WEBVTT 00:00:00.258 --> 00:00:06.769 - All righty y'all. Welcome in. Welcome in. Welcome to the public forum for the candidates Matt Pierce 00:00:06.769 --> 00:00:13.409 - and Liliana Young for Indiana House 61. I'm your moderator Pearl Vernard. I'm a grad student at IU and 00:00:13.409 --> 00:00:19.856 - I work with the League of Women Voters. So they asked me to be here today to be your moderator. The 00:00:19.856 --> 00:00:26.238 - forum is hosted by the League of Women Voters of Bloomington Monroe County. We are pleased to have 00:00:26.626 --> 00:00:33.772 - A few co-sponsors, IU Pace, Political and Civic Engagement, Monroe County branch of the NAACP, Monroe 00:00:33.772 --> 00:00:40.918 - County NOW, and South Central Indiana Citizens Climate Lobby. Thanks to Katz for recording the event. 00:00:40.918 --> 00:00:48.064 - I will take a moment to review the ground rules with the candidates who the candidates have accepted. 00:00:48.064 --> 00:00:52.478 - Each candidate will have one minute to make opening statement. 00:00:53.186 --> 00:01:01.053 - Candidates respond in turn to questions posed by myself rotating with which each candidate will go first. 00:01:01.053 --> 00:01:08.919 - Responses are limited to 90 seconds unless I say a different time. Audience members are invited to submit 00:01:08.919 --> 00:01:16.563 - questions on the cards provided. Please raise your hand if you need a card or have one directly to the 00:01:16.563 --> 00:01:21.758 - stage. I think Ralph has some if we need some, if anyone needs cards. 00:01:23.970 --> 00:01:30.780 - I'll choose those questions. I'll review them. If you guys have any, let me know. Each candidate will 00:01:30.780 --> 00:01:37.457 - be asked to make a closing statement, which is also one minute. And then the candidates have agreed 00:01:37.457 --> 00:01:44.467 - to a civil discourse. So let's get started. Liliana, would you mind getting us started with your opening 00:01:44.467 --> 00:01:50.142 - remarks and everything? And then Matt, if you don't mind going after her. Thank you. 00:01:51.522 --> 00:01:58.687 - Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. Thank you to the League for hosting this. I'm Liliana 00:01:58.687 --> 00:02:06.196 - Young. I'm very proud to have already been serving Bloomington for the last few years as a city commissioner 00:02:06.196 --> 00:02:13.499 - and a leader in the LGBTQ community. And I'm running for a very simple reason. We have a state government 00:02:13.499 --> 00:02:18.046 - filled with people who are monied and insulated from the problems 00:02:18.306 --> 00:02:25.712 - that the actual working people of this state have to contend with every day. I am a working class person. 00:02:25.712 --> 00:02:32.768 - I do not come from a background of money. I know what it's like to sweat and cry and bleed trying to 00:02:32.768 --> 00:02:39.824 - eke out a small life for yourself and your family. And I do firmly believe that it is people like us 00:02:39.824 --> 00:02:47.230 - who are the ones that have to take up the responsibility of government to repair the damage to this state 00:02:47.394 --> 00:02:55.521 - that is broken down so badly. Thank you. Matt, if you don't mind. Thank you. I'm asking for your vote 00:02:55.521 --> 00:03:03.728 - in the upcoming May primary because I want to continue being a progressive voice for our community and 00:03:03.728 --> 00:03:11.776 - our community's values at the State House. And that means treating everyone with dignity and respect 00:03:11.776 --> 00:03:16.318 - and not attacking and trying to marginalize communities. 00:03:16.866 --> 00:03:23.536 - Creating an economy that works for everyone. Affordable housing, which we know is a big issue. Accessible 00:03:23.536 --> 00:03:29.828 - and affordable healthcare is another thing people are crying out for. We need to support our public 00:03:29.828 --> 00:03:36.372 - schools, not private schools. We shouldn't be diverting our money away from our public schools. We need 00:03:36.372 --> 00:03:39.518 - to defend academic freedom and free speech on the 00:03:39.778 --> 00:03:46.529 - IU campus and our other institutions of higher education and the other thing we have to do is we have 00:03:46.529 --> 00:03:53.810 - to protect democracy. That's a sad thing to say and so that means fighting things like attempts to redistrict 00:03:53.810 --> 00:04:00.693 - in the middle of the decade. I've had amendments to unmask ICE. I oppose the governor's military police 00:04:00.693 --> 00:04:07.444 - bill and the ICE compliance as well. Thank you both of you. I appreciate it and both of you have kind 00:04:07.444 --> 00:04:08.702 - of touched on this 00:04:08.962 --> 00:04:15.614 - in your opening statements, but to limit it just to three, what are our three legislative priorities 00:04:15.614 --> 00:04:22.332 - that you both think are the most important and why? Matt, if you don't mind starting. Okay, again, as 00:04:22.332 --> 00:04:29.116 - I was saying broadly, it's just this whole basket of issues surrounding preservation of democracy, and 00:04:29.116 --> 00:04:34.846 - that means fighting off voter suppression and these attempts to kind of militarize the 00:04:35.106 --> 00:04:41.850 - Law enforcement, that's a key thing. I think the next, one of the other key things is the economy. We 00:04:41.850 --> 00:04:48.528 - cannot have a system where some people have fabulous wealth while a significant number of people are 00:04:48.528 --> 00:04:55.272 - struggling just to get by. And you have the middle class shrinking in the middle. And so that's a key 00:04:55.272 --> 00:05:02.083 - thing. And you know, the housing and healthcare and all that kind of fits into that affordability kind 00:05:02.083 --> 00:05:03.934 - of issue. And I think also, 00:05:05.058 --> 00:05:13.308 - Academic freedom and free speech on our campus. I mean, it's really sad what you see happening at IU 00:05:13.308 --> 00:05:21.886 - having protesters in Dunmeto being arrested, faculty members dismissed and punished without due process. 00:05:21.886 --> 00:05:30.218 - These are all things that I think we need to push back on. Thank you. Go ahead. I feel like the three 00:05:30.218 --> 00:05:34.302 - most dire problems facing the state right now are 00:05:34.722 --> 00:05:44.820 - First, state government accountability, which we have zero of. I have ideas for legislation that will 00:05:44.820 --> 00:05:55.512 - expand that state government's accountability to all Hoosiers. The second thing is wages. They are entirely 00:05:55.512 --> 00:06:02.046 - too low. The $7.25 an hour minimum wage in the state is crippling 00:06:02.370 --> 00:06:09.660 - uh... families and working-class people uh... you know you have a state that allows businesses to get 00:06:09.660 --> 00:06:16.878 - away with paying ten or eleven dollars an hour and they claim it's competitive but i think everybody 00:06:16.878 --> 00:06:24.454 - in here knows that that's a joke if you're actually in the workforce anything under seventeen or eighteen 00:06:24.454 --> 00:06:29.886 - an hour does not pay for anything in this state anymore and the third uh... 00:06:30.786 --> 00:06:38.685 - dire problem we're facing, I believe, is access to health care. My research finds 27% of people in the 00:06:38.685 --> 00:06:46.890 - state are on one version or another of the state Medicaid program, and with things like the big, beautiful 00:06:46.890 --> 00:06:54.559 - bill that has put some federal restrictions on that, and we have state-level restrictions like work 00:06:54.559 --> 00:06:59.390 - requirements and income limits. I want to repeal all of those. 00:07:00.162 --> 00:07:06.960 - Thank you so much. So our next question is, what steps would you take to ensure transparency 00:07:06.960 --> 00:07:14.708 - and accountability in the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, and how would these efforts translate 00:07:14.708 --> 00:07:22.164 - into better wages and economic opportunities for Hoosiers? Thank you, Liliana. I apologize. Could you 00:07:22.164 --> 00:07:27.646 - repeat the question? Yes. What steps would you take to ensure transparency 00:07:27.746 --> 00:07:36.154 - accountability in the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, and how would those efforts translate 00:07:36.154 --> 00:07:44.480 - into better wages and economic opportunities for Hoosiers? Like any of the state agencies, I believe 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:52.724 - that what we are going to have to do is put down hard legislation that the governor or other agency 00:07:52.724 --> 00:07:55.774 - heads can't weasel their way around. 00:07:55.874 --> 00:08:09.170 - which is a huge problem we have. And once we actually introduce some hard-coded legislation to set bare 00:08:09.170 --> 00:08:22.849 - minimum standards, this will give us higher wages and better worker protections and less corporate control 00:08:22.849 --> 00:08:24.894 - over the state. 00:08:25.090 --> 00:08:32.277 - smaller businesses and companies will also have a better opportunity to thrive in the state with that 00:08:32.277 --> 00:08:39.676 - loosening of the corporate grip. Well, the root of the problem goes all the way back to when the Daniels 00:08:39.676 --> 00:08:46.793 - administration decided that having a regular agency, the Department of Commerce, was not good enough 00:08:46.793 --> 00:08:49.118 - for economic development because 00:08:49.442 --> 00:08:55.905 - open door laws and other transparency requirements applied to that agency. So they decided to create 00:08:55.905 --> 00:09:02.304 - and spin off this economic development corporation. And the idea was they needed to have these kind 00:09:02.304 --> 00:09:08.767 - of secret negotiations and deals. And what happened is over time, that just spun out into corruption 00:09:08.767 --> 00:09:12.414 - basically. What you had is self-dealing within the IEDC. 00:09:13.154 --> 00:09:19.172 - And you had these crazy things like the LEAP project. They went out and paid outrageous sums of money 00:09:19.172 --> 00:09:25.130 - for land up there. And they didn't even do their due diligence to figure out whether they had enough 00:09:25.130 --> 00:09:31.030 - water for the things they wanted to do there. And all that was at the expense of the taxpayers. And 00:09:31.030 --> 00:09:37.106 - it was because there was not the kind of credibility or the transparency that they needed. A final one 00:09:37.106 --> 00:09:41.118 - to throw in there is this foundation, which is an appendix of IEDC. 00:09:41.218 --> 00:09:47.042 - that case what they would do is they would get these big contributions charitable contributions from 00:09:47.042 --> 00:09:52.808 - uh... mostly utilities and that those then would be used for these worldwide junkets in the name of 00:09:52.808 --> 00:09:58.574 - economic development they would go to the formula one race over in europe and the governor would go 00:09:58.574 --> 00:10:04.398 - there and say i'm making deals you know here in the suites of the sports events and there really was 00:10:04.398 --> 00:10:07.166 - no accountability for that so i voted for uh... 00:10:07.362 --> 00:10:12.956 - a fuller investigation of what actually happened there. I think the current governor is trying to just 00:10:12.956 --> 00:10:18.388 - blame it all on the last governor and move on. And I think we need to go back and really get to the 00:10:18.388 --> 00:10:24.037 - bottom and the details of what happened there. And so I'm hopeful that that will happen. Awesome. Thank 00:10:24.037 --> 00:10:29.631 - you both. Our next question is how will climate change impact your legislation decisions, particularly 00:10:29.631 --> 00:10:32.510 - regarding flooding infrastructure and energy policy? 00:10:36.162 --> 00:10:42.878 - Well, I think at this point, environmental issues and energy issues are inextricable. They're just wrapped 00:10:42.878 --> 00:10:49.154 - together. And so I served for a long time on the Environmental Affairs Committee. And then I had an 00:10:49.154 --> 00:10:55.681 - opportunity to become the ranking member, a Democratic member of the Utilities Committee. And I've been 00:10:55.681 --> 00:11:02.209 - a relentless advocate for renewable energy and moving us to a clean energy economy. And one of the most 00:11:02.209 --> 00:11:03.966 - frustrating and dispiriting 00:11:04.098 --> 00:11:11.421 - things is just how there's no interest among the Republican Party to address the climate change problem. 