Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 203, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1910 — STATE ACCOUNTANTS ARE HOLDING UP MOROCCO. [ARTICLE]

STATE ACCOUNTANTS ARE HOLDING UP MOROCCO.

So Called Experts Have Spent FortyFive days at S2O per Investigating Books and Are Stßl At Ph The Morocco town board is justly indignant at the fact that two of the state accountants have spent fortyfive days and are still at it, going over the books of that town. They are charging the fee of $lO per day and at the time of the last meeting of tlje Morocco board of trustees the accountants had a charge of S9OO against the little town and were going right along as though they intended to spend the rest of their lives at the work. The board of trustees passed a resolution condemning the accountants, and asking that the county auditor shall not honor a bill for their services. The resolutions state that they are not wanted there, that no tax payer asked for them and that the town is not in shape for such services without creating a hardship on the taxpayers. The Kentland Enterprise says: These emissaries of Mr. Dehority have been working on-, records and files of the towns in this county since July sth—forty-five days up to this date not including nights or Sundays they have been upon the job—at $20.00 per day and the end is not yet. We do not know what they have thus far accomplished, but we do know this: no taxpayer sent for them, none wanted them and the strong possibilities are, nobody will pay them for the amount of time they have consumed at $20.00 per day, except on the order of a court of competent jurisdiction and last resort. It is the law that the State Board of Accounts can assume, or has legal authority to dig into the musty archives of every munclpality in the state, for six, eight or ten years back and inflict a bill of expense amounting to several hundred "dollars on each town, either for the amusement of the chief, or to furnish some friend (political or otherwise) lucrative employment, without having been requested to do it by some interested taxpayer, then such law practically amounts to a conflscator of a town’s resourses, levied and collected for other and legitimate purposes, and the same should be speedily repealed and the big chief dethroned. A uniform system of accounting for each class of public office is desirable, and it would seem that an experienced and competent chief, with such qualified assistance as he could command, might devise and install without unreasonable delay or formidable expense. In Hie smaller towns of the state it lydfally occurs that a non-partisan board is elected, and every taxpayer knows, or may easily v know, the amount of money collected and for what it is disbursed, and we do not believe it is within the power of the State Examiner to dictate just how much any muncipality may pay for its commodities, when or where they shall buy them, or in other words it’s none of the State Examiner’s business what they do with their money so long as they do not conflict with any constitutional provision. We belive the Board of Accounts should be a department in one of the state offices, the same as the ‘Bank’ and ‘lnsurance’ department of the Auditor of 'States office, with a sufficient number of experts, subject to call from any interested taxpayer, and thus do away with expensive and expansive examinations arbitrarily forced upon a taxpaying public.