From left: Monroe County council candidates Matt Caldie, David Henry, Trent Deckard and Cheryl Munson met for a forum targeted toward youth voters March 20, 2024, at The Comedy Attic in Bloomington. (Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Candidates for local and state office are encouraging young adults to vote this May.
Democrats vying for office met for a forum targeted toward youth voters Wednesday night at The Comedy Attic in Bloomington.
The event was organized by the Monroe County Democratic Party. Local high school Democrats and IU College Democrats hosted it.
Candidates spoke about a variety of topics. On the state level, they included abortion and the environment. Locally, they spoke about the need for a new county jail, the convention center expansion, affordable housing, and getting young residents civically engaged.
The event was moderated by Jonas Schrodt, who ran for the Bloomington City Council last year and featured intermittent standups by local comedians.
Attending the event were District 46 Indiana House candidate Kurtis Cummings and State Senator Shelli Yoder, who’s running for reelection. Representatives for District 60 Indiana House candidate Michelle Higgs and Attorney General candidate Destiny Wells were also present.
State candidates forum
Kurtis Cummings and Shelli Yoder (Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Those running for state office say abortion and the environment are at the top of their minds.
Yoder, who’s running for reelection, condemned Indiana’s ban on nearly all abortions.
“The way that the legislation was written, there is nobody who's going to be providing that health care in the state of Indiana,” Yoder said.
Yoder also criticized Attorney General Todd Rokita. She said his actions against Caitlin Bernard, an OB-GYN who provided an abortion for an out-of-state 10-year-old rape victim, deter healthcare providers from coming to and staying in Indiana.
Cummings says Indiana is failing the thousands of children in the custody of the Department of Child Services.
“If you're wanting to say adoption is the answer, how many kids have you adopted?” Cummings said. “They're not, they're not pro-life; they're pro-birth.”
On the environment, Yoder says she helped defeat a bill that would have redefined PFAS, commonly called “forever chemicals.”
“Indiana Hoosiers, we deserve better than just redefining what PFAS are,” she said. “We defeated that language (and) we’re fighting really hard to constantly put out fires.”
Yoder also opposed a bill to remove protections on Indiana’s isolated wetlands. However, that bill passed and goes into effect in July.
Cummings said people are and should be concerned about the water supply in Gosport, which has detectable levels of PFAS, according to a report in The Herald-Times.
He also pointed to concerns about carbon sequestration in Vigo County.
“The more that our politicians are influenced by large corporations, just not a whole lot of work is going to get done for what the everyday Hoosier is really concerned about,” Cummings said.
Commissioner candidate forum
Jody Madeira, Peter Iversen, Dee Owens (a representative for Julie Thomas) and Steve Volan (Lucas González, WFIU/WTIU News)
Monroe County commissioner candidates Peter Iversen, Jody Madeira and Steve Volan — as well as a representative for Julie Thomas, who’s running for reelection — took the stage after.
Commissioner Penny Githens is also running for reelection this year but did not attend the forum.
Iversen, Madeira and Volan said the current commissioners should be doing more to establish a new jail.
Iversen is a county council member running against Thomas in the primary. He said the commissioners were difficult to work with on a jail-focused group, the Community Justice Response Committee, or CJRC.
“I've been on the county council for five years, and in my five years I've seen the county commissioners dragging their feet consultant after consultant,” Iversen said. “The CJRC was an absolute nightmare.”
CJRC meetings were rife with interpersonal conflict. The commissioners suspended the group’s meetings last April, and the county council later formed a fiscal advisory group for the jail.
Madeira is an IU law professor running for Penny Githens’ seat. She called the lack of progress embarrassing.
She pointed to a 2008 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union alleging the jail does not uphold inmate’s constitutional rights.
“At first, the lawsuit was about overcrowding,” Madeira said. “Now, we don't have overcrowding; now we have a number of other issues. We have leaky roofs, we have sewage flowing into administrative offices at times, we have courtrooms that are something from the 1990s Law and Order shows. Even worse, we have an elevator that stops working.”
The commissioners recently abandoned the idea of using county-owned land on Bloomington’s southwest side as a future jail site. They say preparing the site for construction will take too long.
They’re now considering buying a privately owned site between State Road 46 and Arlington Road to the city’s northwest.
Madeira said the jail site should be as close to downtown as possible, and that the current jail must be maintained in the meantime — something she said the commissioners have made difficult for Sheriff Ruben Marté.
Volan served several terms on the city council before this year. He said the commissioners should have done more by now.
“When you have commissioners that don't know how to negotiate, who don't take anybody else's counsel, then you wind up with this ongoing problem,” Volan said. “They have to stop paying lip service to it and take action.”
Volan said it shouldn’t take an entire term to build a jail. He said if he’s elected and a new jail is not built during his term, he will not run for a second term.
In September, the jail fiscal advisory group said a new jail likely won’t be built or occupied until 2027, at the earliest.
Thomas and Githens were not present Wednesday. Thomas had a representative, Dee Owens, stand in for her.
Owens did not comment on many of the jail-related issues but said a new jail should be co-located with the prosecutor’s and public defenders’ offices as well as mental health and recovery services.
Thomas later told WFIU/WTIU News the process of building a new jail is complex and requires thoughtful decisions — and that progress is being made, even if it’s not always obvious.
“We want it to be over with and to move quickly on one hand; yet on the other, we should be taking enough time to get this right,” Thomas said. “This is a long-term, multi-decade proposition here, and we have to do it right.”
Githens was not immediately available for comment.
Council candidates forum
The night concluded with comments from county council candidates Matt Caldie, Trent Deckard, David Henry and Cheryl Munson. All four agreed Monroe County urgently needs more affordable housing.
Deckard and Munson are both current council members seeking reelection.
Munson, who also sits on the county plan commission, said she supports more dense residential developments in southern Monroe County.
Munson said she has questions and ideas for the proposed county development ordinance, which governs land use and development in unincorporated parts of Monroe County.
“I know the thinking was to keep these areas more rural, but they're not rural,” Munson said. “I drive by them every day, coming from a truly rural area on the edge of the county.”
Deckard, a longtime resident, said people want to live in Monroe County, and local government must honor that by making it easier to do so.
“If there are things that are blocking that from happening, we need to figure those out very quick, remove those, because again, we would not want the opposite of people not wanting to be here,” Deckard said.
He added the house he grew up in and the one he lives in now may not have been affordable to his family if they were in the current housing market.
Henry is the Monroe County Democratic Party chair. He also used to sit on a defunct county commission for affordable housing.
He said even many Monroe County employees cannot afford to live here.
“County council can do things like tax increment financing and other measures to improve properties to prepare for development in the places that we've identified through the plan commission,” Henry said. “Some of those parcels have been sitting there for 20 years ready and waiting for development. It's now time to do some of the investment.”
Caldie, a relative political newcomer who ran for the Bloomington City Council last year, said it’s important to consider renters, not just homeowners, when discussing housing.
“All that goes up is kind of luxury college accommodations, and it is hard for anyone to find somewhere to rent,” Caldie said. “I do care about owner-occupied housing, and I wish we had a larger share of it. But I want to speak to affordability in general.”
He added addressing the issue will require a lot of new development and increased density.
This year’s primary election is May 7.