00:11:11.421 --> 00:11:18.884 - Despite the evidence that is confronting us with these abnormal weather events, flooding, real significant 00:11:18.884 --> 00:11:26.277 - economic impacts, and longer term impacts that are gonna cause people's grandchildren, future generations 00:11:26.277 --> 00:11:30.462 - to have real problems. And it's really outrageous that this 00:11:30.658 --> 00:11:37.300 - current people in charge are not willing to do something to try to save the future generations. And 00:11:37.300 --> 00:11:43.942 - so I'm doing everything I can to push us to promote solar, rooftop solar. I fought the net metering 00:11:43.942 --> 00:11:50.717 - law that kind of destroyed the economics of people being able to afford rooftop solar and become more 00:11:50.717 --> 00:11:56.894 - independent and save money on their own energy bills on top of it. I've tried to create more 00:11:57.218 --> 00:12:04.166 - Competition with energy. So way back when I had several years in rail I put in what was called a feed-in 00:12:04.166 --> 00:12:10.850 - tariff bill was based on what happened what Germany has where they basically allowed anybody to plug 00:12:10.850 --> 00:12:17.599 - in if you had renewable energy Wind or solar you had a right to sell that into the utilities grid and 00:12:17.599 --> 00:12:22.430 - that really boosted up the amount of renewables they had there Thank you 00:12:24.418 --> 00:12:32.290 - Yeah, I'm a huge proponent of green energy, specifically wind and solar. I want to push initiatives 00:12:32.290 --> 00:12:40.240 - to further develop wind and solar farms, as long as it does not infringe on land that's suitable for 00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:48.820 - farming. I think that's important to safeguard as well. I also think we're going to have to push initiatives 00:12:48.820 --> 00:12:52.126 - to put solar paneling on just about every 00:12:52.290 --> 00:13:03.098 - home and apartment complex as a standard part of construction moving forward. Theoretically, we could 00:13:03.098 --> 00:13:13.801 - free ourselves from ever having to pay Duke Energy another thing ever again. Aside from that, I also 00:13:13.801 --> 00:13:21.854 - believe that we need to also have a set of legislation that will put a hard 00:13:22.050 --> 00:13:34.183 - limit of foundational powers and staffing for the Indiana Environmental Agency. I apologize, I'm forgetting 00:13:34.183 --> 00:13:41.822 - the exact acronym, but I know that our governor has rolled back its 00:13:42.018 --> 00:13:50.896 - powers saying that they can't be any more strict than the federal EPA, which as lax as they've become, 00:13:50.896 --> 00:13:59.601 - is only setting us up for having no kind of oversight or accountability in the state at all with our 00:13:59.601 --> 00:14:07.358 - environmental protections. All righty. Switching gears just a little bit, what is our top 00:14:07.554 --> 00:14:17.406 - priority in supporting women, LGBTQ plus folk and marginalized genders in the state of Indiana? What 00:14:17.406 --> 00:14:27.747 - are your top priorities in supporting women, LGBTQ plus and marginalized genders in the state of Indiana? 00:14:27.747 --> 00:14:33.502 - I believe Lily. Yeah, I believe so. My ultimate goal is to 00:14:33.602 --> 00:14:41.741 - codify as much as possible into the state constitution, specifically on a human rights level. I believe 00:14:41.741 --> 00:14:49.646 - in bodily autonomy for everybody, women, LGBTQ people, even just run-of-the-mill people here in this 00:14:49.646 --> 00:14:57.863 - room. I also believe in codifying things like marriage equality, both interracial and same-sex marriage, 00:14:57.863 --> 00:15:00.446 - and gender identity protections. 00:15:01.090 --> 00:15:08.021 - if we can achieve that, and I know it's gonna be a difficult process, but if we can achieve that goal 00:15:08.021 --> 00:15:14.817 - of putting it into the state constitution, then that makes it almost impossible to further infringe 00:15:14.817 --> 00:15:21.884 - upon, you know, when we have the nothing that we do right now, or even state-level laws would certainly 00:15:21.884 --> 00:15:28.815 - be an improvement, but even with that, there could still be ways to try and weasel around it. So that 00:15:28.815 --> 00:15:30.174 - is my biggest goal, 00:15:30.370 --> 00:15:38.011 - put that into the state constitution itself. I haven't seen any politics more cynical and hateful than 00:15:38.011 --> 00:15:45.503 - the Republicans at the State House when it comes to the LGBTQ plus community. You know this all goes 00:15:45.503 --> 00:15:53.367 - back to 2004. George Bush was in trouble because of his wars going into the election. He needed something 00:15:53.367 --> 00:15:58.782 - to drive his base out to the polls and so they cynically said let's make 00:15:59.074 --> 00:16:04.990 - marriage equality the big issue and the same thing happened at the state house and we went through year 00:16:04.990 --> 00:16:10.679 - after year of having to fight off this effort to take the so-called defense of marriage act and put 00:16:10.679 --> 00:16:16.368 - it in the state constitution and I'm proud that at the time the Democrats are in the majority I was 00:16:16.368 --> 00:16:19.838 - the chair of the courts and criminal code committee and that 00:16:20.034 --> 00:16:26.976 - Constitutional amendment passed out of the Senate was sent to my committee and I killed it I said I'm 00:16:26.976 --> 00:16:33.850 - not giving this bill a hearing. I'm not participating in the cynical hateful process since then They 00:16:33.850 --> 00:16:40.996 - moved on because people actually the issue turned on them right and it no longer had the political power 00:16:40.996 --> 00:16:48.414 - to attack marriage equality so now they're attacking trans people and it's sad I fought off those efforts to 00:16:49.186 --> 00:16:56.610 - to basically marginalize that community. And I've authored, co-authored several bills with Representative 00:16:56.610 --> 00:17:03.614 - Campbell from Lafayette that attempts to at least begin to claw back this attack on parents' rights 00:17:03.614 --> 00:17:10.688 - to decide what kind of health care their kids could get when they need gender-affirming care. And so 00:17:10.688 --> 00:17:18.462 - I'll continue to work on those issues. Thank you both. How do you plan to reach out to the other side in order 00:17:18.594 --> 00:17:26.546 - to make progress. We know the Indiana House is majority or Republican House. They have a super majority. 00:17:26.546 --> 00:17:34.195 - So how do we plan on reaching out to them? Well, what I have found during my time in the legislature 00:17:34.195 --> 00:17:41.843 - that you have to demand respect from the majority party. You can't just be kind of the go along nice 00:17:41.843 --> 00:17:43.358 - guy junior partner. 00:17:43.938 --> 00:17:50.204 - You've got to really get up in their face sometimes, but you have to balance it out because if you get 00:17:50.204 --> 00:17:56.410 - in their face too much, you end up getting marginalized yourself. And so what I found just, you know, 00:17:56.410 --> 00:18:02.676 - one example is the speaker went too far one day and he ruled out, we had an amendment to expand voting 00:18:02.676 --> 00:18:08.821 - rights to an election bill called various elections matters. And the speaker said that our amendment 00:18:08.821 --> 00:18:12.958 - was not germane, it violated the rules and could not be voted upon. 00:18:13.634 --> 00:18:20.182 - which was insane because this bill had like 50 different election provisions of all types in it. And 00:18:20.182 --> 00:18:26.794 - so we appealed the ruling of the chair and we debated it. And I basically told the other people like, 00:18:26.794 --> 00:18:33.342 - my fellow Democrats, stand back. I'm taking this one. And I really went after the speaker full bore. 00:18:33.954 --> 00:18:40.211 - And I went through every single provision in that bill. I pointed out that it said various elections 00:18:40.211 --> 00:18:47.025 - matters for the title. And I said what the speaker just did here today is an abuse of power. And I challenged 00:18:47.025 --> 00:18:53.343 - them to say why are you afraid to vote on these bills? Why are you hiding behind the rules to prevent 00:18:53.343 --> 00:18:59.600 - yourself from being held accountable to the voters? And I said it's got to stop. Now the interesting 00:18:59.600 --> 00:19:02.078 - thing is for about the next week or so, 00:19:02.434 --> 00:19:10.580 - there is not a single ruling by the Speaker that our amendments are out of order on stuff that I think 00:19:10.580 --> 00:19:18.409 - probably was stretching it a little bit. So you got to learn how to push hard and command respect. 00:19:18.409 --> 00:19:26.397 - You know, I'm old enough to have watched Republicans in Indiana, in Texas, where I was born, and the 00:19:26.397 --> 00:19:29.086 - national level, and other states. 00:19:29.186 --> 00:19:37.824 - become increasingly less interested in compromise, in discussion, in debate. They have, especially in 00:19:37.824 --> 00:19:46.632 - the last decade, become the my way or the highway party. And I, as a matter of principle, don't believe 00:19:46.632 --> 00:19:56.286 - in trying to reach across the aisle because I don't believe you can anymore. My goal is to do everything possible 00:19:56.450 --> 00:20:05.315 - to organize the Democrats in the state house as a formal obstruction party, which is something Republicans 00:20:05.315 --> 00:20:14.014 - are extremely good at in the times when they are a minority party. They never let being a minority party 00:20:14.014 --> 00:20:22.796 - stop them from achieving anything or playing a longer game to claw back power later. And that is actually 00:20:22.796 --> 00:20:26.110 - my goal in the state house. All righty. 00:20:26.338 --> 00:20:36.028 - We are again going to shift gears again. What actions, if any, would you take to address the need for 00:20:36.028 --> 00:20:45.529 - affordable housing in Bloomington and in the state of Indiana? One of the big things that I want to 00:20:45.529 --> 00:20:54.174 - push for is initiatives on establishing public housing options for our homeless residents. 00:20:54.274 --> 00:21:01.068 - We have a severe homelessness epidemic in this state. It's only growing worse every year. You can't 00:21:01.068 --> 00:21:08.065 - help people rebuild their life until you give them that base level stability. You give them that, they 00:21:08.065 --> 00:21:14.927 - can get back into the workforce. They can get healthcare treatments that they need. So that's a part 00:21:14.927 --> 00:21:20.702 - of the overall plan. As far as addressing other things, rental costs, housing costs, 00:21:20.898 --> 00:21:28.972 - There's a myriad of things that the state can do. One of the things that I have in mind is punishing 00:21:28.972 --> 00:21:37.126 - landlords who sit on properties that go unused. We have properties all over this city that are vacant 00:21:37.126 --> 00:21:45.360 - for years at a time sometimes. I think anything six months or more of the year that goes unused, those 00:21:45.360 --> 00:21:48.158 - landlords need to be fined heavily 00:21:48.258 --> 00:21:55.832 - for sitting on property that's too expensive for people to move into. We certainly do lack enough housing, 00:21:55.832 --> 00:22:02.982 - but we can start solving the problem by lowering housing costs of what we already have available and 00:22:02.982 --> 00:22:08.574 - moving people into those places. And these are parts of the plans that I have. 00:22:13.282 --> 00:22:20.179 - The affordable housing issue is kind of one of the more complex issues that I've come across, because 00:22:20.179 --> 00:22:27.144 - you have so many variables and factors impacting it. Everything from interest rates to housing supply. 00:22:27.144 --> 00:22:34.379 - We now have hedge funds coming in and buying up homes competing with average buyers. And they have endless 00:22:34.379 --> 00:22:41.276 - funds to come in. And so we're seeing kind of the housing corporatized. And so you've got to approach 00:22:41.276 --> 00:22:43.102 - it from a lot of different 00:22:43.234 --> 00:22:49.019 - angles and so we need to do a better job and this is probably Congress's job on Section 8 vouchers. 00:22:49.019 --> 00:22:54.977 - The wait lists are too long for that. We have to do more to try to get more housing and you know I was 00:22:54.977 --> 00:23:00.762 - excited when in this session the Republicans said that they were actually going to start addressing 00:23:00.762 --> 00:23:06.142 - affordability issues and one of the things they said they were going to address was housing. 00:23:06.978 --> 00:23:13.096 - What they ended up doing is they had a homebuilder spearhead the bill and the homebuilder said the big 00:23:13.096 --> 00:23:19.154 - problem is we have too many regulations. And so by the time this affordable housing bill actually got 00:23:19.154 --> 00:23:25.390 - before us for in its final form after it had gone through both houses it was like a joke. It essentially 00:23:25.390 --> 00:23:30.142 - outlawed two safety items because the homebuilder said they were too expensive. 00:23:30.498 --> 00:23:36.501 - They had to deal with keeping your house and burning down. And it also limited what kind of flood mitigation 00:23:36.501 --> 00:23:42.449 - they could do for these retention ponds and things. And and then finally it just told every local community 00:23:42.449 --> 00:23:48.012 - you have to have a hearing to discuss how your zoning laws might be impacting building which I think 00:23:48.012 --> 00:23:52.638 - we've already had those debates in our community here and we continue to have them. 00:24:00.162 --> 00:24:10.282 - Maybe turning on the mic would be helpful here. We've both answered that question, yes. Do we both answer 00:24:10.282 --> 00:24:19.924 - that? Yeah, I believe so. Sorry, it's been a long day. Let's see, what policies would you support to 00:24:19.924 --> 00:24:29.758 - improve public safety while maintaining community trust and law enforcement? Yeah, so I'm pleased that 00:24:30.018 --> 00:24:37.420 - When we had the Black Lives Matters protests and that issue was forefront, one of the things I did is 00:24:37.420 --> 00:24:44.821 - I called up the Republican person I'd worked with on criminal code reform and I said, look, we cannot 00:24:44.821 --> 00:24:52.296 - allow this moment to pass without doing something about police brutality and making clear that we have 00:24:52.296 --> 00:24:59.262 - to have a different way forward. And I was pleased that we were able to get a bill put together 00:25:00.162 --> 00:25:07.583 - that prohibited things like chokeholds, some things that were resulting in people being injured or killed 00:25:07.583 --> 00:25:14.654 - and stress de-escalation and put into the training rubrics for people at the law enforcement academy 00:25:14.654 --> 00:25:21.865 - processes to try to avoid getting into the situations that we've just seen happen over and over again. 