Howard County Commissioners voted this week to reject a new social media policy.
Introduced in December of 2025 was a proposal to disallow public commenting on all county social media pages.
“It was brought up at the last meeting about social media policy and I think at this time I would be in favor of the county not doing the policy,” Commissioner Jeff Lupinski said.
When it was introduced, the policy faced backlash from some Howard County residents. After two weeks of consideration and listening to public input, commissioners unanimously voted against it. They did agree to add a disclaimer notifying the public that county officials can and will remove any offensive content.
“The people are not in favor of it,” Commission president Jack Dodd said. “But here is what people have to understand: we do not monitor those comments, so offensive remarks could be on it.”
Dodd said the county’s information technology director would work with County Attorney Alan Wilson on the wording of the disclaimer.
Individual departments may set their own guidelines, but there will not be a blanket policy for the whole county.
The Howard County Sheriff’s Office will be turning comments off on its Facebook page after receiving several offensive and vulgar comments on its posts. “We are going to shut comments off at the sheriff’s office,” Sheriff Jerry Asher said before reading some examples of the comments that have been posted there. “I’m thinking if people want to take our Facebook posts and then take it to their own Facebook account, that to me, is the free speech that they have to do.”
In other business, commissioners elected Dodd as commission president for 2026 and Brad Bray as vice president.
Howard County Commissioners will next meet at 4 p.m. Jan. 20 in room 338 of the Howard County Administration Building, 220 N. Main St., Kokomo.
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