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Axios
7 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Report says city was legally compliant in handling sexual harassment complaints
The city was legally compliant in its handling of sexual harassment allegations against Mayor Joe Hogsett's former top aide, according to the findings of a seven-month investigation released Thursday. Why it matters: The investigation was tasked with getting to the bottom of reports alleging Hogsett's former chief of staff Thomas Cook sexually harassed multiple female employees and abused his position of power, and recommending policy changes. Catch up quick: In addition to accusations against Cook, another city administrator was fired over similar allegations, and investigations were launched into at least six other employees, suggesting a more pervasive problem. In October, the City-County Council hired Atlanta-based law firm Fisher Phillips to conduct an independent investigation into the allegations and the city's handling of them. What they found: While the 54-page report found no legal wrongdoing, it describes "overly casual and at times professionally inappropriate workplace conduct" displayed by Cook and unnamed others in the administration. It found that Cook and others used "insulting or profane language and acted in an unprofessional manner in the workplace," and the work atmosphere was "more of a fraternity or sorority" around Cook than a business setting. Danielle Kays, partner with Fisher Phillips, said the firm interviewed 12 people, including Hogsett and two of the three women who made complaints against Cook. Cook did not respond to multiple requests for interviews as part of the investigation, according to Kays. What they're saying: Several council members said they were disappointed by the findings, if not surprised. "I think morally and ethically we fell way short," Councilor Josh Bain said, contrasting the conclusion that legally, the city was in compliance. State of play: Two of the women who made complaints against Cook have come forward publicly, Lauren Roberts and Caroline Ellert — neither of whom currently lives in Indianapolis. During Thursday's presentation to a council committee, Roberts called a member of the audience, who placed her on speakerphone. She said neither she nor Ellert was given the report in advance of Thursday's meeting and begged committee chair Crista Carlino to take her call and answer questions about how and when they would receive it. "The survivors have paid the highest price here, and you're still causing harm," she said over speakerphone, heard throughout the committee room. "This is not OK." Carlino said that because the report was a public document, they couldn't provide it to Roberts and Ellert ahead of its public release at the conclusion of the meeting. Between the lines: Council Republicans have been critical of the lack of transparency during the investigation and its estimated $450,000 cost. Minority leader Michael-Paul Hart said Thursday that Hogsett should reimburse the council for the cost. "Whether it's his office or his pocket … that needs to come back to the council office," Hart said. The other side: "It remains crucial that the city has the best system in place for reporting, investigating, and dealing with harassment of any kind, which is why I will work with the City-County Council on how these recommendations may further strengthen efforts to create a safer, better workplace for everyone throughout the city's operations," Hogsett said in a statement. What's next: Carlino said the council will spend time digesting the report and then consider what next steps to take. Recommendations include replacing the city's current HR division with an independent human resources board and updating anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, retaliation and non-fraternization policies. The report also recommended that the city investigate potential self-dealing during the two months Cook was employed in 2020 after Hogsett requested his resignation. "Our work is just beginning," Carlino said.
Indianapolis Star
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
A different kind of race
President Donald Trump will not be among the 300,000-plus fans at the Indy 500 on Sunday, but we asked our local and statewide elected officials about whether they plan to be at IMS for the race. Here's what we found about Gov. Mike Braun, Mayor Joe Hogsett and more. If you're like me and have no plans on Sunday, keep an eye on for coverage of all things race day from our colleagues who will be at the track. -Brittany Forwarded this newsletter from a friend? Sign up for Checks and Balances here. Among the other last-minute higher-education oversight provisions slipped into the state budget this year is a provision that could eliminate more than half of the bachelor's degrees offered at Indiana's public colleges and universities. Education institutions that don't meet program size quotas will now have to get permission from Gov. Braun to continue their programs. The change has critics worried Indiana's already low college-going rate could dip even further. Read more from Hayleigh on what Indiana's higher education institutions had to say about the change. During an Oval Office announcement this week, Indiana U.S. Sen. Jim Banks named a few Indiana defense organizations that are expected to help develop President Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense shield. Indiana's support will be "a big factor," Trump said. We've got more here on what groups should be involved. Indiana executed Benjamin Ritchie in the early hours of Tuesday morning more than two decades after he murdered Beech Grove police officer William Toney. Read more here about Ritchie's final words and last meal. The execution was the first of Gov. Braun's administration and the second since the state paid $900,000 to secure the drug pentobarbital in 2024. The law firm that's been investigating Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett's response to sexual harassment claims against his former chief of staff Thomas Cook appears to be wrapping up its work. Fisher Phillips investigators will present its findings to the City-County Council's investigative committee on Thursday, May 29. The Hogsett administration has said they're fully cooperating with the investigation. Axios: Each week a different Senate Republican provides lunch for the rest of the caucus. This week it was Sen. Todd Young's turn, and he went with St. Elmo Steak House's shrimp cocktail. Hopefully someone warned the senators to take it easy with the cocktail sauce. IndyStar columnist James Briggs argues that, if Indiana continues to carry out executions with little transparency, the state should "go all in on the violence and permit firing squads." "If state Attorney General Todd Rokita is so enthusiastic about killing inmates, he can even pull one of the triggers and put it in a campaign ad," Briggs writes. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay died this week at age 65. | The League of Women Voters of Indianapolis said it likely held its final voter registration event at a naturalization event at the Indianapolis Public Library following a DHS decision about where such ceremonies can be held. | Indiana University is shuttering it's diversity, equity and inclusion office following state and federal actions targeting DEI policies and programs. Even the U.S. Senate was glued to Wednesday night's Knicks-Pacers game.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
How does Indy's snow fleet compare to other cities? Here's what we found.