00:25:21.865 --> 00:25:27.326 - And so we have to keep after that because after a while kind of people forget 00:25:27.682 --> 00:25:33.248 - and they maybe resort back to the old ways. But I think that the other thing that that bill did, which 00:25:33.248 --> 00:25:38.706 - I thought was really important, is I believe the most police officers want to serve their community, 00:25:38.706 --> 00:25:44.218 - they want to protect the community, and they're very public spirited. But we unfortunately have a few 00:25:44.218 --> 00:25:50.270 - people who seem to have a different set of priorities. And what would happen is when someone would do something 00:25:50.370 --> 00:25:57.699 - that violated the rules of the department, they would just resign and move to the next department, which 00:25:57.699 --> 00:26:04.749 - was easy because there was a shortage of officers. This bill requires the last department to have to 00:26:04.749 --> 00:26:11.868 - share all the information about their personal records with the new potential hires. I go against the 00:26:11.868 --> 00:26:16.894 - grain of my fellow socialists a little bit on this in that I do believe 00:26:17.378 --> 00:26:27.561 - a standing police force is necessary. But what I believe is a major part of the problem is how we rely 00:26:27.561 --> 00:26:37.843 - on cops to solve every imaginable problem that pops up across the city. And I believe that the solution 00:26:37.843 --> 00:26:45.950 - here is plugging in initiatives that lessen the need for uniformed armed officers 00:26:46.114 --> 00:26:54.801 - and replace them in some situations with more trained social workers or other public service specialists. 00:26:54.801 --> 00:27:03.325 - You know, we have situations where we need cops to try and handle mental health crises of people having 00:27:03.325 --> 00:27:08.734 - some kind of a problem out in public. That's a social worker job. 00:27:09.122 --> 00:27:17.308 - psychologist's job, not a cop's job, and you put this strain on cops day after day, you stretch them 00:27:17.308 --> 00:27:25.575 - thin, you wear them down, and even some of the most well-intentioned officers can over time turn less 00:27:25.575 --> 00:27:33.680 - than noble because of that pressure. And that's the kind of thing I want to see is expanding social 00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:38.462 - workers and lessening the need for cops in all situations. 00:27:41.826 --> 00:27:51.197 - All righty. How can we maintain a positive attitude in a time like this? I know it's difficult being 00:27:51.197 --> 00:28:00.847 - the minority in the house. What's the best ways to stay positive? I have a lot of great music to listen 00:28:00.847 --> 00:28:10.590 - to at home. I have an amazing daughter and I have a gorgeous wife and those things keep me really happy. 00:28:16.002 --> 00:28:21.501 - Yeah, I have to admit there's some days where just things go so crazy up there. You just want to kind 00:28:21.501 --> 00:28:27.053 - of drop your head on the desk and say, I surrender. I mean, what can you possibly do to talk any sense 00:28:27.053 --> 00:28:32.714 - into people? Or the worst thing I hate is like, you made really good points in that bill, but I couldn't 00:28:32.714 --> 00:28:38.428 - vote with you because my leadership would get mad at me or something. But you know, there are just enough 00:28:38.428 --> 00:28:44.089 - victories to keep me going. And that's really what continues to motivate me. We had a tremendous victory 00:28:44.089 --> 00:28:45.598 - by defeating redistricting. 00:28:45.986 --> 00:28:52.884 - That was awesome. And there are lesser victories that people don't particularly hear about all the time 00:28:52.884 --> 00:28:59.584 - one that I can think of we had last session was this crazy bill that wanted to move to firing squads 00:28:59.584 --> 00:29:06.482 - for executions, which just like the nuttiest thing ever and You know, I really pushed back on that bill 00:29:06.482 --> 00:29:13.314 - and it couldn't get enough votes within the house to actually move on to the Senate and I thought that 00:29:13.314 --> 00:29:14.110 - was another 00:29:14.242 --> 00:29:20.270 - you know opportunities. So I think that the worst thing we can do is think of ourselves as helpless 00:29:20.270 --> 00:29:26.480 - and hopeless and not having an ability to impact the system. And so particularly right now I feel like 00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:32.689 - coming up in this election in the fall we have an opportunity to really take back some power to change 00:29:32.689 --> 00:29:39.079 - the direction of the country and the state. And I think that is the critical thing to keep people focused 00:29:39.079 --> 00:29:43.902 - on is don't give up hope. It's frustrating. It's dispiriting. When you see this 00:29:44.098 --> 00:29:53.041 - horrible legislation continue to come through the process, but we've had some victories and we can have 00:29:53.041 --> 00:30:02.070 - more victories if we all work together and focus on basically gaining that political power at the ballot 00:30:02.070 --> 00:30:11.184 - box. Continuing on the redistricting topic, is there any hope for a nonpartisan redistricting in Indiana? 00:30:11.184 --> 00:30:12.990 - Yeah, this is really 00:30:13.922 --> 00:30:19.534 - Tough because I've offered some amendments on that I've been kind of I think it's because I drew the 00:30:19.534 --> 00:30:25.146 - short straw but it ended up being like the house Democrats point person on redistricting so I had to 00:30:25.146 --> 00:30:30.702 - read all those grinding legal cases and everything and I Think that it is achievable. It's happened 00:30:30.702 --> 00:30:36.258 - in other states, but it's gonna take a long-term movement You know, I think it's something like the 00:30:36.258 --> 00:30:39.870 - women earning the right to vote I mean those were a multi-decade 00:30:40.450 --> 00:30:46.895 - kinds of efforts, civil rights movement. I think it has to be something up to that level where it's 00:30:46.895 --> 00:30:53.597 - almost a movement and you have to get people engaged enough to understand the impacts of redistricting. 00:30:53.597 --> 00:31:00.300 - I think it's a root of a lot of our problems because when you pack all the Democrats together to delete 00:31:00.300 --> 00:31:06.744 - their power and that then creates lopsided Republican districts, the primaries become the elections 00:31:06.744 --> 00:31:07.582 - that matter. 00:31:07.970 --> 00:31:13.433 - the general elections are really just kind of a rubber stamp kind of thing. And this reduces 00:31:13.433 --> 00:31:19.367 - the accountability of the members. You know, there was a time when you had like a 52-48, 51-49 split 00:31:19.367 --> 00:31:25.359 - in the House, even a 55-45 split, which considered a huge majority in those days, you could literally 00:31:25.359 --> 00:31:31.292 - see people sweating as they were thinking about how to vote. They would see stuff like, oh, how am I 00:31:31.292 --> 00:31:36.638 - people gonna explain this back home? And now with 70 members and these lopsided districts, 00:31:36.738 --> 00:31:44.403 - There is no sweating in the General Assembly. People just vote how they want to. They pander to their 00:31:44.403 --> 00:31:52.294 - most extreme bases, and there's no accountability because of that. So we definitely need to do something 00:31:52.294 --> 00:32:00.035 - on redistricting. Well, I believe there's always hope. And working towards a nonpartisan solution like 00:32:00.035 --> 00:32:02.590 - that is one of many things that I 00:32:02.850 --> 00:32:09.729 - hope to work towards achieving it should I be elected. But it isn't just going to be about the people 00:32:09.729 --> 00:32:16.540 - in the state legislature. It's also going to be about people like those of you gathered here helping 00:32:16.540 --> 00:32:23.351 - adding your voices and your pressure from the ground level onto our legislators and other members of 00:32:23.351 --> 00:32:30.365 - the state government to help make that, turn it from just something that we can hope for into an actual 00:32:30.365 --> 00:32:31.646 - tangible solution. 00:32:32.162 --> 00:32:40.718 - So that's something I hope you will all join me on, should I be elected. Talking about elections and 00:32:40.718 --> 00:32:49.275 - voting, that's why we're here. What steps would you take to increase voter participation in Indiana, 00:32:49.275 --> 00:32:57.746 - but especially in the Bloomington area with IU being a huge campus and being half of the population 00:32:57.746 --> 00:33:00.542 - here in Bloomington? Indiana has 00:33:00.994 --> 00:33:08.282 - the lowest voter turnout in the state. And something that I have found over the course of my own campaign 00:33:08.282 --> 00:33:15.571 - here is there's a lot of people who seem to just be halfway checked out day in and day out. And I believe 00:33:15.571 --> 00:33:22.653 - that's because a lot of people have just lost hope that anything better is possible in this state. But 00:33:22.653 --> 00:33:26.366 - I have seen over the last year all across the country 00:33:26.946 --> 00:33:35.637 - the most deep red districts and the most deep red states have been flipping blue including my former 00:33:35.637 --> 00:33:44.329 - home state of Texas. And if you can flip districts in Texas or Florida you can flip anything as long 00:33:44.329 --> 00:33:52.934 - as people show up to provide a challenge and try and give people an actual reason to want something 00:33:52.934 --> 00:33:55.774 - different. You know you have to. 00:33:56.418 --> 00:34:05.057 - make people understand that it is OK to still dream of a better Indiana. I dream of a better Indiana. 00:34:05.057 --> 00:34:13.527 - It's why I'm running. I do believe that we can turn this state around if we just allow ourselves to 00:34:13.527 --> 00:34:21.150 - actually want to put in that work and make it happen and not just check out all the time. 00:34:24.130 --> 00:34:30.334 - Yeah, I think it's going to take a lot of education, particularly because, you know, over my objections, 00:34:30.334 --> 00:34:36.243 - the Republicans adopted a law which took away the right of the student ID to be used as a voter ID, 00:34:36.243 --> 00:34:42.329 - even though it met every exact, and I made the author of the bill for like 15 or 20 minutes. I led him 00:34:42.329 --> 00:34:48.297 - through every single aspect of this, and he could not give a good reason why they were doing it. And 00:34:48.297 --> 00:34:53.438 - so that makes it harder to vote. So you got to educate people what you needed to vote. 00:34:54.178 --> 00:35:00.363 - One of the saddest things that I see and it happens every election cycle, if you go to the county election 00:35:00.363 --> 00:35:06.374 - board when they meet about 10 days after the election, they go through their provisional ballots. There 00:35:06.374 --> 00:35:12.270 - will be 60 or 80 students who showed up to vote and they're not registered. They're not registered in 00:35:12.270 --> 00:35:18.108 - the county. They're not even from the state. They just showed up because they decided they wanted to 00:35:18.108 --> 00:35:24.062 - vote and participate but they didn't understand that you have to get registered by a certain deadline. 00:35:24.258 --> 00:35:30.594 - that you have to get to the right precinct. And what happened is, I don't know if they thought their 00:35:30.594 --> 00:35:37.181 - provisional ballot would just magically count or what, but it didn't. And to think about all those votes 00:35:37.181 --> 00:35:43.454 - that are not being accounted for is really bad. So education is a key thing. And then secondly, the 00:35:43.454 --> 00:35:50.354 - other part of education is helping people to understand who is doing what to them. One reason why politicians 00:35:50.354 --> 00:35:52.926 - are not held accountable when they don't 00:35:53.026 --> 00:36:00.660 - address the needs of the people is because with this crazy media we have, social media, you can't figure 00:36:00.660 --> 00:36:07.930 - out who's doing what to whom. And so we gotta work much harder for people to understand what votes, 00:36:07.930 --> 00:36:15.491 - what parties are for their interests and against their interests. This is probably going to be our last 00:36:15.491 --> 00:36:21.598 - question. And it's from the audience. And I ran out of questions, I'm sorry. Sorry. 