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