A woman couldn't take her mother to chemotherapy. A man missed three days of work. School buses slid as children stood nearby. The complaints piled up as quickly as snow during Winter Storm Blair in early January. The Indianapolis Department of Public Works deployed 70 plow drivers around the clock for nearly two weeks, logging more than 13,000 hours of overtime and dropping nearly a dozen tons of salt. It wasn't enough. Complaints continued to pour into the Mayor's Action Center — 784 of them — during January as snow hardened to ice on Indianapolis sidewalks and residential roads. An IndyStar investigation found that a constrained budget, stretched-thin snowplow fleet and past policy decisions combined to strand residents in their homes, leading members of the City-County Council to interrogate the public works department over a snow response that Councilor Jared Evans called the "worst that [he's] seen." One month after the public outcry, Mayor Joe Hogsett and City-County Council President Vop Osili took action to get the city through the rest of the winter. IndyStar examined data from six cities, including the number of plows owned, the maximum deployed at once, the miles a city is committed to plowing and the city's total road surface to get a better understanding of how other cities deploy their snow fleets. The analysis found that Indianapolis has significantly fewer snowplows per mile compared to its midwest neighbors. This result was found by dividing the distance of miles plowed by the maximum number of trucks on the road at once. When rounded to the nearest mile, that breaks down to: Chicago (38.4 inches average annual snowfall): 32 miles/truck + contractors Cincinnati, OH (23.3 inches average annual snowfall): 52 miles/truck Columbus, OH (22.4 inches average annual snowfall): 66 miles/truck Detroit, MI (45 inches average annual snowfall): 49 miles/truck + contractors Indianapolis (25.5 inches average annual snowfall): 100 miles/truck Louisville, KY (13.4 inches average annual snowfall): 45 miles/truck Nashville, TN (8.1 inches average annual snowfall): 75 miles/truck St. Louis, MO (18.9 inches average annual snowfall): 47 miles/truck Even cities with more snowplows took heated criticism over Winter Storm Blair. Columbus saw hundreds of complaints filed to its reporting system, and the response in St. Louis had residents so riled that snow removal became a "hot topic" on the mayor's campaign trail. Indianapolis' snowplow inventory is just one piece of a complicated system. Clues to how the city got to this point can be found in a December 2020 meeting of the Public Works Committee. At that meeting, then-director Dan Parker announced that the department was doing away with a rule that hired paid contractors on residential side streets to augment its fleet following 6 inches or more of snow. Instead, denser residential streets — "connectors" — would be added to the city's plowing routes. Administrators presented the change as a way for more local streets to be plowed faster and create more neighborhood accessibility. Contractors could be called in for residential side streets before the 6-inch threshold was met at the city's discretion. 'We eliminated the old 6-inch arbitrary rule, and we've added 300 additional centerline miles of residential streets,' Parker said on Dec. 10, 2020. In practice, however, the city hasn't called out contractors since February 2021, despite notable snow events in 2022 and 2024. And roads that might have previously been taken care of were left uncleared following two back-to-back January snowstorms. Interim DPW director Sam Beres defended the department's actions at a contentious Public Works Committee meeting on Jan. 16, 2025, saying that contractors could make streets more slippery by reducing streets' cover to a thin layer of ice. 'Now all of those neighborhoods are a sheet of ice anyway,' Councilor Brian Mowery shot back. More: 'The worst that I've seen:' City officials push DPW on unplowed residential roads To DPW's credit, more than 80% of the city's 8,400 miles are covered by snow routes. But narrow neighborhood streets weren't part of that plan, leaving residents struggling to get basic services like mail delivery and trash removal. In the absence of help from the city, people paid out of their own pockets for plowing so that they and their neighbors could receive in-home health care, buy groceries and get to work. On Feb. 13, the Public Works Committee was set to discuss a proposal from Councilor Jared Evans requiring contractors to clear streets following 4 inches of snow as a matter of policy. Two hours before the meeting began, Mayor Hogsett and Council President Osili announced a nearly identical strategy, but only for the remainder of this winter. Snow fell in Indianapolis days after the announcement, but it wasn't enough to trigger contractors. Discussion and voting of Evans' proposal were tabled until March. The news was a welcome change for Jack Stocks, a civil engineer who volunteers to arrange private plowing in his northeast Indianapolis neighborhood. "The city needs to make people feel safe, and people don't feel safe if their streets aren't cleared off," Stocks said. "It's clear that they responded to the concerns, which is good. That's what they're supposed to do." Even if the policy gets permanently adopted, Evans says it's a stopgap to a broader infrastructure issue. 'We're doing all of these projects, and we need more and more engineers and people,' Evans said. 