Following Up On A Few Details . . .

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Kirby Grant.

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SEVERAL OF you have asked about HB 1312, the bill that would have taken public notices (and some Indiana newspapers) out of the public eye. That awful bill died last week in a Senate committee. The final vote was 2-8 with Sens. La Keisha Jackson, Greg Taylor, Rick Niemeyer, Mike Bohacek, Vaneta Becker, Shelli Yoder, Dan Dernulc and Daryl Schmitt voting against taking public notices out of Indiana newspapers. Committee Chair Sen. Jim Buck and James Tomes cast votes that would have severely hurt Hoosier papers.

More importantly for right now, the bigger issue is that legislators listened. They listened when Indiana newspapers showed up in force at the Statehouse. We had more than 120 people attend a rally at the Statehouse and we had lots of reader support – thank YOU very much!

This issue is not dead. There is a chance something could be added to an existing bill before this session ends in a couple of weeks. Legislators have tried to kill Indiana newspapers for several years and indications are they are going to try again. With property taxes and the budget still looming, experts tell me that it’s unlikely for public notices to come back up this time. If that is correct, it gives time for the two sides to talk to find better answers. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that we do!

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SPEAKING OF you, a lot of you responded to the recent scribbles I wrote on Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. If you missed it, the gist is that the bigger media in the state reported that Beckwith was proposing to spend more money – LOTS more money – on finding ways to get faith-based answers involved with homelessness, addiction, crime, etc.

Ironically, there wasn’t a great deal of noise about the separation of church and state. The big thing the media jumped on was that Beckwith wanted to spend more money during a time when Indiana Gov. Mike Braun is asking everyone to trim their budgets back.

It wasn’t accurate. Beckwith actually cut his budget from $41 million to $36 million – a fact conveniently left out by his critics . . . uh, I mean media reports.

And that’s where you guys jumped in. A LOT of you reached out and said that you are tired of politicians who don’t get it. You seem to like the fact that Beckwith is about faith AND that he is spending less money. (You also correctly pointed out that he probably spent too much on a new vehicle – but also that he was replacing a rent-a-dent piece of crap.) Thing is, almost everyone who responded mentioned examples uncovered by the folks at DOGE and are bewildered over how many in government (yes, mostly Democrats) aren’t jumping on the DOGE bandwagon.

It proved there are not a few, but a lot of us, who are fed up with politicians going into office as perhaps reasonably successful people and coming out as rich beyond imagination. How do they increase their wealth by millions and millions in a job that doesn’t pay millions?

I don’t have that answer, but it sure sounds like a lot of you are asking – and are thankful for guys like Beckwith who are a lot more honest and trustworthy. Stay tuned.

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AS MY PAL Honest Hoosier might say, here’s a tip of the seed corn cap to the good folks at the Crawfordville Library. They have a program at 6 p.m. on Tuesday – The Best We Got: The Carl Erskine Story. This is an hour and a half film about a Hoosier schoolkid from Anderson who enjoyed a Hall of Fame career in Major League baseball with the Brookly Dodgers and in L.A. after the move.

For a lot of us guys who are, um, let’s just say NOT spring chickens anymore . . . we grew up big baseball fans. Players were larger than life, in part because we didn’t have social media telling us every scandal and toe stub – and we had a media back then who didn’t believe they had to report every negative thing they heard.

Erskine was certainly a star – but the fact that he was from Indiana is what caught my attention first. Actually, there were a lot of Hoosier Major Leaguers back then – Don Larsen, Tommy John, Gil Hodges and Bob Friend just to name a few.

It’s spring and what an appropriate time to watch a film on baseball – the only sport with grass that green and skies so blue!

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SOME OF you may remember Kirby Grant in the title role of Sky King, a television (and radio) show I watched on Saturday mornings as a kid. Grant played Schuyler “Sky” King, an Arizona cattle rancher who used his twin-engine Cessna to catch bad guys and save pretty girls. That show instilled a love of aviation that led to classes, flying and eventually even a spot as a Board of Aviation Commissioner for the city of Crawfordsville.

Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically on Wednesdays in The Paper. Timmons is the publisher of The Paper and can be contacted at [email protected].