not answer the community
- values of this community. Are we working on prevention? Are we working on restorative justice? Because
- leadership, you lead from your seat. And it's not about deferring to others behind closed doors about
- what they want to see in the justice center. It's about standing up for values. This is not
- of time for calm in our community. We have to address this head on. What have we done since? The good
- news is we've listened to the public and we are trying to move that facility back downtown near service
- providers and I hope in future iterations and discussions start to bring prevention and diversion and
- restorative justice activities back into this conversation because if I want to raise taxes on something
- it better be to help keep people out of jail instead of putting people in it.
- So one of the things that I noticed when I first got into office in 2019, when I would ask questions
- about our jail facility and our ongoing settlement with the ACLU, people would say, well, you know,
- you don't want to get into all that. And when it came down to questions of constitutional care about
- how that facility is for the people that are actually in there, not the folks talking about the people
- that are in there, it's not meeting its
- needs not meeting constitutional care needs and the constitution has to mean something in this country
- and so I began with other counselors to raise a voice that how do we do it what do we do we hit a pandemic
- we had a plan for a time cost did go up because we have a thing called co-location that means that our
- facility is the interaction it has with other agencies other departments was important the states changed
- the mechanism by which we fund what has not changed is our
- need to make sure that for folks receiving medical care in our medical bay in the jail, that they receive
- constitutional care in a facility that we all would not object to, were we in there, right? And we have
- to move forward. But what I've noticed over the years are the excuses for not moving forward, they become
- either more subtle, more sophisticated, or always a good reason.
- Folks, we've got to move forward with this. And I'm pleased to say that the council now and the commissioners
- now are now looking at new sites that will hopefully meet the needs of what a constitutional care jail
- will look like because the sheriff has kind of reached a limit on what he can now do. Thanks. So follow
- up on that from the audience. What would be the ideal location for a new jail? 20 seconds. It's at Trent's
- house. That's where it should go.
- I want to it's we've we've defined terms there it needs to stay in the city limits of Bloomington it
- needs to be close to service providers and people that can help with keeping people out instead of in
- and making sure they're close to our services so in the city limits is where we're aiming the good news
- is the commissioners after a bit of time are coming around to this the current commissioners but I think
- the idea that saying well we had a plan and we would have got away with it too if it weren't for Mike
- Braun is a little too far to go here and I think the idea and excuses meaning moving forward it's not
- excuses it's a civil rights
- and making sure we're not overspending taxpayer dollars to build a palace instead of answering the specific
- questions of constitutional care of overcrowding and exercise in that facility. Thank you. Well once
- we're done with the politics we still have to get back to having a constitutional care jail and the
- bottom line is on location it has to be a place that meets the needs of a
- access to the facility it also has to meet the need of how do you now allocate or deal with the fact
- that you are not co-located how do you do that and then also we have partners that are also in government
- the city of bloomington we heard from their council they want to weigh in on this we also heard from
- residents that they want to weigh in so again i go back to collaboration friends we got to be very wary
- of my way or the highway approaches
- on how these things work because that has put us in some of the messes that we're in. Okay, thanks.
- So here's a question submitted in advance as well. What would you do to increase residents' confidence
- in county government? But I think I want to precede that by saying, how would you assess Monroe County
- residents' confidence
- in county government? Do you think it's high? Do you think it's low? Do you think people aren't aware
- of it? Do you think people know what county government does? And what would you do to make them more
- confident in county government? Your turn. So one of the things you learn in a campaign at doors is
- you get the honest truth from people and there's nothing like a Saturday morning when someone's in the
- robe and they're not real happy to see you there for some of these things that we're talking about.
- And friends, I heard it Saturday morning. Do you know what they think? They think we fight too much,
- that we don't get enough done. And when you say, but you know it's about, and but it's about this, but
- it's also, they say, yup, yup, more excuses. How are you getting it done? And how are you working with
- the city? And how are you working with the town? And how are you not leaning heavily on others? That's
- what it is. Because at the end of the day, our folks in our county, they have a million different things
- that they're doing.
- They're dealing with academic deadlines. They're dealing with bills. They're dealing with health care
- visits that never end or health care visits they can't get in the case of our county. And so they want
- us to go to work. And they want us to think a little less of ourselves. They want us to have some self-esteem
- but not shut down our processes. And so I think that we all could take a page out of being a little
- bit more humble in our role, a little bit more self-serving. And it's probably time for us to reflect on how
- things get done by us being more collaborative and trying to figure out how do we get more people in
- the room? It's the number one thing I hear. How do you get more people into the room so we can get these
- hard things discussed and figure out ways that we can move forward together? Another thing I hear at
- doors, and I don't disagree that the straw poll on county government's not great for our elected officials.