'It's like, why do we keep contracting this out? Why don't you at some point just bring it in-house?' When do cities plow residential roads?Indianapolis: The city doesn't salt or plow residential roads unless the city calls in private contractors, which is done on a case-by-case basis. There aren't specific guidelines about how those case-by-case decisions are made, but Department of Public Works spokesperson Kyle Bloyd said the city considers how fast snow falls, how soon it will melt, and whether more snow is OH: Residential streets are plowed by "trained auxiliary city staff" after four or more inches of snow fall, according to the city's snow control plan. These roads aren't salted, citing environmental concerns, and they're plowed last after major thoroughfares and their OH: Cincinnati refers to its smallest streets as "pickup routes" because they can only be plowed by pickup trucks. They're prioritized last, behind primary thoroughfares and connectors (known in Cincinnati as "residential routes"). The city bans street parking during a snow emergency, which helps plows navigate down narrow local MI: Private contractors are deployed to residential streets if the Motor City sees more than six inches of snow. The city can ban parking to help plows move through narrow KY: Neighborhood streets aren't plowed, but on Jan. 16, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced crew members would salt 70 neighborhood streets surrounding city schools. The city prioritizes major thoroughfares, connector roads and roads near major employers and hospitals, according to its Louis, MO: Residential streets are not plowed according to a map provided by the TN: Some residential roads are not Residential roads are plowed after major streets are cleared. Each plow maintains between 14 and 17 miles of side streets, a city representative said. 'If folks want to know why [contractors are] not called out all the time, every time they're called out, it does cost us quite a bit of money,' then-director Dan Parker told the Public Works Committee after the city spent $600,000 during a February 2021 snow fight. For the 2024 fiscal year, Indianapolis allocated $62.6 million to the Department of Public Works for its operations budget, which covers snow removal. The money also covers the city's never-ending fight against potholes, a scourge compounded by the state's road funding formula, which doles out maintenance money based only on road length, not traffic volume or number of lanes. That means a rural road traveled a few times a day gets just as much state maintenance money as a heavily trafficked Indianapolis thoroughfare. More on the public works funding gap: Indianapolis should spend 5 times what it currently does on infrastructure, study says The cost of maintaining a staggering 8,400 miles of road depletes Indianapolis' ability to pay for other public goods – including snow removal. Councilor Evans told IndyStar the city's administration should calculate how much contractors cost and put that money aside each winter in case of an emergency. 'We're having a snow event like this every six [expletive] years,' Evans said after the snow had melted. The city needs to adopt a policy with "a little bit of common sense to it," he continued. After the February 2021 snowstorm, DPW asked to set aside $460,000 to pay for snow removal contractors the following year. They haven't been called out since, and that money was instead used to hire contractors for some of the city's many other infrastructure needs, according to the department. During an August 2024 budget hearing, then-DPW director Brandon Herget said some changes to next year's operations budget would reflect patterns based on previous years' spending. 'This is a 'live within our means' budget. That does mean that hard choices have to be made,' Herget said. More: Indy council passes budget despite 'no' votes over police, roads concerns The same residential streets that go unplowed by the city have also been passed over for critical repairs for years. Prospects of Marion County getting any more road funding seem nil. The statehouse has not looked favorably upon increasing taxes, leaving Indianapolis only with the option to make do with its undersized budget or pass a tax referendum. Rep. Justin Moed, a Democrat representing Indianapolis, has authored bills looking to overhaul the state's road funding formula every year for the past five legislative sessions. This year's bill, HB 1278, stalled in committee. Without some form of lasting change, odds are high that Indianapolis will again risk what was described in January complaints — missed doctors' appointments, a vehicle crashed into a home and broken bones from slip-and-falls. On Feb. 10, Director Todd Wilson took the reins of the Department of Public Works. He wasn't available for an interview at the time of this article's publication. "I look forward to working with you all in the future and to find a best way for our city to move forward," Wilson, the department's third director in 5 years, told the Public Works Committee on Feb. 13. Ryan Murphy is the communities reporter for IndyStar. She can be reached at (317) 800-2956 or rhmurphy@ This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis has fewer snowplows per mile than other midwestern cities
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Indy council Democrats booted Jesse Brown because he's a terrible co-worker