00:36:21.858 --> 00:36:28.951 - I just read the same one I just read in my head. Actually, what is your plan to support small businesses 00:36:28.951 --> 00:36:35.842 - in Indiana? Well, I think if you get back to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, one of the 00:36:35.842 --> 00:36:42.665 - biggest problems is they just got into this mindset of we're going to get the Fortune 500 company to 00:36:42.665 --> 00:36:49.758 - come build a big factory here because we're going to give them these tremendous benefits. We will outbid 00:36:49.890 --> 00:36:56.025 - the corporate welfare that we'll give to the people to get them here. And they ignored the ability of 00:36:56.025 --> 00:37:02.039 - the small businesses, the startups right here. And so this is one thing where I agree with Governor 00:37:02.039 --> 00:37:08.173 - Brown. He seems to be trying to redirect IEDC to be more focused toward something beyond just central 00:37:08.173 --> 00:37:14.248 - Indiana and kind of the big corporations and the big kind of long bomb deals like the leap district. 00:37:14.248 --> 00:37:16.894 - And so I think that we need to redirect our 00:37:17.026 --> 00:37:24.127 - Efforts so that small businesses that business that is prospering and it needs to get to the next level 00:37:24.127 --> 00:37:31.023 - but it needs some help to get there. How do we help them do that. And then we have to make sure that 00:37:31.023 --> 00:37:32.798 - that assistance gets out. 00:37:33.282 --> 00:37:38.922 - and across the state. And for Bloomington, it's particularly important that we support the tech sector, 00:37:38.922 --> 00:37:44.346 - right? So we have a tech park here. We have a lot of people working really hard to build off of the 00:37:44.346 --> 00:37:49.986 - industries we have now and to figure out how to get this kind of startup entrepreneurial economy going. 00:37:49.986 --> 00:37:55.681 - And I think that if we put more effort into that, we have an opportunity to start some small businesses, 00:37:55.681 --> 00:37:58.718 - some startups that could end up being quite substantial 00:37:58.914 --> 00:38:07.321 - companies that would really help our community because we need better, higher paying jobs in our community. 00:38:07.321 --> 00:38:15.417 - We don't have enough of those. You know, I am a pretty strong believer that one of the problems Indiana 00:38:15.417 --> 00:38:23.902 - has is I've been watching the state court, the giant corporations year over year, bringing them in and these 00:38:24.770 --> 00:38:33.984 - large national multinational corporations, they choke out smaller businesses that don't have the resources 00:38:33.984 --> 00:38:42.595 - or the infrastructures available. And one of the things that I really believe we need to work at in 00:38:42.595 --> 00:38:51.550 - the state house is putting a hard limit onto how many offices, branches, locations, what have you, that 00:38:52.194 --> 00:39:00.930 - certain corporation can have operating in the state. We have to have room for our smaller companies, 00:39:00.930 --> 00:39:09.580 - smaller businesses to thrive on their own without being overcrowded by companies that have 10 times 00:39:09.580 --> 00:39:18.576 - the muscle that they do and 100 times the advertising budget. And aside from that, I'm also researching 00:39:18.576 --> 00:39:19.614 - things like 00:39:19.746 --> 00:39:28.366 - you know, initiatives to help smaller businesses get their better footing going forward in their first 00:39:28.366 --> 00:39:36.986 - couple of years. You know, you're a new business owner, your first business. Maybe there is a way that 00:39:36.986 --> 00:39:45.438 - we can have the state forgive or comp your rent for your business in your first location, help build 00:39:45.438 --> 00:39:48.702 - a stronger foundation. Thank you both. 00:39:48.866 --> 00:39:57.334 - I now ask that we start with closing remarks if you don't mind getting us started. We'll have about 00:39:57.334 --> 00:40:06.224 - a minute and a half, 90 seconds, to give our closing remarks if that's okay. I think I'm up first. Okay. 00:40:06.224 --> 00:40:15.454 - All right. You know, one of the things that I think is really important if you're serving as a legislator is 00:40:15.746 --> 00:40:22.683 - to look around the hearing rooms and the hallways of the Capitol and ask yourself, who's not here? Because 00:40:22.683 --> 00:40:29.295 - oftentimes you hear only from the interest groups that can afford to have paid lobbyists at the State 00:40:29.295 --> 00:40:35.972 - House who are there constantly, who build the relationships, who become friendly with legislators. And 00:40:35.972 --> 00:40:42.585 - their viewpoints always get across. But there are many average everyday Hoosiers who aren't organized 00:40:42.585 --> 00:40:45.502 - in a way with the resources to have somebody 00:40:45.602 --> 00:40:52.454 - on the scene at the State House every day working for their interests. And so that's where the responsibility 00:40:52.454 --> 00:40:58.684 - of the legislators who represents all of the people within his or her district, that legislator has 00:40:58.684 --> 00:41:05.037 - to be thinking about who's not here, who's getting left out of the conversation. And that's one thing 00:41:05.037 --> 00:41:11.827 - that I really pride myself on. You know, so when the payday lenders show up and say, we need less regulation 00:41:11.827 --> 00:41:14.942 - because we need to give people access to capital, 00:41:15.330 --> 00:41:21.618 - I say, look guys, this is not Fortune 500 companies talking about. You're exploiting struggling people. 00:41:21.618 --> 00:41:27.845 - So let's not come up with some phony excuses for why you need stuff. We know what's going on here. And 00:41:27.845 --> 00:41:34.254 - so people need legislators who will call out those people who want to prey upon people who are struggling 00:41:34.254 --> 00:41:40.360 - the most. And so that's why I very much would like to be returned to the legislature. I'm asking the 00:41:40.360 --> 00:41:42.174 - voters to return me there for 00:41:42.370 --> 00:41:50.933 - another two years so I can continue working on those issues and representing all the people of District 00:41:50.933 --> 00:41:59.332 - 61. You know here in Indiana we elect the same people to tackle the same problems year after year and 00:41:59.332 --> 00:42:07.895 - we expect different results every time but that falls in line with the definition of insanity and we've 00:42:07.895 --> 00:42:11.518 - tried this same old same tactics every term 00:42:11.618 --> 00:42:19.199 - It's very clearly not working, hasn't been working for the last 20 years. We need people with different 00:42:19.199 --> 00:42:26.635 - perspectives, different backgrounds in the halls of power in the state government. And one thing that 00:42:26.635 --> 00:42:33.925 - we have not tried is getting people from the working class into the state house to actually work on 00:42:33.925 --> 00:42:35.966 - the working class problems. 00:42:36.130 --> 00:42:44.910 - 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 00:42:44.910 --> 00:42:53.603 - here to be that voice of working people who are struggling because I know what this is like. I feel 00:42:53.603 --> 00:43:02.556 - this pinch, this sting every single day. And I very genuinely believe that it's people like me who are 00:43:02.556 --> 00:43:04.382 - going to be the ones 00:43:04.546 --> 00:43:12.255 - who actually understand how to solve these problems and make this a state that works for all working 00:43:12.255 --> 00:43:19.887 - class people, not just the one percenters up on top. Thank you to our candidates for our discussion 00:43:19.887 --> 00:43:27.520 - tonight. On behalf of all forum sponsors, remember to vote. Election day is Tuesday, May 5th. Early 00:43:27.520 --> 00:43:31.870 - voting begins Tuesday, April 7th. Thank you again, guys. 00:43:39.586 --> 00:43:46.392 - Welcome, everybody. Good to see you here. Try to keep the mic in position so you can hear me. Welcome 00:43:46.392 --> 00:43:53.266 - to the public forum for candidates for Monroe County Commissioner. I'm your moderator, Steve Hinefeld, 00:43:53.266 --> 00:44:00.005 - affiliated with Limestone Post Magazine, Bloomington Press Club, and other stuff, primarily here for 00:44:00.005 --> 00:44:06.678 - Limestone Post Magazine, I guess, tonight. This forum is sponsored or hosted by the League of Women 00:44:06.678 --> 00:44:09.214 - Voters of Bloomington, Monroe County. 00:44:09.794 --> 00:44:18.886 - We're pleased to have as co-sponsors IU PACE, that's Political and Civic Engagement, Kappa Tau Omega 00:44:18.886 --> 00:44:28.428 - Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the Monroe County branch of the NAACP, Monroe County NOW, and South Central 00:44:28.428 --> 00:44:34.910 - Indiana Citizens Climate Lobby. Thanks to Katz for recording the event. 00:44:35.746 --> 00:44:43.597 - I'll take a moment to review the ground rules so that everybody knows the candidates have received these 00:44:43.597 --> 00:44:51.298 - in advance. I believe each candidate will have one minute to make an opening statement. The candidates 00:44:51.298 --> 00:44:59.224 - will then respond in turn to questions posed by me, rotating which candidate will answer first. Responses 00:44:59.224 --> 00:45:03.710 - are limited to 90 seconds unless I specify a different time 00:45:03.874 --> 00:45:11.105 - It may be that some questions are more complicated than that or you don't have to go 90 seconds. You 00:45:11.105 --> 00:45:18.335 - don't need to use your full time. Audience members are invited to submit questions on the cards that 00:45:18.335 --> 00:45:25.566 - are provided. So please raise your hand if you need a card or if you have filled out a card and have 00:45:25.566 --> 00:45:32.510 - one to be collected and brought up here to be read. I'll try to get to the questions that I can. 00:45:33.314 --> 00:45:41.222 - I'm trying to avoid duplication if I can and try to cover a range of topics if we can hopefully. Each 00:45:41.222 --> 00:45:49.053 - candidate after we go through the questions at the end of our 45 minute session, each candidate will 00:45:49.053 --> 00:45:57.348 - be asked to make a closing statement for one minute. The candidates have agreed to have a civil discourse. 00:45:57.348 --> 00:46:00.062 - Monica over there is keeping time. 00:46:00.546 --> 00:46:09.301 - let the candidates know when they're approaching the one-minute mark and when they hit it and so candidates 00:46:09.301 --> 00:46:17.974 - please try to agree to that. So our candidates are Trent Deckard and David Henry in the Democratic primary 00:46:17.974 --> 00:46:25.918 - for county commissioner the one seat that's up this year or yes this year. So let's just go ahead 00:46:26.114 --> 00:46:32.135 - go alphabetically and Trent you go first and then we'll rotate back and forth. Thank you very much and 00:46:32.135 --> 00:46:37.982 - good evening friends. It is wonderful to be with you and I want to thank the league for hosting and 00:46:37.982 --> 00:46:43.886 - Steve for moderating and that wonderful panel that we had before. My name is Trent Decker. Everybody 00:46:43.886 --> 00:46:45.406 - hearing me okay? Awesome. 00:46:45.730 --> 00:46:52.442 - My name is Trent Deckard. I am currently a member of the Monroe County Council I was caucused into my 00:46:52.442 --> 00:46:59.021 - seat in 2019 and elected in Monroe County in 2020 and then again in 2024 and I'm very pleased to be 00:46:59.021 --> 00:47:05.733 - running for Monroe County Commissioner for district one on a community of care platform and With this 00:47:05.733 --> 00:47:11.326 - I build into this community of care building a little bit on some of the things that 00:47:11.458 --> 00:47:16.710 - that I've done in my life. I've worked in this community for a long time in a variety of roles as a 00:47:16.710 --> 00:47:22.224 - congressional aide for former representative Barron Hill, as an agency head and co-director of elections 00:47:22.224 --> 00:47:27.581 - for the state of Indiana, and as a chief of staff for the Indiana House Democratic Caucus. And simply 00:47:27.581 --> 00:47:32.990 - put, I believe the community of care means that we take experience, we take the elected officials that 00:47:32.990 --> 00:47:38.610 - we have, and we work together in a collaborative fashion to get things done. And I look forward to getting 00:47:38.610 --> 00:47:39.870 - into that this evening. 00:47:45.122 --> 00:47:49.790 - Good evening and thank you. There we go. All right. We're green. 00:47:49.954 --> 00:47:55.342 - Good evening and thank you to legal women voters and partners for hosting tonight's conversation. I 00:47:55.342 --> 00:48:01.000 - am David Henry. I'm running to be your next Monroe County commissioner because too many people in Monroe 00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:06.550 - County ask the same basic questions every primary every election cycle. Can I afford to live here. Can 00:48:06.550 --> 00:48:12.423 - I find a career here. Can I build a future here. Am I safe from the decisions in Indianapolis and Washington 00:48:12.423 --> 00:48:15.710 - here. And they are the same questions asked term after term. 00:48:15.906 --> 00:48:20.599 - Monroe County is just not working for so many people in our community and the facts don't lie. When 00:48:20.599 --> 00:48:25.293 - one out of every four of our friends and neighbors live in poverty, when half the kids that went to 00:48:25.293 --> 00:48:30.080 - this school in the MCCSC this morning are on free and reduced lunches, and most people are struggling 00:48:30.080 --> 00:48:35.102 - to make the rent, let alone a mortgage, we need a new direction in Monroe County. We've had conversations, 00:48:35.102 --> 00:48:39.889 - we've had studies, we've had meetings, we've had plans, but families are still getting priced out and 00:48:39.889 --> 00:48:44.676 - too many young people don't see a pathway to stay here. These are serious times that require courage, 00:48:44.676 --> 00:48:45.662 - action, and results. 