Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Whether they agreed with him or not, those attending Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s town hall meeting Tuesday evening at Warsaw City Hall gave him kudos for doing what most elected officials don’t do anymore - take questions and give responses no matter the topic.
And the topics during the nearly two hours ranged from social topics to personal ones.
One man told Beckwith this past legislative season was “terrible when it came to taxpayers.” He asked Beckwith to let the state legislators and Gov. Mike Braun know so much of taxpayers’ dollars shouldn’t be going to the state.
“I totally agree with you,” Beckwith responded. “We did a poor job of cutting taxes and defending the taxpayer, and we’re still working on this. It’s a work in progress. I talked to a couple legislators even today, and they know what happened when it comes to taxpayer dollars this past session did not cut it.”
He said they’ve got to make sure local governments have what they need, and there’s a balance there.
“Property taxes, unfortunately, are about 80% of most counties. They get the revenue from property taxes. So you can’t just pull the rug out from underneath them right away, but we can start making strides to sort of ween them off of that and start finding other sources of revenue for those counties. But, again, when it comes to property taxes, I’m a big supporter of the fact that it’s not really your property if you have to pay the government rent to stay there,” Beckwith stated.
Along with having a conversation with Beckwith about helping people who are intersex, local businessman Don Zolman asked, “Should illegal immigrants working on farms be allowed to stay and not be deported? President Trump has made that comment numerous times. I don’t have any working for me on my farm, but I’m just saying I’ve heard that. To me, that shouldn’t be allowed because if we’re going to deport people that are illegal, then it should be everybody. We shouldn’t be making exceptions.”
Beckwith responded, “We have limited resources in federal government. It’s the federal government’s job to enforce immigration law. I think what President Trump is doing right now is the absolute right thing to go after the criminals and those that are posing a threat to our society first, right?”
In the meantime, he said he believes those who are here illegally should be motivated to “get into right alignment. Why? Because you can’t ever have the life that we want people to have if you’re not here legally.”
Sometimes the questions brought up to Beckwith were personal.
Halie Fancil brought up her dad, Doug Fancil, who died Sept. 29 “in an Indiana prison because no one listened.” She said he died at New Castle Correctional Facility and was supposed to come home this year. He had serious chronic health conditions, which she listed. For over a year, Halie said her dad reported passing out, shortness of breath, losing weight and needing medical care. Doug was in segregation so he couldn’t leave his cell.
“The day before he died, he asked to go to the hospital twice. A guard even asked for him to be pulled from the unit. Nothing was done. He had 40 bloody bowel movements a day, he couldn’t breathe. He died alone unmonitored for hours in his cell,” she said.
She had waited for her dad to come home since she was 9. Just when she was close to that moment, she lost him forever and he never got to meet her daughters.
Halie said she met another family from Warsaw who also lost a loved one at the same prison a couple years ago. She asked Beckwith who was responsible for preventing deaths like her father’s.
Beckwith offered her sympathy for her loss, and said he and Braun are looking at the really poor things that have been going on for far too long with the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC).
“Some say it’s the lack of funding, some say it’s the lack of leadership, but that is something we’re looking at,” he said. While he didn’t know specifics about Halie’s dad’s case, Beckwith said he wanted to get more details about that. “Because we’ll take it to the governor, we’ll do our due diligence and look into this as well, because certainly people in the Department of Corrections need to be treated humanely.”
Beckwith said what Halie said happened shouldn’t be happening and isn’t humane.
Another woman asked Beckwith a couple questions, including, “Can you please tell me how your behavior as of late is making Indiana great, in particular doubling down on calling the Three-fifths Compromise a great move and saying that Democrats pay for black voter turnout? In addition, can you elaborate how tariffs ... are not an issue but an opportunity and supply chains are opportunities for towns like Warsaw whose largest employer relies on trade?”
Beckwith said the tariffs are working and are creating a fair playing field.
“We’re already seeing billions of dollars - it was just reported last week that this has brought in over $120 billion of revenue already to the United States, and we’re not seeing prices skyrocket like a lot of the economists say was going to happen. We’re not seeing supply chains impacted in a way that is stopping the products from getting to where they need to go, so I think it’s working,” he said, adding that he’s not for tariffs for forever.
As for the Three-fifths Compromise from the U.S. Constitution, Beckwith stated even American abolitionist Frederick Douglass said it was a “glorious liberty document. He was one of the greatest abolitionists of slavery that this nation has ever seen. He was a free slave himself. Three-fifths Compromise, if you ever go and actually read it in the Constitution, it doesn’t say that it’s three-fifths of a person, it’s saying three-fifths of the number of slaves.”
Beckwith’s comments about Democrats paying for voters - which he insisted was true because a black pastor he knows in Marion County told him as such - not only made the woman unhappy, but also got District 2 Congressional Chair Brian Smith mad and yelling at Beckwith his comment was not true. If it were true, Smith said, then Beckwith should have it investigated. Beckwith said maybe he would.
Local attorney Travis McConnell said he values the role of faith in public life, but also respects the Constitutional limits in Article I, Section 4 as far as no preference being given to any particular religion.
“Yet you’ve created a Christian Advisory Board to guide public decisions, wanting government to operate on a Biblical worldview. At the same time, you’re calling for significant government spending cuts, even though local communities like ours struggle to pay for judges, police, state highway because more and more money gets siphoned off to Indianapolis. How do you expect to reconcile these things?” McConnell asked.
Beckwith said he wasn’t calling for cuts, he was calling for the rollback of growth. He said there was a big difference between cutting and limiting growth.
When it comes to faith, Beckwith said he believes in a moral law giver and for America that is the Christian God. He mentioned how many times the Founding Fathers mentioned the God of the Judeo Christian ethics.
Kosciusko County Democratic Party Chairwoman Vicki Morton brought up cuts to education by the state, and Beckwith pointed out that $22 billion of the budget’s $45 billion goes toward education. He asked her how much is enough.
Those were just some of the nearly two dozen issues brought up at the town hall, which Beckwith said was probably their longest to date.