Mayor Joe Hogsett's budget address to the City-County Council last year was one of the most dramatic government meetings I've covered. Lauren Roberts and Caroline Ellert, who said they had been subject to sexual harassment under the mayor's employ, attended the meeting. Their presence prompted Hogsett to publicly apologize for his failures to keep employees safe and promise change. The emotionally charged moment illustrated the power of speaking up and telling your story. Briggs: Vop Osili is raising money like he's running for Indy mayor And then there were members of the audience co-opting that story by holding signs linking sexual harassment in Indianapolis to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The protesters, who were calling for the city to pass a special resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, would later disrupt the meeting and force a recess while law enforcement cleared them from the council chamber. Council Democrat Jesse Brown might not have directed the protesters' actions during that Aug. 12 meeting. But they were his people, acting out on his Gaza fixation, which would go on for weeks to divide council Democrats and cause more disruptions over an issue that had nothing to do with city government. The council in November removed Brown's proposed ceasefire resolution from an agenda after councilors couldn't agree on the language — a move that prompted more outbursts from protesters. This is an example of why Brown is no longer part of the council's Democratic caucus. He is a terrible co-worker who constantly makes other Democrats' jobs harder for no good reason. Brown is an east-side Democrat who identifies as a democratic socialist and is a prolific poster on social media. He joined the council by defeating former Vice President Zach Adamson in 2023, a truly impressive primary win in a safe Democratic district. Democrats considered booting Brown from their caucus almost immediately after he took office last year, but finally expelled him this month. Brown's exit from the caucus means he can't attend Democrats-only meetings where they collaborate on strategy and policy. He can otherwise continue to fully participate as a council member. Brown says council Democrats didn't give him a reason for the expulsion. That might be because there are too many reasons to name. Since joining the council, Brown has gone into business for himself. He went on a political crusade last year against state Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, during sensitive negotiations to save the Blue Line. Then he cast aspersions on a compromise that preserved the bus rapid transit line, suggesting Democrats gave too much ground to Republicans (they didn't). Brown called for Hogsett to resign as mayor over the sexual harassment scandal, putting himself out on a limb where he remains alone several months later. He has attacked others, too, most recently going after "so-called Democrats," as he put it in a recent newsletter, for supporting charter schools as the Indiana General Assembly considers multiple bills to either weaken or dismantle Indianapolis Public Schools. Most other council Democrats (but not all) see a need to accommodate charter schools in Indianapolis and are trying to reach a compromise that causes minimal damage to IPS. Some view Brown's anti-charter barrage as counterproductive to saving IPS. As you can see, Brown takes far-left positions. But his problem isn't political views. It's that he constantly chooses to operate on an island without regard for how his words or actions affect others — while also positioning himself as a lone truth-teller in a political party full of corrupt establishment cronies. Council Democrats finally gave Brown what he seemed to want: a one-person caucus of his own. Yet, suddenly, Brown professes to want to be part of the team. He's urging supporters to "resist this disenfranchisement of the people of District 13" and plans to participate in a March 3 "march on city hall" to protest being kicked out of caucus meetings. Brown repeatedly acted alone and now he's complaining about being marginalized. He can't have it both ways. Brown is the classic colleague who thinks he's always right and everyone else is always wrong. No one likes working with that person. Brown wrote a column last year for IndyStar arguing that "Democrats need to welcome outsiders to the table warmly and gratefully rather than keeping them at arms' length." Brown's actions suggest he takes that to mean the Democratic Party must bend to his outsider's approach while he attacks peers who favor different policies or strategies. Brown is not the only free-thinking Democrat in Indianapolis. Jared Evans, a west-side council Democrat, has repeatedly infuriated council colleagues and the mayor's office with his own independent streak. Yet, he has remained a Democrat in good standing for his entire nine years on the council. What's different with Brown? Brown pursued a path of maximum hostility toward friend and foe alike. He has neither fit in with the establishment nor done the hard work of persuading Democrats to move toward him. He has caused constant distractions and headaches for Democrats, while giving legislative Republicans an easy left-wing target. Politics aside, Brown's relationship with other Democrats amounted to a simple workplace drama that had run its course. The council's Democratic caucus did what organizations do every day: identified a self-absorbed teammate who didn't want to work with others and wished him well in future endeavors. Now, council Democrats don't have to deal with Brown in caucus meetings and he's getting a march in his honor, the kind of dopamine-driven reward he seems to crave. This workplace conflict is ending with a win-win resolution. Contact James Briggs at 317-444-4732 or Follow him on X and Threads at @JamesEBriggs. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Jesse Brown's exit from council caucus is a workplace drama | Opinion