00:48:45.794 --> 00:48:51.918 - That means a change not only in how we do business in the county government but in our county commission 00:48:51.918 --> 00:48:57.750 - and how they see the community making it easier and not harder for people to live here and not just 00:48:57.750 --> 00:49:03.874 - survive living in Monroe County but thrive living here too. I look forward to getting into the questions 00:49:03.874 --> 00:49:09.765 - tonight. Thank you for being here. Thank you candidates. Please do take note of the time. So we have 00:49:09.765 --> 00:49:15.422 - some starter questions that were submitted to the league in advance by sponsoring organizations. 00:49:15.554 --> 00:49:21.839 - I'm gonna start with those, but whoever's gathering the cards, get them to me when you get them. So 00:49:21.839 --> 00:49:28.438 - please give an example of how you've worked with people on opposing sides to accomplish something. Yeah, 00:49:28.438 --> 00:49:34.849 - is it me first? Let's rotate. David, can you go first, please? Good question, and thank you for that. 00:49:34.849 --> 00:49:41.134 - I had the privilege of being the only person up here that served as president of our local election 00:49:41.134 --> 00:49:45.534 - board, which means I had to sit next to a Republican for over a year. 00:49:45.666 --> 00:49:51.550 - and try to make local election decisions to benefit the whole community. 00:49:51.714 --> 00:49:56.793 - election board was trying to move toward a vote anywhere center model for our community which would 00:49:56.793 --> 00:50:02.024 - mean that making it easy to vote or buy groceries is driving a car. It's stopping to stopping the vote 00:50:02.024 --> 00:50:07.205 - on the way home from work. That required a lot of work with our Republican colleagues. In fact we had 00:50:07.205 --> 00:50:12.284 - the vote to move forward on vote centers for the county with the Republican vote on that committee. 00:50:12.284 --> 00:50:17.464 - Judge Benkert was very much in favor of that as well as myself and my successor John Fernandez on the 00:50:17.464 --> 00:50:21.680 - election board. That required a lot of negotiation. It required setting up a truly 00:50:21.680 --> 00:50:27.495 - bipartisan committee of experts on both sides of the aisle and independent voters in the community including 00:50:27.495 --> 00:50:32.510 - with the league to help inform that plan. And so it was about setting a goal, doing the work. 00:50:33.346 --> 00:50:37.616 - doing the research and presenting that information to our community. Now I have to say while we had 00:50:37.616 --> 00:50:41.886 - the Republican vote I didn't necessarily have the county council's vote at the time. The resolution 00:50:41.886 --> 00:50:46.455 - was never brought forward by the council president. Maybe he'd like to explain that today as we're sitting 00:50:46.455 --> 00:50:50.896 - here. But nonetheless working together working collaboratively bipartisanly is something that I've done 00:50:50.896 --> 00:50:55.166 - in our community when we've needed to get stuff done of mutual concern. Thank you for the question. 00:50:58.530 --> 00:51:04.127 - Well serving on the county council since 2019 it's one of the few bipartisan bodies that we have in 00:51:04.127 --> 00:51:09.892 - Monroe County there is a Republican on that and counselor hawk will tell you that while I don't always 00:51:09.892 --> 00:51:15.656 - agree with her a lot of the time she definitely is a commanding presence and you have to work with her 00:51:15.656 --> 00:51:19.518 - in that role in a variety of different subjects I've done just that. 00:51:19.714 --> 00:51:25.296 - Kind of going a little bit to what David spoke, I actually learned about working in a bipartisan fashion 00:51:25.296 --> 00:51:30.613 - as an agency head. So I served as the Democrat co-director of the state election division, which is 00:51:30.613 --> 00:51:36.088 - one Democrat co-director, one Republican co-director, and literally everything they do from paying the 00:51:36.088 --> 00:51:41.405 - light bills to printing the manuals that some of our election administrative staff, some of them in 00:51:41.405 --> 00:51:44.382 - the audience, everything they do has to be agreed upon. 00:51:44.642 --> 00:51:50.322 - we every day coming into that office had to reach agreement. And sometimes we had to reach agreement 00:51:50.322 --> 00:51:56.228 - on very critical things such as voterless maintenance. So when you hear things about voter purges, other 00:51:56.228 --> 00:52:01.852 - things like that, we had to come to safety discussions about how you can have voterless maintenance 00:52:01.852 --> 00:52:07.645 - that protects voters and moves voters forward. Speaking of which, when I was co-director, vote centers 00:52:07.645 --> 00:52:09.726 - were first conceived and thought of. 00:52:09.858 --> 00:52:15.787 - And I actually was the voice on that that talked to counties how we responsibly adopt those so that 00:52:15.787 --> 00:52:22.190 - you can be guaranteed that your distance to a voting location is not extreme or burdensome. The Republicans 00:52:22.190 --> 00:52:28.474 - at that time wanted to let vote centers run wild. So I support vote centers here as long as we're keeping 00:52:28.474 --> 00:52:34.462 - existing polling places and access doesn't go away. We can't go back, friends. We got to go forward. 00:52:37.154 --> 00:52:43.842 - I'm gonna give each of you another 20 seconds to talk about vote centers since the topic was raised. 00:52:43.842 --> 00:52:50.596 - Trent, can you go first? Yeah, so a vote center allows you to vote at any voting location on election 00:52:50.596 --> 00:52:57.416 - day. And if it's done well, you have ample locations to choose from. It means that when you go to vote 00:52:57.416 --> 00:53:04.038 - anywhere in the county, you can vote at that location. If it's done extremely well, you have enough 00:53:04.038 --> 00:53:04.766 - early vote 00:53:04.898 --> 00:53:10.385 - so that folks can vote early, which is something that they like to do here. And you take pressure off 00:53:10.385 --> 00:53:15.872 - election day vote, which can become like a pressure valve. And so theoretically, if you don't do that 00:53:15.872 --> 00:53:20.606 - right, you make a huge mistake. If you do it really well, you make a voter convenience. 00:53:22.338 --> 00:53:27.068 - Thank you. I will say and I appreciate the walkthrough and the commentary on the process. It just didn't 00:53:27.068 --> 00:53:31.573 - happen here. We weren't going to be the first county the 10th of 25th or 50th in the state to adopt 00:53:31.573 --> 00:53:36.213 - vote centers in the county. The requirement was our county commissioners and our county council needed 00:53:36.213 --> 00:53:40.808 - to pass a resolution to move forward on it. We had the votes on the election board to pull it off. We 00:53:40.808 --> 00:53:45.313 - had a 50 something page report from a bipartisan committee that answered all those questions and we 00:53:45.313 --> 00:53:49.998 - never had the resolution from the county council president brought forward. I think that's unfortunate. 00:53:49.998 --> 00:53:50.494 - Thank you. 00:53:53.826 --> 00:54:01.433 - Okay, going back to the submitted questions. Who's going first this time? I've kind of lost track with 00:54:01.433 --> 00:54:08.819 - the follow-up there. You went first last time. Okay, David, since you brought up affordable housing 00:54:08.819 --> 00:54:16.795 - in your opening statement, what actions, if any, would you take as a commissioner, should the commissioners 00:54:16.795 --> 00:54:20.414 - take, to address the need for affordable housing 00:54:20.546 --> 00:54:26.573 - Keeping in mind that we have to talk about things that are that are feasible and affordable in itself 00:54:26.573 --> 00:54:32.660 - and can be accomplished. I'm sorry you said feasible and affordable. That was your comment Steve. Yeah 00:54:32.660 --> 00:54:34.846 - I just want to make sure I heard it. 00:54:35.202 --> 00:54:40.124 - I'm sorry, what? You said feasible, that was the word you used? Actions that are feasible. Thank you, 00:54:40.124 --> 00:54:44.949 - I appreciate the question. I have the good fortune of representing our county council on the Monroe 00:54:44.949 --> 00:54:49.920 - County Plan Commission, and that's really the front line of the discussion between city and county and 00:54:49.920 --> 00:54:54.890 - how we're going to grow as a community. Our community has not had a plan since 2012 on how to grow our 00:54:54.890 --> 00:54:59.812 - community. The comprehensive plan of the county is antiquated. We have a development ordinance in the 00:54:59.812 --> 00:55:04.734 - county that makes a lot of decisions about how we grow and develop in the community that's quite old, 00:55:04.802 --> 00:55:09.701 - and quite antiquated in its thinking. The county needs to be a partner in how we grow as a region. And 00:55:09.701 --> 00:55:14.933 - for too long, the county, the board of commissioners, the commissioner majority has treated that conversation 00:55:14.933 --> 00:55:15.742 - as an either or. 00:55:15.810 --> 00:55:20.532 - City verse county city or town verse gown Ellisville verse Bloomington and we need to move away from 00:55:20.532 --> 00:55:25.347 - that because the truth is this as Each generation moves up as kids in this building that are in eighth 00:55:25.347 --> 00:55:30.068 - grade now There will be seniors graduating high school at the end of this term look just try to stay 00:55:30.068 --> 00:55:34.837 - in Monroe County They cannot find an affordable place to live. They cannot find it a career not a job 00:55:34.837 --> 00:55:39.792 - But a career that will keep them here and make them a second third fourth eighth generation Monroe County 00:55:39.792 --> 00:55:44.841 - resident This is a vital issue for our community now the steps that we need to take are having a commission 00:55:44.841 --> 00:55:45.776 - commission majority 00:55:45.776 --> 00:55:50.343 - that are looking ahead to those generations and starting to think through how we develop against a triple 00:55:50.343 --> 00:55:54.738 - bottom line, what I call our triple bottom line. Are we taking care of our people? Are we taking care 00:55:54.738 --> 00:55:59.176 - of the planet and the environment that we inhabit in Monroe County? And are we helping to build middle 00:55:59.176 --> 00:56:03.528 - class prosperity that is becoming harder and harder for more people to reach? We need to revisit the 00:56:03.528 --> 00:56:07.923 - county development ordinance and we need a plan for the county that attracts the 21st century jobs of 00:56:07.923 --> 00:56:12.404 - this community, tech jobs, but also high paying labor jobs and wage jobs, whether you work on your feet 00:56:12.404 --> 00:56:14.558 - or with your hands or with your heart. Thank you. 00:56:17.730 --> 00:56:23.247 - Well, I agree with David on a lot around affordable housing in the county being an active partner. And 00:56:23.247 --> 00:56:28.872 - the way that this gets done is something unique that we are going to try in politics for a change. We're 00:56:28.872 --> 00:56:34.389 - going to actually say we're going to collaborate together and then we're going to actually lead people 00:56:34.389 --> 00:56:39.906 - to collaboration. Too often, and some of the elected officials in the room, they know what I'm getting 00:56:39.906 --> 00:56:45.370 - ready to say here. Too often we get in the room and somebody says, hi everybody, I've got a plan. And 00:56:45.370 --> 00:56:46.334 - here's that plan. 00:56:46.498 --> 00:56:52.485 - And I just need you all to back that plan and then we'll have it. On an issue like housing, where we 00:56:52.485 --> 00:56:58.591 - have a lot of diverse opinions on how that works, we need elected officials that can get people to the 00:56:58.591 --> 00:57:04.104 - table to have the tough conversations. And when I say people to the table, I mean residents, 00:57:04.104 --> 00:57:10.269 - business leaders, concerned parties, who can come to the table and then say, how do we do this and take 00:57:10.269 --> 00:57:15.486 - care of your concerns? How do we do this and move forward versus what we've had friends 00:57:15.586 --> 00:57:22.330 - And that is my way or the highway that leads to stalemate. You know, doing the same thing over and over 00:57:22.330 --> 00:57:28.944 - again is continuing to put people into office that just hand us a plan and then the plan gets debated 00:57:28.944 --> 00:57:35.493 - or they get defeated. Let's actually do something so that the west side of the county and beyond can 00:57:35.493 --> 00:57:42.366 - actually look at growth that folks have meaningful input on and also for those generations who need a job 00:57:42.690 --> 00:57:52.235 - and we need to track those jobs, they have a house that they can go to that we can begin to talk about 00:57:52.235 --> 00:58:01.873 - child care, which is one of the giant headaches of anyone trying to bring a child up in this community. 