Representation

Editor, Times-Union:
If you have not figured out, the person Indianapolis selected to speak to us has really stepped up his game. This session, he authored a bill for the Indiana Gaming Commission to accept applications and award an owner’s license for a casino in Allen County. Why is a Kosciusko County “representative” helping Allen County get a casino? Whether Allen County needs a casino is not the issue. The issue is someone from two counties away is authoring the bill to help them out.
But this is not new with Indy’s representative to us. He was groomed to be a lapdog for Indianapolis from the moment he was picked. He’s taken their money, done their bidding, and donated back to the HRCC to stay in their good graces. And they reward him by giving him a bill he didn’t write, but put his name on to help Allen County get a casino? When he first started running for office in 2020, the Indy Establishment gave him 15,000 for his campaign. His 2023 campaign finance report shows no donations from local individuals or businesses. If you think that he actually cares about us, the receipts say otherwise. Let’s be honest, Indianapolis bought that seat, picked someone they could manipulate like clay to do their bidding and told us to go along with it because he’s a Republican. He has stopped listening to us and has gone back to listening to “experts.” Kosciusko County has lost representation in Indianapolis. We have a spokesman; we don’t have a representative.
If he had the political courage, he would not even bother working to advance the bill and let it quietly die the death it deserves because we should not be doing the work for Fort Wayne. But he won’t because they have all the leverage as he is their puppet, and we all know that Indianapolis does not like it when the puppets cut their own strings.
Gary Eppenbaugh
Warsaw