Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1896 — Township Trustees. [ARTICLE]

Township Trustees.

Anderson Herald: The township trustees’ organization will make an effort this winter to secure the repeal of the law requiring them to publish their annual reports. * The law is a good one and their only trouble with it is that it has been set at defiance by al&rgecnmber of trustees throughout the state. The taxpayers can well afford to pay a nominal sum to have their reports published, if it will have a tendency, only a tendency, to check the extravagances in many ' of the trustees’ offices. Supplies have been brought in thousands of cases because there was a large “rebate’’ to the trustees. The trustees cannot afford to make a united effort to prevent the public from knowing something of the business transacted in their offices. The people have a right to know how every dollar was expended, and it is-the duty of the trustees to see that they know it, or suffer the penalty attached to the law requiring publication of such information. Crawfordsville Journal: We have on the statute books a law compelling township trustees to make an itemized statement of their receipts and expenditures. In many of the townships of the state the law is a dead letter. If the law wqp enforced it would be the means of stopping many a leak, and there would be a hesitancy on the part of the trustees before the v would invest iii rain water colored with brick dust at 9100 a barrel. It has just been made public that a trustee in one of the northern

counties of the state during last year brought from a Chicago supply house goods of various kinds t > the amount of S3O 000 Another in the eastern part of the state bought $20,000 worth. Both of. these trustees of course, ignored the law in the publication of their receipts and expenditures. And these trustees will be at the head of a strong lobby this winter to have the law repealed. In the background.will be these supply bouses from Chicago and Indianapolis. The lfiw should stand and its proper enforcement will be the meat;s of informing the people just how their money is expended, and thousands'of dollars thereby saved through fear of publicity.