00:58:01.873 --> 00:58:11.326 - Thank you. How will you ensure that Monroe County prioritizes public safety and fiscal responsibility 00:58:11.682 --> 00:58:19.524 - while protecting families and students in our public schools if local law enforcement is asked or forced 00:58:19.524 --> 00:58:27.142 - to cooperate with ICE? A lot going on in that question. There is a lot. Is it me? I'm sorry. Yes. How 00:58:27.142 --> 00:58:34.909 - will you ensure that Monroe County prioritizes public safety and fiscal responsibility while protecting 00:58:34.909 --> 00:58:40.734 - families and students in our public schools if local law enforcement is asked 00:58:41.218 --> 00:58:49.462 - or coerced to cooperate with ICE. So this is, I think, asking for kind of a statement of philosophy 00:58:49.462 --> 00:58:58.366 - regarding that general topic, rather than necessarily specifics, if I may editorialize. You're doing great. 00:58:58.466 --> 00:59:04.624 - So when I look at that question, I take it into two parts in my philosophy. Number one, we have a sheriff 00:59:04.624 --> 00:59:10.550 - that is very publicly out and about and talking to people about how public safety works, as it should 00:59:10.550 --> 00:59:16.302 - be. I'm not the sheriff, nor am I the judge, nor the prosecutor. We have very competent, qualified 00:59:16.302 --> 00:59:22.460 - individuals doing that role. As commissioner, my job is to support them and encourage them in that public 00:59:22.460 --> 00:59:27.166 - outreach. And also to start by simply focusing on individuals in this community. 00:59:27.330 --> 00:59:32.988 - whoever they represent or whatever their background and say, what makes you feel safe? What makes you 00:59:32.988 --> 00:59:38.924 - not feel safe? And I want to jump over to ICE on that very note. As a member of the IU Bloomington Faculty 00:59:38.924 --> 00:59:44.582 - Council, I've been a loud voice about ICE encroachment on this campus. And frankly, friends, we said, 00:59:44.582 --> 00:59:50.462 - hell no. We don't want that. Now, they've tried to gut the Faculty Council, but we still have our voices. 00:59:50.530 --> 00:59:56.721 - under this constitution and in this country. And so ice and bullying is not welcome in this community 00:59:56.721 --> 01:00:03.276 - as long as I'm a commissioner and I will work with any other elected official that will help me championing 01:00:03.276 --> 01:00:09.709 - that. And it is our job to stand at the doors or any door that we need to to prevent a bully from getting 01:00:09.709 --> 01:00:15.960 - either a child in this school or a child in this community or any person that wishes to make this home 01:00:15.960 --> 01:00:18.206 - and otherwise has caused us no harm. 01:00:18.594 --> 01:00:25.713 - That's who we are in Monroe County, and that's what I would do both on safety and when it comes to thinking 01:00:25.713 --> 01:00:32.370 - about ICE encroachment. Every elected official, whether you're a commissioner, a county counselor, a 01:00:32.370 --> 01:00:39.094 - prosecutor, a judge, a sheriff, has taken an oath of the Constitution. That oath for the Constitution 01:00:39.094 --> 01:00:46.278 - has a Fourth Amendment in it. We do due process rights in Monroe County. I took an oath of the Constitution. 01:00:46.278 --> 01:00:48.190 - I'm not going to violate it. 01:00:48.514 --> 01:00:54.269 - for anybody, and as I've said in other candidate forums, this is the difference in changing the culture 01:00:54.269 --> 01:01:00.025 - of the county courthouse, where a county commission has a county legal department that needs to frankly 01:01:00.025 --> 01:01:05.835 - get prepared to get into the good trouble, because we're going to have to be dealing with, in very short 01:01:05.835 --> 01:01:11.369 - order, Senate Bill 76 has been signed, a attorney general who is seeking to harm our community. And 01:01:11.369 --> 01:01:16.350 - I think that's as basic as that. We took an oath. And to go beyond that, I will say this. 01:01:16.450 --> 01:01:22.449 - Leadership is about more than just providing support to other elected officials. County commissioners 01:01:22.449 --> 01:01:28.390 - don't just have their constitutional duties of zoning and planning and holding meetings on Thursdays 01:01:28.390 --> 01:01:34.271 - at 10 o'clock, they actually lead in the community. And that means that if we do have other elected 01:01:34.271 --> 01:01:37.918 - officials that are exercising their views locally, it's okay. 01:01:38.146 --> 01:01:42.730 - for the board of commissioners to call out through leadership what needs to be done and not done in 01:01:42.730 --> 01:01:47.405 - our community. There's Indiana code, which you must follow, but there's administrative rules locally, 01:01:47.405 --> 01:01:52.401 - which are really up to other candidates like judges and prosecutors that run for office on their preferences 01:01:52.401 --> 01:01:57.030 - on how they'll work or not work with ICE. We've been very fortunate that the only sheriff in Indiana 01:01:57.030 --> 01:02:01.614 - in 92 counties, Ruben Martez, said no when it comes to working with administrative orders from ICE, 01:02:01.614 --> 01:02:04.318 - which is not the same as a court bench order to cooperate. 01:02:04.386 --> 01:02:11.042 - We need to get behind that sheriff. We need county commissioners that will say what I've said out loud 01:02:11.042 --> 01:02:17.891 - and to remember their Fourth Amendment oath to defend the due process rights of people in this community. 01:02:17.891 --> 01:02:24.353 - Thank you. So we have several questions about the jail issue. Not surprisingly, I'm going to read a 01:02:24.353 --> 01:02:30.944 - couple of them and ask you to respond to those and then possibly a follow up as well. So submitted in 01:02:30.944 --> 01:02:34.046 - advance, how will you ensure that Monroe County 01:02:34.914 --> 01:02:44.311 - I'm sorry. How will you balance a new jail's civil rights compliance with calls for expanded incarceration, 01:02:44.311 --> 01:02:52.924 - including state legislation, state laws, and also related, the county council voted down the pork, 01:02:52.924 --> 01:03:02.147 - what is it, pork 46, the location between here and Ellisville for the jail. What have you done to advance 01:03:02.147 --> 01:03:04.670 - the project since that time? 01:03:06.402 --> 01:03:12.198 - to start with. David, I believe you go first this time. Sure. Thank you. That's a lot. There's a lot 01:03:12.198 --> 01:03:17.995 - there. Well, let's start with civil rights because I think that's important for the sponsors of this 01:03:17.995 --> 01:03:24.021 - event in the room. Once upon a time, I was on this side of the desk as the chairman of the Monroe County 01:03:24.021 --> 01:03:26.718 - Democrats when, at a very critical moment, our 01:03:26.786 --> 01:03:31.675 - County Commissioners and County Council were aiming toward building the very large justice center on 01:03:31.675 --> 01:03:36.710 - North Park. I joined with organizations that state our party's values, that we wanted to see prevention 01:03:36.710 --> 01:03:41.745 - and diversion and restorative justice policy inside whatever this quarter billion dollar facility would 01:03:41.745 --> 01:03:46.731 - be. And after many meetings, the County Council made a call, they took a vote to move it to North Park 01:03:46.731 --> 01:03:51.669 - at a time when we thought it'd be about $100 million. And between November of 2024 and February 2025, 01:03:51.669 --> 01:03:56.752 - the price got up to $257 million, with no explanation from your current County Commissioners on how that 01:03:56.752 --> 01:04:01.481 - happened I think I was wrong and so when I got into office imagine when you take office say congratulations 01:04:01.481 --> 01:04:05.246 - you're here by the way this this price of this project doubled and organizations like 01:04:05.346 --> 01:04:09.705 - Now in the NAACP in this room, we're still concerned about the disparate impact of filling a jail with 01:04:09.705 --> 01:04:13.938 - people that are of color in our community. But now we've built a potentially or building facilities 01:04:13.938 --> 01:04:18.424 - much larger. I had a problem with that. I had no problem leading that charge with my colleagues to cancel 01:04:18.424 --> 01:04:22.742 - the project at North Park because it was too big. It was overwrought. It did not answer the community 01:04:22.742 --> 01:04:27.101 - values of this community. Are we working on prevention? Are we working on restorative justice? Because 01:04:27.101 --> 01:04:31.418 - leadership, you lead from your seat. And it's not about deferring to others behind closed doors about 01:04:31.418 --> 01:04:35.312 - what they want to see in the justice center. It's about standing up for values. This is not 01:04:35.312 --> 01:04:39.835 - of time for calm in our community. We have to address this head on. What have we done since? The good 01:04:39.835 --> 01:04:44.447 - news is we've listened to the public and we are trying to move that facility back downtown near service 01:04:44.447 --> 01:04:48.971 - providers and I hope in future iterations and discussions start to bring prevention and diversion and 01:04:48.971 --> 01:04:53.627 - restorative justice activities back into this conversation because if I want to raise taxes on something 01:04:53.627 --> 01:04:57.086 - it better be to help keep people out of jail instead of putting people in it. 01:05:00.898 --> 01:05:07.042 - So one of the things that I noticed when I first got into office in 2019, when I would ask questions 01:05:07.042 --> 01:05:13.124 - about our jail facility and our ongoing settlement with the ACLU, people would say, well, you know, 01:05:13.124 --> 01:05:19.268 - you don't want to get into all that. And when it came down to questions of constitutional care about 01:05:19.268 --> 01:05:25.533 - how that facility is for the people that are actually in there, not the folks talking about the people 01:05:25.533 --> 01:05:27.966 - that are in there, it's not meeting its 01:05:28.258 --> 01:05:34.642 - needs not meeting constitutional care needs and the constitution has to mean something in this country 01:05:34.642 --> 01:05:41.274 - 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 01:05:41.274 --> 01:05:47.659 - we had a plan for a time cost did go up because we have a thing called co-location that means that our 01:05:47.659 --> 01:05:54.229 - facility is the interaction it has with other agencies other departments was important the states changed 01:05:54.229 --> 01:05:57.886 - the mechanism by which we fund what has not changed is our 01:05:58.210 --> 01:06:05.215 - need to make sure that for folks receiving medical care in our medical bay in the jail, that they receive 01:06:05.215 --> 01:06:12.089 - constitutional care in a facility that we all would not object to, were we in there, right? And we have 01:06:12.089 --> 01:06:19.094 - to move forward. But what I've noticed over the years are the excuses for not moving forward, they become 01:06:19.094 --> 01:06:23.390 - either more subtle, more sophisticated, or always a good reason. 01:06:23.490 --> 01:06:30.575 - Folks, we've got to move forward with this. And I'm pleased to say that the council now and the commissioners 01:06:30.575 --> 01:06:37.209 - now are now looking at new sites that will hopefully meet the needs of what a constitutional care jail 01:06:37.209 --> 01:06:43.908 - will look like because the sheriff has kind of reached a limit on what he can now do. Thanks. So follow 01:06:43.908 --> 01:06:50.800 - up on that from the audience. What would be the ideal location for a new jail? 20 seconds. It's at Trent's 01:06:50.800 --> 01:06:52.990 - house. That's where it should go. 01:06:53.058 --> 01:06:57.758 - I want to it's we've we've defined terms there it needs to stay in the city limits of Bloomington it 01:06:57.758 --> 01:07:02.504 - needs to be close to service providers and people that can help with keeping people out instead of in 01:07:02.504 --> 01:07:07.343 - and making sure they're close to our services so in the city limits is where we're aiming the good news 01:07:07.343 --> 01:07:12.229 - is the commissioners after a bit of time are coming around to this the current commissioners but I think 01:07:12.229 --> 01:07:16.975 - the idea that saying well we had a plan and we would have got away with it too if it weren't for Mike 01:07:16.975 --> 01:07:21.721 - Braun is a little too far to go here and I think the idea and excuses meaning moving forward it's not 01:07:21.721 --> 01:07:23.024 - excuses it's a civil rights 01:07:23.024 --> 01:07:29.696 - and making sure we're not overspending taxpayer dollars to build a palace instead of answering the specific 01:07:29.696 --> 01:07:35.936 - questions of constitutional care of overcrowding and exercise in that facility. Thank you. Well once 01:07:35.936 --> 01:07:42.114 - we're done with the politics we still have to get back to having a constitutional care jail and the 01:07:42.114 --> 01:07:46.686 - bottom line is on location it has to be a place that meets the needs of a 01:07:46.818 --> 01:07:52.632 - access to the facility it also has to meet the need of how do you now allocate or deal with the fact 01:07:52.632 --> 01:07:58.733 - that you are not co-located how do you do that and then also we have partners that are also in government 01:07:58.733 --> 01:08:04.547 - the city of bloomington we heard from their council they want to weigh in on this we also heard from 01:08:04.547 --> 01:08:10.534 - residents that they want to weigh in so again i go back to collaboration friends we got to be very wary 01:08:10.534 --> 01:08:12.606 - of my way or the highway approaches 01:08:12.738 --> 01:08:20.093 - on how these things work because that has put us in some of the messes that we're in. Okay, thanks. 