- I think for our county employees,
- Our frontline workers are doing a great job. They need support from their elected officials to make
- sure department heads are supporting our frontline workers which doesn't always happen in county government.
- We've had some incredible turnover in some of our departments because we're not doing the oversight
- to ask the hard questions in public. Collaboration is just a tool in the toolkit. It's not the goal
- and it should not be the goal in a primary.
- It should be about results. Are we delivering results in our community or is it four more years
- of collaboration and listening sessions? Because that's the Democratic Party's favorite tool in the
- toolkit when we have a hard problem, is we kick it down the road another four years with listening sessions
- in town halls. I hear something different at doors, maybe we're at different doors. It's about results.
- And when you look back on the longer someone is in office, six years, 12 years, in some cases
- the commissioners have been in office since 2009 at the beginning of our lawsuit with the ACLU, they
- want results.
- They want to know that someone has set a goal, that we're holding county government to a standard, that
- they show up and they know that when they get a building permit, they're going to get their stuff built
- in a short amount of time, not 14 months to fix a garage. It's getting to results and supporting our
- staff to do that. And we do that by focusing on ideas, because elections are really about ideas. We
- do the listening before we file for office. At least that's the way I've always run campaigns since
- I was 16 years old, running people for judge back in Ohio. We run on ideas. This is the League of Women Voters.
- You know, Charlotte Zitlow didn't run as a hat. She ran on issues. You bring your issues to the table
- and you put them before the public and we vote on them to get results in our community. Okay, thanks.
- This is a question I've always wanted to ask somebody in county government, so I'm going to take moderator's
- privilege and ask this question. So the commissioners represent all the residents of Monroe County.
- A majority of those residents
- who are in Monroe County, who pay county taxes and so on, vote in county elections, live in incorporated
- areas. Majority actually live in the city of Bloomington. A fair number live in the town of Ellisville,
- a few in the town of Steinsville. A minority live in unincorporated areas. As commissioner, how would
- you balance those different, those disparate, and sometimes competing interests between incorporated
- and unincorporated areas?
- one example that comes up was annexation. And I'm sure there are others you can think of.
- And David, I think that's a good question. No, it's a great question, because when you're knocking doors
- in incorporated spaces, they don't understand. People are like, are we having an election, and who are
- you, and how do you work for the mayor, is usually the question you get. County government has an essential
- role, and it's opaque. It's a very old institution in our state constitution. It does require a little
- education at the door about how city and county should work together, how unincorporated spaces and
- smaller towns should work together in our community. But I think, as I said in my opening statement,
- that's been our challenge. I think for the past decade,
- and a half we've set a tone in our county courthouse that says it is either or. It's city versus county.
- It's town versus gown. It's rural versus urban. Instead of thinking through how as a region we grow
- and work together. You'll meet people in townships that understand that while they didn't necessarily
- care for the city's
- Approach the annexation this cycle they understand cities grow they just didn't like the way it was
- growing that particular way. That's very much a conversation Van Buren Township where I live no one's
- saying we shouldn't be a growing county they're saying they were concerns about the manner by which
- the previous administration want about it and I think that's important to say that the idea that.
- All right, what the county commissioner should do is do that education at the door.
- and be part of that conversation. But we have a lot of work to do, undo 12 years, of what has been somewhat
- adversarial between county and city. But the truth is, city people pay taxes. People in Ellisville pay
- county taxes. City people pay county taxes. And we need to work together on ways that we grow regionally.
- That means attracting those 21st century jobs. It means having a plan for the county that updates and
- thinks about how we attract businesses along I-69 and also takes care of our watershed and environment
- as a whole community. Thank you.
- This sharing microphone may be the best thing that comes out of the whole night. We need more of this.
- One of the things, when I was a congressional aide in 2008, President Obama was on the ballot and it
- was amazing at that time people would talk about healthcare reform and what that meant was different
- in every different part of the 21 county congressional district I worked in here in southern Indiana.
- Same thing in this county.
- When you talk about affordable housing, that term alone, I was out of Meadowood on Saturday night talking
- with folks what that term means for folks there, what that means on the west side, what that means in
- a household between two different bedrooms of two different generations is a different thing. So when
- I talk about collaboration, friends, I'm not just coming up with that as we always got a cool campaign thing.
