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Dear Editor:
I am writing as a concerned resident of Hamilton County.
I’m concerned because I have a lot of questions about why the Hamilton County Council would back-door an appointment to the Hamilton East Public Library Board at their meeting on Sept. 7.
- Why was the appointment not on the agenda prior to the meeting making it impossible for members of the community to make public comment or weigh in on potential applicants? Isn’t that against the meeting rules?
- Why was the list of applicants not sent to the members of the council until the day of the meeting?
- Why was there no discussion about any of the applicants or their qualifications before a member of the council nominated an applicant?
- Why was there no discussion around the nominated applicant’s qualifications before the vote? (The only discussion was that the nominated applicant had shown interest in the past.)
I sent these questions to every member of the Hamilton County Council on Sept. 14 and have only received a response from one member, Sue Maki. She abstained from the vote “because she thought that the process did not give adequate time for consideration of the individuals who applied for the position.”
It appears that at least one member of the council agrees that there wasn’t proper consideration of all applicants. She also acknowledged that voting on an appointment that was not on the published agenda may need to be addressed. In her response she says, “the Council as a body will collectively address the shortcomings of the process we experienced at the September 7th meeting.”
The entire process lacked transparency and leads me to conclude that the all-GOP council knew who they wanted all along and their reason for appointing Micah Beckwith had nothing to do with him being qualified and everything to do with the Indiana GOP’s political agenda.
He is a local pastor who is very outspoken about his religious ideology and his support of groups like Moms for Liberty who attack public education, educators and want to ban books. That’s not someone I want on my library board, and I know I’m not alone.
I’m sure some will say that this is “politics as usual” and the council can appoint whoever they want. Maybe that’s true, but I don’t want to be represented by people who use their position to fight culture wars and ban books, either on the county council or in the Indiana legislature.
Lisa Fero
Fishers
If your argument is with the process, Lisa, that is fine. Raise your argument. I think much of the Hamilton County public agrees that our processes are often not transparent enough.
If your argument is that religious Christians do not have the right to be represented on public committees, or that there should not be decency standards in public libraries to decide what items will be allowed to be accessible to all ages, I think you should go back and read the constitution and court cases on categorization of books by age in public libraries.
Ms. Brockman, the idea that libraries don’t already have standards is patently ridiculous. Librarians are trained professionals and put a great amount of thought and effort into ensuring that collections are curated with age-appropriateness in mind. Of course, not every parent will agree with those decisions, but that’s where they need to step up and exercise their responsibility as parents and do what they think is best for *their* children. They should *not* impose their views on everyone else.
My concern with Mr. Beckwith isn’t simply that he is a “religious Christian,” but that he is a religious zealot, whose public declarations make it clear that he has no respect for the First Amendment separation of church and state and that he would attempt to use his position to impose his views on others. He wouldn’t be satisfied with giving parents tools to control their kids’ activities in the library (those already exist), he would seek to control what everyone could access in the library. The single biggest qualifying factor for a library board member should be an understanding that libraries should be places where different perspectives and information flow freely. Mr. Beckwith does not seem to believe that.