01:08:20.093 --> 01:08:27.668 - So here's a question submitted in advance as well. What would you do to increase residents' confidence 01:08:27.668 --> 01:08:35.244 - in county government? But I think I want to precede that by saying, how would you assess Monroe County 01:08:35.244 --> 01:08:36.862 - residents' confidence 01:08:36.994 --> 01:08:42.921 - in county government? Do you think it's high? Do you think it's low? Do you think people aren't aware 01:08:42.921 --> 01:08:48.790 - of it? Do you think people know what county government does? And what would you do to make them more 01:08:48.790 --> 01:08:54.602 - confident in county government? Your turn. So one of the things you learn in a campaign at doors is 01:08:54.602 --> 01:09:00.587 - you get the honest truth from people and there's nothing like a Saturday morning when someone's in the 01:09:00.587 --> 01:09:06.398 - robe and they're not real happy to see you there for some of these things that we're talking about. 01:09:06.786 --> 01:09:11.920 - And friends, I heard it Saturday morning. Do you know what they think? They think we fight too much, 01:09:11.920 --> 01:09:17.156 - that we don't get enough done. And when you say, but you know it's about, and but it's about this, but 01:09:17.156 --> 01:09:22.392 - it's also, they say, yup, yup, more excuses. How are you getting it done? And how are you working with 01:09:22.392 --> 01:09:27.628 - the city? And how are you working with the town? And how are you not leaning heavily on others? That's 01:09:27.628 --> 01:09:32.965 - what it is. Because at the end of the day, our folks in our county, they have a million different things 01:09:32.965 --> 01:09:33.982 - that they're doing. 01:09:34.082 --> 01:09:39.737 - They're dealing with academic deadlines. They're dealing with bills. They're dealing with health care 01:09:39.737 --> 01:09:45.448 - visits that never end or health care visits they can't get in the case of our county. And so they want 01:09:45.448 --> 01:09:51.546 - us to go to work. And they want us to think a little less of ourselves. They want us to have some self-esteem 01:09:51.546 --> 01:09:57.091 - but not shut down our processes. And so I think that we all could take a page out of being a little 01:09:57.091 --> 01:10:03.134 - bit more humble in our role, a little bit more self-serving. And it's probably time for us to reflect on how 01:10:03.234 --> 01:10:09.776 - things get done by us being more collaborative and trying to figure out how do we get more people in 01:10:09.776 --> 01:10:16.578 - the room? It's the number one thing I hear. How do you get more people into the room so we can get these 01:10:16.578 --> 01:10:23.120 - hard things discussed and figure out ways that we can move forward together? Another thing I hear at 01:10:23.120 --> 01:10:30.116 - doors, and I don't disagree that the straw poll on county government's not great for our elected officials. 01:10:30.116 --> 01:10:32.318 - I think for our county employees, 01:10:32.546 --> 01:10:37.017 - Our frontline workers are doing a great job. They need support from their elected officials to make 01:10:37.017 --> 01:10:41.890 - sure department heads are supporting our frontline workers which doesn't always happen in county government. 01:10:41.890 --> 01:10:46.360 - We've had some incredible turnover in some of our departments because we're not doing the oversight 01:10:46.360 --> 01:10:50.831 - to ask the hard questions in public. Collaboration is just a tool in the toolkit. It's not the goal 01:10:50.831 --> 01:10:52.798 - and it should not be the goal in a primary. 01:10:52.930 --> 01:10:57.196 - It should be about results. Are we delivering results in our community or is it four more years 01:10:57.196 --> 01:11:01.640 - of collaboration and listening sessions? Because that's the Democratic Party's favorite tool in the 01:11:01.640 --> 01:11:06.440 - toolkit when we have a hard problem, is we kick it down the road another four years with listening sessions 01:11:06.440 --> 01:11:11.062 - in town halls. I hear something different at doors, maybe we're at different doors. It's about results. 01:11:11.062 --> 01:11:15.239 - And when you look back on the longer someone is in office, six years, 12 years, in some cases 01:11:15.239 --> 01:11:19.728 - the commissioners have been in office since 2009 at the beginning of our lawsuit with the ACLU, they 01:11:19.728 --> 01:11:20.350 - want results. 01:11:20.642 --> 01:11:25.577 - They want to know that someone has set a goal, that we're holding county government to a standard, that 01:11:25.577 --> 01:11:30.512 - they show up and they know that when they get a building permit, they're going to get their stuff built 01:11:30.512 --> 01:11:35.305 - in a short amount of time, not 14 months to fix a garage. It's getting to results and supporting our 01:11:35.305 --> 01:11:40.050 - staff to do that. And we do that by focusing on ideas, because elections are really about ideas. We 01:11:40.050 --> 01:11:44.795 - do the listening before we file for office. At least that's the way I've always run campaigns since 01:11:44.795 --> 01:11:50.110 - I was 16 years old, running people for judge back in Ohio. We run on ideas. This is the League of Women Voters. 01:11:50.626 --> 01:11:55.878 - You know, Charlotte Zitlow didn't run as a hat. She ran on issues. You bring your issues to the table 01:11:55.878 --> 01:12:01.131 - and you put them before the public and we vote on them to get results in our community. Okay, thanks. 01:12:01.131 --> 01:12:06.744 - This is a question I've always wanted to ask somebody in county government, so I'm going to take moderator's 01:12:06.744 --> 01:12:11.893 - privilege and ask this question. So the commissioners represent all the residents of Monroe County. 01:12:11.893 --> 01:12:13.438 - A majority of those residents 01:12:13.954 --> 01:12:20.857 - who are in Monroe County, who pay county taxes and so on, vote in county elections, live in incorporated 01:12:20.857 --> 01:12:27.695 - areas. Majority actually live in the city of Bloomington. A fair number live in the town of Ellisville, 01:12:27.695 --> 01:12:34.400 - a few in the town of Steinsville. A minority live in unincorporated areas. As commissioner, how would 01:12:34.400 --> 01:12:41.041 - you balance those different, those disparate, and sometimes competing interests between incorporated 01:12:41.041 --> 01:12:42.750 - and unincorporated areas? 01:12:42.882 --> 01:12:48.830 - one example that comes up was annexation. And I'm sure there are others you can think of. 01:12:49.698 --> 01:12:54.352 - And David, I think that's a good question. No, it's a great question, because when you're knocking doors 01:12:54.352 --> 01:12:58.918 - in incorporated spaces, they don't understand. People are like, are we having an election, and who are 01:12:58.918 --> 01:13:03.706 - you, and how do you work for the mayor, is usually the question you get. County government has an essential 01:13:03.706 --> 01:13:08.272 - role, and it's opaque. It's a very old institution in our state constitution. It does require a little 01:13:08.272 --> 01:13:12.704 - education at the door about how city and county should work together, how unincorporated spaces and 01:13:12.704 --> 01:13:17.182 - smaller towns should work together in our community. But I think, as I said in my opening statement, 01:13:17.182 --> 01:13:19.664 - that's been our challenge. I think for the past decade, 01:13:19.664 --> 01:13:25.084 - and a half we've set a tone in our county courthouse that says it is either or. It's city versus county. 01:13:25.084 --> 01:13:30.245 - It's town versus gown. It's rural versus urban. Instead of thinking through how as a region we grow 01:13:30.245 --> 01:13:35.510 - and work together. You'll meet people in townships that understand that while they didn't necessarily 01:13:35.510 --> 01:13:36.542 - care for the city's 01:13:36.994 --> 01:13:41.505 - Approach the annexation this cycle they understand cities grow they just didn't like the way it was 01:13:41.505 --> 01:13:46.106 - growing that particular way. That's very much a conversation Van Buren Township where I live no one's 01:13:46.106 --> 01:13:50.617 - saying we shouldn't be a growing county they're saying they were concerns about the manner by which 01:13:50.617 --> 01:13:55.038 - the previous administration want about it and I think that's important to say that the idea that. 01:14:02.306 --> 01:14:07.678 - All right, what the county commissioner should do is do that education at the door. 01:14:08.002 --> 01:14:13.643 - and be part of that conversation. But we have a lot of work to do, undo 12 years, of what has been somewhat 01:14:13.643 --> 01:14:19.023 - adversarial between county and city. But the truth is, city people pay taxes. People in Ellisville pay 01:14:19.023 --> 01:14:24.559 - county taxes. City people pay county taxes. And we need to work together on ways that we grow regionally. 01:14:24.559 --> 01:14:29.887 - That means attracting those 21st century jobs. It means having a plan for the county that updates and 01:14:29.887 --> 01:14:35.266 - thinks about how we attract businesses along I-69 and also takes care of our watershed and environment 01:14:35.266 --> 01:14:36.990 - as a whole community. Thank you. 01:14:56.418 --> 01:15:02.523 - This sharing microphone may be the best thing that comes out of the whole night. We need more of this. 01:15:02.523 --> 01:15:08.509 - One of the things, when I was a congressional aide in 2008, President Obama was on the ballot and it 01:15:08.509 --> 01:15:14.496 - was amazing at that time people would talk about healthcare reform and what that meant was different 01:15:14.496 --> 01:15:20.542 - in every different part of the 21 county congressional district I worked in here in southern Indiana. 01:15:20.542 --> 01:15:22.142 - Same thing in this county. 01:15:22.370 --> 01:15:27.877 - When you talk about affordable housing, that term alone, I was out of Meadowood on Saturday night talking 01:15:27.877 --> 01:15:33.176 - with folks what that term means for folks there, what that means on the west side, what that means in 01:15:33.176 --> 01:15:38.475 - a household between two different bedrooms of two different generations is a different thing. So when 01:15:38.475 --> 01:15:44.190 - I talk about collaboration, friends, I'm not just coming up with that as we always got a cool campaign thing. 01:15:44.322 --> 01:15:49.701 - I'm saying that because I have watched state, federal, and local government, particularly here as a 01:15:49.701 --> 01:15:55.134 - part of a nine-generation Monroe County family. I've watched this a long time. I've seen things that 01:15:55.134 --> 01:16:00.513 - worked well. I've known superintendents that did great jobs and superintendents that suffered. I've 01:16:00.513 --> 01:16:06.161 - known county counselors that were successful and commissioners that were not. I've seen a lot of mayors, 01:16:06.161 --> 01:16:08.958 - too. And the reality is that you don't get anywhere 01:16:09.314 --> 01:16:15.494 - without stopping, listening, saying how do we get here to talk about perhaps we can get some movement 01:16:15.494 --> 01:16:21.612 - on this? What does this look like? And that takes a person that can go across those different lines. 01:16:21.612 --> 01:16:27.731 - I always used to say in Elstville when people would be fired up about something, I'd say I represent 01:16:27.731 --> 01:16:33.850 - people on both sides of the border here. I just want you all to be okay. And that's an awesome thing 01:16:33.850 --> 01:16:35.486 - in public service. Thanks. 01:16:35.874 --> 01:16:44.410 - We have a question from the audience that says what would you do to improve, how could you work to improve 01:16:44.410 --> 01:16:52.547 - funding for schools? That's pretty far removed from the usual activities of county government, but in 01:16:52.547 --> 01:17:01.003 - fact there's a lot of overlap between education and local government. So I think I'd expand that question 01:17:01.003 --> 01:17:05.470 - and say what should county government do with regard to 01:17:05.922 --> 01:17:12.641 - If anything with regard to education k-12 schools in the community Well the first thing I think that 01:17:12.641 --> 01:17:19.492 - you do is that you have working partnerships with the folks that are in some of these roles I was with 01:17:19.492 --> 01:17:26.144 - our superintendent I believe it was two weeks ago this current coming up Friday, and we just talked 01:17:26.144 --> 01:17:31.998 - about how do what do we what do you need? What do we do? How do we do this? because how 01:17:32.130 --> 01:17:37.459 - Her job goes how our children go that literally that's our workforce We will blink and they will be 01:17:37.459 --> 01:17:42.947 - out and unfortunately if we don't attract enough jobs Or we don't attract enough or have enough homes. 