Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1911 — State Board of Accounts Has Hearing By Legislature. [ARTICLE]

State Board of Accounts Has Hearing By Legislature.

A resolution was introduce by Representative Wells of Scott and Jennings counties requiring Chief Dehority of the state board of accountants to furnish some information as to what it costs to run his department and what it is accomplishing. The resolution was passed and the report was promised for 11 o’clock Wednesday. When, at that hour, it had not arrived Representative Wells raised some “suds,” and said it seemed funny that a department created to regulate all the offices in that state should not be ready to render an accounting of its own proceedings upon call. Representative Wells sent for Chief Dehorlty and informed him that he had been running his office like a czar and that his report must be forthcoming or there would be some real trouble.

The report was filed later in the day and showed that $50,926.11 had been recovered since the board began business a year ago. It also showed that it had paid out to field examiners $145,652.30. Thus it has cost three times as much to operate the department as it has recovered. The average number of field examiners during the year was 52. These draw a total of $1,040 per day, which would indicate that the expense for the examiners alone would exceed $300,000 per year. The report explains that all errors on the part of trustees and others have been charged against the officers, even though the money could not be recovered. The report showed that there had been recovered from jounty officials $5,873.91, while the cost of examining the books of county officers had been $49,145 as salaries and $431.28 in railroad fares. From trustees there was recovered $30,389.85 and the expense for examiners was $68,130.70, with $1,106.66 added for railroad fares. The municipal examinations came nearer breaking even. From towns and cities there was recovered $14,573.59 and the cost of recovering this was $16,081.42 for examiners and $326.90 for railroad fares. The sum of $129.76 was recovered from school official's and the cost of examinations was $3,727.95 and $109.69 for railroad fare.

The report says that to recover any more of the poney charged against officials litigation must be resorted to. The effect of the report will certainly result In the changing of the law to materially reduce the operating expenses. Another effect will he to prove that theft are a lot of officials in the state of Indiana who are not dishonest -and it will show that it takes about three times as much by the present method to recover from a corrupt official as the official had stolen. The law is in disfavor about all over the state as seems conclusive from the vote on the Wells’ resolution demanding an immediate report, which was 74 to 15 in favor of the report and that in view of the effort of the democratic floor leader to pacify Representative Wells by assuring him that the report would soon be supplied.

Our Country, a farm magazine, believes that silos will be the means of revolutionizing farming and stock raising, especially in the corn belt. By placing the corn in silos each acre will be made to bring four times its present value, when fed to cattle. The country is waking up to the possibilities of silos. Instead <jf whole fields of corn stalks going to waste, thousands and millions of acres of them, this great quantity of feed will be ■utilized and, placed on the market as fat steers and sheep or fed to mules. Forty per cent of the corn crop of the United States is wasted every year. Some day it will all be saved, and the silo is the solution, F. Thompson, Rensselaer, Ind., sells the Indiana.