- I'm saying that because I have watched state, federal, and local government, particularly here as a
- part of a nine-generation Monroe County family. I've watched this a long time. I've seen things that
- worked well. I've known superintendents that did great jobs and superintendents that suffered. I've
- known county counselors that were successful and commissioners that were not. I've seen a lot of mayors,
- too. And the reality is that you don't get anywhere
- without stopping, listening, saying how do we get here to talk about perhaps we can get some movement
- on this? What does this look like? And that takes a person that can go across those different lines.
- I always used to say in Elstville when people would be fired up about something, I'd say I represent
- people on both sides of the border here. I just want you all to be okay. And that's an awesome thing
- in public service. Thanks.
- We have a question from the audience that says what would you do to improve, how could you work to improve
- funding for schools? That's pretty far removed from the usual activities of county government, but in
- fact there's a lot of overlap between education and local government. So I think I'd expand that question
- and say what should county government do with regard to
- If anything with regard to education k-12 schools in the community Well the first thing I think that
- you do is that you have working partnerships with the folks that are in some of these roles I was with
- our superintendent I believe it was two weeks ago this current coming up Friday, and we just talked
- about how do what do we what do you need? What do we do? How do we do this? because how
- Her job goes how our children go that literally that's our workforce We will blink and they will be
- out and unfortunately if we don't attract enough jobs Or we don't attract enough or have enough homes.
- We will lose them including my daughters They will be gone and they will not we won't have those talents
- So you do that. The other thing is that you recognize, though the state constitution may say one thing
- about roles, there's things that we can commonly do. I was pleased to support the South Side Library
- when the library expanded. That is huge. I wish I'd had it as a kid. And every time I'm in there, I
- look how fantastic it is. Over on 11th Street, I was pleased to really jump in with ARPA dollars and say,
- Rigidly to the county we have got to have on 11th Street that community kitchen Express that has got
- to be expanded because we got to feed people because if a kid goes to sleep tonight Hungry, that's not
- good for the county. It's not good for the city. It's not good for the township It's definitely not
- good for that school and so you got to look at the role a little bit bigger than it is and sometimes
- what the state does is
- And you have to do that until you the state either stops you and then you figure out a slicker way to
- do it. But you've got to be open minded to a little bit beyond the courthouse into these lives and families.
- The question is.
- Really about the austerity we're moving into as a state. I wish we had unlimited funds like ARPA funding
- that we had years ago when we had a pandemic. I wish that we had some of that infrastructure dollars
- that came in with the Obama administration years ago, but we don't. What we're facing in our community
- and where the spirit of that question is coming from is how are we as a county with limited resources
- going to figure out how to
- What to tax and where to spend our money. You know one of those things of course is not a quarter billion
- dollar jail but it should be making sure that the tax dollars we have available to us locally are going
- to the places that make the most sense. We have seen in Indiana already some answers to this question.
- I look up at Fishers for example has looked at a city.
- school district partnership to absorb some of the athletic facilities of the public schools there taking
- that off the books and putting it into a space that can be used both by the public and the school system.
- That's that's good innovation and what we need in county government our ideas and innovators thinking
- about them and we'll put them out there and people might like them or not like them. But at least we
- see communities trying to answer those questions. But the most important thing a county commissioner can do.
- in the role that they have. And how we zone and plan our county is to start getting more housing choices
- in this community, which means more people living here, paying taxes here, and sending their kids to
- school here. Because right now, that's not what we're doing. Right now, we have passed tax abatements
- as a county council to attract jobs like Simtra out on the west side to our community, but we do not
- have the housing for that workforce that's coming. They will call Owen County and Green County home
- unless we start to turn around our zoning and planning of our community and attract the next generation
- of Monroe County residents here who will be first-time settler, Monroe County residents, to raise their
- families and bring their children here. But that's half the battle. It's also making sure that we're
- not stringing together jobs, but we're finding careers for people in this community. That requires a
- county commission focused on rezoning and attracting those 21st century jobs here as well. This question
- came in from the audience, and I think you can answer it quickly, maybe 20, 30 seconds. We've talked
- about people not understanding county government to help
- uh... interested citizens understand the structure and functions of the county government would you
- reactivate or activate the citizens academy i think this is something maybe that the city has done i
- don't know if the county has done it do you see a need for that do you see that as something that's
- valuable maybe take twenty seconds and talk about that go ahead trent
- Yeah, Purdue Extension has our version of the academy. And I've lectured there. Let me tell you why.
