Decisions should be made as close to home as possible.
A decision made in LaGrange County by people who live here can be argued with at the grocery store, appealed at a public meeting, and voted on at the next election.
A decision made in Indianapolis or Washington arrives as a rule, a mandate, or a pile of money with strings, and the people it lands on had no say in any of it. I put LaGrange County residents first, and I will fight to keep our decisions ours.
What I believe
The closest government is the most accountable government
Power should sit at the lowest level that can actually handle the job: the family first, then the community, then the county, and only after that the state or the federal government.
Every step up that ladder, the people deciding get further from the people affected, and accountability gets thinner.
Local people have local knowledge
The people who drive these roads, farm this ground, and send their kids to these schools understand this county in ways no agency analyst ever will.
State government works best when it respects local communities instead of trying to micromanage them.
One size fits nobody
LaGrange County, where roughly 43 percent of our neighbors are Amish, does not run like an Indianapolis suburb, and it should not be governed like one.
Rules written for the whole state, or the whole country, land here as nonsense half the time, and the people who wrote them never have to live with the result.
Strings are control
Federal and state money with conditions attached is not generosity. It is a carrot on a stick: take the money, take the orders.
Every conditional dollar this county depends on is a piece of local control we have traded away, and the trade is rarely worth it. Cut the carrot off the stick, budget from our own revenues, and our priorities stay ours.
Localism is not isolation
We trade with our neighbors, cooperate where it helps, and respect how other communities run their own affairs.
It only asks the same respect in return: final say over LaGrange County’s money and LaGrange County’s life belongs in LaGrange County.
What that means in practice
Child services
Decisions about LaGrange County children should be made by people who live in LaGrange County.
I am gathering the evidence through public records requests to build the argument, take it to Indianapolis, and back it with a county budget plan showing we can fund and manage child services independently.
Spending
County money decisions happen here, in open meetings, on numbers residents can read.
That includes bringing the Council’s meetings to the people: I will push to rotate them through our high schools, with seniors in the room, instead of always expecting residents to come to the county building.
Pushback
When Indianapolis or Washington hands down a mandate or a money offer that bends this county away from its own voters’ best interests, from county spending to the right to parent, the county should say so, in public, and be willing to say no.
What I will do on the Council
- Vote against accepting state and federal money whose conditions override local judgment
- Budget from local revenues first, so county priorities are set here and not negotiated with a grant office
- Defend the authority of families, towns, and townships against county overreach too, because localism that stops at the courthouse is just a smaller central plan
- Carry LaGrange County’s case for independence on child services to Indianapolis, with the evidence and the budget plan behind it
Washington will not fix LaGrange County. Indianapolis will not fix LaGrange County. LaGrange County will, if we keep the power and the money close enough to home to do it.
No coercion. No extortion.