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Briggs' mailbag: Indy can't just be for convention visitors
Happy Royal Rumble week to all who celebrate (it's me; I'm celebrating). I'd love to spend a full week writing about pro wrestling and why CM Punk will win the Rumble, but there doesn't seem to be much audience demand for that. Briggs: WWE's Royal Rumble is scripted chaos at its best What people do seem to love is snowplowing content. I've received a ton of responses to my columns on Indianapolis' botched snowplowing, so I'll start there with the first mailbag of 2025. If you want to send questions for future mailbags, you can use the form at the bottom of the online article page or email me at the address below. Let's mailbag! Chris: I enjoyed your on residential streets. We live on the far west side of Indianapolis, and our neighborhood has been a sheet of ice for over a week. My question is, what happens to all this income that gets generated from all these sporting events/conventions that Indy hosts? We see on TV the millions of dollars made, but they can't take care of our streets? To be fair to Indianapolis, budgets are more complicated than that. Indianapolis is coping with a legacy of neglected, under-funded infrastructure and you can't just take some money out of a big downtown event (like, say, the WWE Royal Rumble, coming Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium!!!) and use it to plow the whole city when it snows. But I agree with your overarching sentiment, and that's why I wrote about snowplowing. Indianapolis can't just be a city for convention visitors and people with tickets to sporting events. It needs to accommodate people who've chosen to spend their lives here — and who, in many cases, could choose to move elsewhere. Briggs: The City-County Council is finally showing Hogsett a spine over snowplowing I'm sympathetic to the city's struggles with issues like potholes, because there's no obvious solution to fix 8,400 lane miles that have mostly been neglected for decades. Snowplowing is a bit different. As city officials have noted, big snowstorms are rare here, which should make them at least somewhat easier to budget for. I'm no expert on municipal finance, but it seems like Indianapolis should be able to budget for once-or-twice-a-decade snowstorms and use that money to pay private contractors to plow the streets when they happen. Whatever the case, Indianapolis needs a better plan. The street conditions this month are not acceptable in a first-world city. Jerry Gearlds: With this new (Trump) administration stating their disdain for any media, news outlet or person saying anything negative about them, how do you personally feel about this? Do you fear that saying the wrong thing will put your career on the line? I lose sleep over a lot of things, but this isn't one of them. The U.S. has clear, strong protections for free speech (which is supposed to be a big conservative issue, no?) and I know how to do my job responsibly within the bounds of First Amendment protections. That doesn't prevent frivolous lawsuits, of course. President Trump has demonstrated he's willing to weaponize the courts to chill free speech, most recently by filing a lawsuit against IndyStar's sister publication, The Des Moines Register, over a poll that happened to show him trailing in Iowa last year. I can't speak to that case, but I can say it's good to work for a big company with lots of resources. IndyStar's parent company, Gannett, has successfully defended my work against bad-faith litigation from far-right actors in the past. I'm glad to live in a country where I can do this job without fear, and I appreciate Gannett's commitment to supporting its journalism. Doug Logan: IndyStar's Hayleigh Columbo wrote about how the state comptroller sent $20 million to the wrong city (Gary). That is the latest 'triumph' of Indiana Republican run-government-like-a-business smartitude. Gary doesn't need that hassle, being already the only city I have ever seen that shut its traffic lights off and replaced them with stop signs. How can Republicans send $20 million, over several years, to the wrong city? Mistakes happen, I guess, but you can be sure that if Indianapolis or (perhaps more timely) the Indianapolis Public Schools district made an error of this magnitude, Republicans would be filing legislation to take power away from the incompetent libs who did it. Instead, a Republican made the mistake at the state level, so lawmakers are ignoring the incompetence and telling Democratic-controlled Gary it needs to return the $20 million it already budgeted. Sorry, Gary, time to pull yourself up by those bootstraps. Thank you for reading! If you want to send questions for future mailbags, fill out the Google form on the online article page or email This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Indy's pothole problem is harder to fix than snowplowing | Opinion
