Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1908 — IS THIS A CHANGE OF HEART? [ARTICLE]

IS THIS A CHANGE OF HEART?

Several of our exchanges have been copying an Interview of the Indianapolis News with Abraham Halleck, state senator-elect from this district, had while the latter was down to the Capital recently on the Peacock trial before , the K. of P. grand lodge tribunal. In this Interview Mr. Halleck is quoted, among other things, as favoring a plan for inspecting the books of county and township officers; he ‘‘thinks they are honest as a rule, but it would not be a bad idea, by any means, to have a system of inspection for such offices.” Reference to the commissioners’ recoids of Jasper county shows that some eight or nine years ago one thousand taxpayers, in round numIbers, of Jasper county, petitioned [the board of commissioners of said i county to have a non-partisan examination made of the various county offices. This petition was signed by many of the largest landowners and taxpayers in the county, both democrats and republicans. Tb-re were many and persistent rumors that all was not right in some of these offices, and a new court house that had been contracted for at |82,500 had just been completed at a cost 'of approximately $175,000. The taxpayers were being “investigated” at that time by a band of alleged taxferrets, and the petitioners thought the county officers should also be investigated. Mr. Halleck, as president of the board of county commissioners at that time, side-tracked said petition by continuing it indefinetly, and all the record that we have ever been able to find relating to it after its filing was this one continuing record. If Mr. Halleck now, eight or nine years later, favors a law for the inspection or investigation of county offices, would he favor it§ going ■back to the period. covered when Jasper county's $i 75,000 court house was built? . »