01:17:42.947 --> 01:17:48.542 - We will lose them including my daughters They will be gone and they will not we won't have those talents 01:17:48.802 --> 01:17:54.356 - So you do that. The other thing is that you recognize, though the state constitution may say one thing 01:17:54.356 --> 01:17:59.802 - about roles, there's things that we can commonly do. I was pleased to support the South Side Library 01:17:59.802 --> 01:18:05.194 - when the library expanded. That is huge. I wish I'd had it as a kid. And every time I'm in there, I 01:18:05.194 --> 01:18:10.910 - look how fantastic it is. Over on 11th Street, I was pleased to really jump in with ARPA dollars and say, 01:18:12.034 --> 01:18:17.500 - Rigidly to the county we have got to have on 11th Street that community kitchen Express that has got 01:18:17.500 --> 01:18:23.075 - to be expanded because we got to feed people because if a kid goes to sleep tonight Hungry, that's not 01:18:23.075 --> 01:18:28.487 - good for the county. It's not good for the city. It's not good for the township It's definitely not 01:18:28.487 --> 01:18:33.953 - good for that school and so you got to look at the role a little bit bigger than it is and sometimes 01:18:33.953 --> 01:18:35.198 - what the state does is 01:18:35.362 --> 01:18:45.496 - And you have to do that until you the state either stops you and then you figure out a slicker way to 01:18:45.496 --> 01:18:56.325 - do it. But you've got to be open minded to a little bit beyond the courthouse into these lives and families. 01:18:56.325 --> 01:18:58.014 - The question is. 01:18:58.146 --> 01:19:03.223 - Really about the austerity we're moving into as a state. I wish we had unlimited funds like ARPA funding 01:19:03.223 --> 01:19:08.107 - that we had years ago when we had a pandemic. I wish that we had some of that infrastructure dollars 01:19:08.107 --> 01:19:13.088 - that came in with the Obama administration years ago, but we don't. What we're facing in our community 01:19:13.088 --> 01:19:18.020 - and where the spirit of that question is coming from is how are we as a county with limited resources 01:19:18.020 --> 01:19:19.326 - going to figure out how to 01:19:19.650 --> 01:19:25.059 - What to tax and where to spend our money. You know one of those things of course is not a quarter billion 01:19:25.059 --> 01:19:30.367 - dollar jail but it should be making sure that the tax dollars we have available to us locally are going 01:19:30.367 --> 01:19:35.623 - to the places that make the most sense. We have seen in Indiana already some answers to this question. 01:19:35.623 --> 01:19:38.430 - I look up at Fishers for example has looked at a city. 01:19:38.562 --> 01:19:43.013 - school district partnership to absorb some of the athletic facilities of the public schools there taking 01:19:43.013 --> 01:19:47.507 - that off the books and putting it into a space that can be used both by the public and the school system. 01:19:47.507 --> 01:19:51.831 - That's that's good innovation and what we need in county government our ideas and innovators thinking 01:19:51.831 --> 01:19:56.113 - about them and we'll put them out there and people might like them or not like them. But at least we 01:19:56.113 --> 01:20:00.734 - see communities trying to answer those questions. But the most important thing a county commissioner can do. 01:20:00.994 --> 01:20:06.127 - in the role that they have. And how we zone and plan our county is to start getting more housing choices 01:20:06.127 --> 01:20:11.064 - in this community, which means more people living here, paying taxes here, and sending their kids to 01:20:11.064 --> 01:20:16.050 - school here. Because right now, that's not what we're doing. Right now, we have passed tax abatements 01:20:16.050 --> 01:20:20.988 - as a county council to attract jobs like Simtra out on the west side to our community, but we do not 01:20:20.988 --> 01:20:25.876 - have the housing for that workforce that's coming. They will call Owen County and Green County home 01:20:25.876 --> 01:20:30.960 - unless we start to turn around our zoning and planning of our community and attract the next generation 01:20:30.960 --> 01:20:36.121 - of Monroe County residents here who will be first-time settler, Monroe County residents, to raise their 01:20:36.121 --> 01:20:41.134 - families and bring their children here. But that's half the battle. It's also making sure that we're 01:20:41.134 --> 01:20:46.146 - not stringing together jobs, but we're finding careers for people in this community. That requires a 01:20:46.146 --> 01:20:51.357 - county commission focused on rezoning and attracting those 21st century jobs here as well. This question 01:20:51.357 --> 01:20:56.369 - came in from the audience, and I think you can answer it quickly, maybe 20, 30 seconds. We've talked 01:20:56.369 --> 01:20:59.198 - about people not understanding county government to help 01:20:59.682 --> 01:21:05.003 - uh... interested citizens understand the structure and functions of the county government would you 01:21:05.003 --> 01:21:10.377 - reactivate or activate the citizens academy i think this is something maybe that the city has done i 01:21:10.377 --> 01:21:15.697 - don't know if the county has done it do you see a need for that do you see that as something that's 01:21:15.697 --> 01:21:19.422 - valuable maybe take twenty seconds and talk about that go ahead trent 01:21:19.618 --> 01:21:24.463 - Yeah, Purdue Extension has our version of the academy. And I've lectured there. Let me tell you why. 01:21:24.463 --> 01:21:29.595 - If you go to lecture there, you go to take it, they're going to give you very serious content, and they're 01:21:29.595 --> 01:21:34.440 - not going to mess around. It's a beautiful program. I only wish more people could get in it and have 01:21:34.440 --> 01:21:39.285 - the time for it and had more information. And I love something like that, where they take very small 01:21:39.285 --> 01:21:44.130 - amounts of resources, and they make tremendous things working. We were breaking apart property taxes 01:21:44.130 --> 01:21:48.974 - so hard, I thought I was having a meeting with Jeff McKim. And those of you that know that, you know 01:21:48.974 --> 01:21:49.598 - what I mean. 01:21:49.762 --> 01:21:55.476 - It these are good things and people that come out on nights like this. That's a good thing. That's what 01:21:55.476 --> 01:22:01.190 - we've got to encourage and get back into our civic life. We need a lot of tools in the toolkit. I think 01:22:01.190 --> 01:22:06.740 - the Citizens Academy approach and we see that in other jurisdictions works well but it's one tool in 01:22:06.740 --> 01:22:07.454 - the toolkit. 01:22:07.554 --> 01:22:12.561 - We right now don't have a county commission that communicates with the public at all really outside 01:22:12.561 --> 01:22:18.069 - of its meetings or the occasional news coverage No press releases about its activities. No public information 01:22:18.069 --> 01:22:23.176 - program out to you the occasional Facebook post if that's your social media of choice You know, we're 01:22:23.176 --> 01:22:25.630 - not doing a great job as a county explaining the 01:22:25.730 --> 01:22:31.381 - you know painfully down to the very detail or even just basically you know what we do as a county government 01:22:31.381 --> 01:22:36.825 - and I'm not I don't think it needs to be a promotional for one elected official or another it just needs 01:22:36.825 --> 01:22:42.217 - to be a much wider understanding of how in the 21st century a professional government communicates with 01:22:42.217 --> 01:22:44.446 - this community what's going on where to be 01:22:44.610 --> 01:22:49.724 - what events are going on at the courthouse, opening up the courthouse in the evening, which hasn't been 01:22:49.724 --> 01:22:54.837 - done in a generation or more for the public to rent and use as a specific venue in our community. These 01:22:54.837 --> 01:22:59.754 - are just a number of tools in the toolkit that we should be doing and pursuing. Okay, we've hit our 01:22:59.754 --> 01:23:05.015 - deadline here, I'm afraid. A lot of ground that we could still cover. I apologize to those whose questions 01:23:05.015 --> 01:23:10.030 - didn't get asked. They were good questions. I wish we could have covered more ground, gotten to them, 01:23:10.030 --> 01:23:11.358 - but we're at our deadline. 01:23:11.586 --> 01:23:17.468 - So we will now go to one minute closing statements since Trent went first. I'm going to ask David to 01:23:17.468 --> 01:23:23.583 - go first with the close. 60 seconds. Keep an eye on the time. I was just warming up. It's like halftime. 01:23:23.583 --> 01:23:29.407 - Okay. Again, thank you to League and thank you to the partners for hosting tonight. And I also want 01:23:29.407 --> 01:23:34.590 - to thank Trent for this important forum. We need to have these debates in our community. 01:23:34.882 --> 01:23:39.345 - This election is not easy for a lot of our frequent voters because you have two former party chairmen, 01:23:39.345 --> 01:23:43.938 - two county counselors at large running for an open seat that doesn't open up very often in our community. 01:23:43.938 --> 01:23:45.758 - But I'll start, I'll end where I started. 01:23:45.890 --> 01:23:50.466 - Times are incredibly tough for a lot of people in this community that are working right now and can't 01:23:50.466 --> 01:23:55.041 - be at places like this. My focus on this election has been that 80% of our community that do not have 01:23:55.041 --> 01:23:59.841 - time to engage in that civic dialogue that are counting on us to go find the 21st century jobs and housing 01:23:59.841 --> 01:24:04.327 - for our community. I believe in listening. And as your county counselor, I've done it. On the jail, 01:24:04.327 --> 01:24:09.082 - I listened to residents to make sure we weren't pursuing a facility that was too expensive. On our public 01:24:09.082 --> 01:24:13.568 - health, when frontline nurses sounded the alarm at the closing of our family planning clinic, I was 01:24:13.568 --> 01:24:15.856 - there in paper and demanding results and demanding 01:24:15.856 --> 01:24:20.629 - accountability for why we closed that clinic. In times of crisis, I've worked with townships to make 01:24:20.629 --> 01:24:25.354 - sure we don't forget about those less fortunate when the tornado strikes and the news has moved on, 01:24:25.354 --> 01:24:30.127 - but people are still trying to get a tarp off their roof and get their houses repaired. That's not a 01:24:30.127 --> 01:24:34.994 - my way or the highway approach to county government. That's responsibility, that's accountability, and 01:24:34.994 --> 01:24:39.766 - that's standing up for Democratic Party values and bringing ideas before the electorate in a primary 01:24:39.766 --> 01:24:40.286 - to decide. 01:24:40.386 --> 01:24:46.485 - What is our new direction for this county? Is it to go along to get along, or is it time for a new direction 01:24:46.485 --> 01:24:52.247 - to expect more from Monroe County and demand results that you deserve? Thank you very much. Thank you, 01:24:52.247 --> 01:24:53.758 - Trent. Your turn to close. 01:24:54.658 --> 01:25:00.594 - Thank you very much for listening to all of our thoughts on all these questions. Hopefully we answered 01:25:00.594 --> 01:25:06.645 - everything. I just want to say in closing, I love this place. Today I got done teaching and I was tired. 01:25:06.645 --> 01:25:12.523 - My students are back from spring break and they're not happy about it. And they really worked me. And 01:25:12.523 --> 01:25:18.517 - the person I teach with said, you've got a forum tonight? And I said, I do. And they said, I don't know 01:25:18.517 --> 01:25:24.510 - why you do all this. What do you get out of it? And I said, I love this place. I believe in this place. 01:25:24.930 --> 01:25:29.776 - This is where I am, and this is where I'll be. Unfortunately, a lot of people can't come here and be 01:25:29.776 --> 01:25:33.086 - here, and they want to be here, and this is a good headache to have. 01:25:33.154 --> 01:25:38.421 - Friends, we've got to be serious about affordability issues. We've got to have people in the room that 01:25:38.421 --> 01:25:43.535 - can get people around these subjects and say, what do we do for workforce attraction retention? How 01:25:43.535 --> 01:25:48.700 - do we deal with environmental issues that keep coming through flooding and other things that make us 01:25:48.700 --> 01:25:53.915 - more disaster response than not? How do we get health in all policies so that food deserts don't just 01:25:53.915 --> 01:25:59.029 - pop up and we have to keep making ad hoc things for not-for-profits to fix? How do we do it? We get 01:25:59.029 --> 01:26:03.120 - a commissioner that listens, works together, and really loves and cares for all 01:26:03.120 --> 01:26:09.253 - this and I'm so pleased that you care enough that you're here with this. Why don't you join 01:26:09.253 --> 01:26:16.187 - me? Trentdecker.com. Come out and help us and we'd love to have you along on the ride. Thank you. Thank 01:26:16.187 --> 01:26:23.054 - you to the candidates for a lively discussion. Let's give them a round. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks 01:26:23.054 --> 01:26:29.054 - to CATS for broadcasting this. And on behalf of all the forum sponsors, remember to vote. 01:26:29.506 --> 01:26:35.166 - uh... primary election days tuesday may fifth early voting begins tuesday april seven thank you