- If you go to lecture there, you go to take it, they're going to give you very serious content, and they're
- not going to mess around. It's a beautiful program. I only wish more people could get in it and have
- the time for it and had more information. And I love something like that, where they take very small
- amounts of resources, and they make tremendous things working. We were breaking apart property taxes
- so hard, I thought I was having a meeting with Jeff McKim. And those of you that know that, you know
- what I mean.
- It these are good things and people that come out on nights like this. That's a good thing. That's what
- we've got to encourage and get back into our civic life. We need a lot of tools in the toolkit. I think
- the Citizens Academy approach and we see that in other jurisdictions works well but it's one tool in
- the toolkit.
- We right now don't have a county commission that communicates with the public at all really outside
- of its meetings or the occasional news coverage No press releases about its activities. No public information
- program out to you the occasional Facebook post if that's your social media of choice You know, we're
- not doing a great job as a county explaining the
- you know painfully down to the very detail or even just basically you know what we do as a county government
- and I'm not I don't think it needs to be a promotional for one elected official or another it just needs
- to be a much wider understanding of how in the 21st century a professional government communicates with
- this community what's going on where to be
- what events are going on at the courthouse, opening up the courthouse in the evening, which hasn't been
- done in a generation or more for the public to rent and use as a specific venue in our community. These
- are just a number of tools in the toolkit that we should be doing and pursuing. Okay, we've hit our
- deadline here, I'm afraid. A lot of ground that we could still cover. I apologize to those whose questions
- didn't get asked. They were good questions. I wish we could have covered more ground, gotten to them,
- but we're at our deadline.
- So we will now go to one minute closing statements since Trent went first. I'm going to ask David to
- go first with the close. 60 seconds. Keep an eye on the time. I was just warming up. It's like halftime.
- Okay. Again, thank you to League and thank you to the partners for hosting tonight. And I also want
- to thank Trent for this important forum. We need to have these debates in our community.
- This election is not easy for a lot of our frequent voters because you have two former party chairmen,
- two county counselors at large running for an open seat that doesn't open up very often in our community.
- But I'll start, I'll end where I started.
- Times are incredibly tough for a lot of people in this community that are working right now and can't
- be at places like this. My focus on this election has been that 80% of our community that do not have
- time to engage in that civic dialogue that are counting on us to go find the 21st century jobs and housing
- for our community. I believe in listening. And as your county counselor, I've done it. On the jail,
- I listened to residents to make sure we weren't pursuing a facility that was too expensive. On our public
- health, when frontline nurses sounded the alarm at the closing of our family planning clinic, I was
- there in paper and demanding results and demanding
- accountability for why we closed that clinic. In times of crisis, I've worked with townships to make
- sure we don't forget about those less fortunate when the tornado strikes and the news has moved on,
- but people are still trying to get a tarp off their roof and get their houses repaired. That's not a
- my way or the highway approach to county government. That's responsibility, that's accountability, and
- that's standing up for Democratic Party values and bringing ideas before the electorate in a primary
- to decide.
- What is our new direction for this county? Is it to go along to get along, or is it time for a new direction
- to expect more from Monroe County and demand results that you deserve? Thank you very much. Thank you,
- Trent. Your turn to close.
- Thank you very much for listening to all of our thoughts on all these questions. Hopefully we answered
- everything. I just want to say in closing, I love this place. Today I got done teaching and I was tired.
- My students are back from spring break and they're not happy about it. And they really worked me. And
- the person I teach with said, you've got a forum tonight? And I said, I do. And they said, I don't know
- why you do all this. What do you get out of it? And I said, I love this place. I believe in this place.
- This is where I am, and this is where I'll be. Unfortunately, a lot of people can't come here and be
- here, and they want to be here, and this is a good headache to have.
- Friends, we've got to be serious about affordability issues. We've got to have people in the room that
- can get people around these subjects and say, what do we do for workforce attraction retention? How
- do we deal with environmental issues that keep coming through flooding and other things that make us
- more disaster response than not? How do we get health in all policies so that food deserts don't just
- pop up and we have to keep making ad hoc things for not-for-profits to fix? How do we do it? We get
- a commissioner that listens, works together, and really loves and cares for all
- this and I'm so pleased that you care enough that you're here with this. Why don't you join
- me? Trentdecker.com. Come out and help us and we'd love to have you along on the ride. Thank you. Thank
- you to the candidates for a lively discussion. Let's give them a round. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks
- to CATS for broadcasting this. And on behalf of all the forum sponsors, remember to vote.
- uh... primary election days tuesday may fifth early voting begins tuesday april seven thank you