Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 198, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1910 — HOWARD COUNTY TRUSTEES ASSAIL ACCOUNTING LAW. [ARTICLE]

HOWARD COUNTY TRUSTEES ASSAIL ACCOUNTING LAW.

Declare That Bookkeeping is Complicated and That Men Who Make Errors are Paraded as Thieves. “It looks to us as though one of the main objects of the public acrounting law is to prove that a majority of the trustees are totally incompetent or thieves, or both.” The is one of the protests voiced in a sizzling indictment of the state accounting law adopted by the township trustees of Howard county in their monthly meeting. The protests against what they pronounce the iniquities of the law there have been set forth in a written “declaration of independence” forwarded to W. A. Dehority, state examiner, Indianapolis. This fulmination declares: believe it is wholly unnecessary to parade a trustee as a thief who is short $4.80, especially when that shortage is caused by the fact that there are thir-ty-nine different funds out of which we are to pay bills, some of which are so closely related that wiser men than ourselves are guessing as to which is the correct pocket out of which to pay. “We are throughly convinced, after trying the job for a year and a half, that to be safe from conviction as thieves and robbers we must conbine all the qualities of a first-class lawyer, an expert bookkeeper and a thoroughly reliable business man. We do not claim to embody all these qualities. We are just like ordinary human beings. “In the past we have been led to believe by remarks made by yourself (Mr. Dehority) and Governor Marshal that the main object of the law was to simplify the bookkeeping of the trustee’s office and guide us in the discharge of our duties. "As to the simplification of the ‘bookkeeping’ we are thoroughly convinced that it has been simplified ‘upward;’ that no one, except an expert bookkeeper, would call it simple. We trustees are of only ordinary abilities and cannot keep our books technically exact, as you demand.

“As to advertising for everything we want, even for a box of chalk, a broken stove leg or a broken window, we are advised that we can buy nothing of this kind without advertising for bids. We have not the gift o* second sight. We cannot anticipate the wants and actions of the future and if we must follow the law as shown to us, then we must violate other laws.”