Investigations and Justice
Friends,
I hope you are all enjoying your weekends. There are, as usual, many important topics to talk about.
One item that I want you to start thinking about is the proposed city budget. The $1.65 billion budget proposed by Mayor Hogsett puts no new funds into alley repairs, which is the number one issue that my constituents ask for city help with. It continues drastically underfunding our streets and sidewalks. It provides only a few dozen new units of housing, despite the 1,700 homeless people on our streets and the 500 evictions being filed every week in Marion County. But it gives more money than ever before in city history to our police department.
I have massive problems with this budget as written. Please look over the high-level budget summary that the administration has provided and let me know what your thoughts are.
The second item I want to get your opinion on has to do with Mayor Joe Hogsett and the still-unfolding scandal about sexual abuse, harassment, and intimidation within his administration over the course of years. The IndyStar and Mirror Indy have both written excellent pieces about one aspect of this scandal: the repeated abuses alleged to have been committed by former Chief of Staff, Thomas Cook.
The Thomas Cook affair is horrific and speaks to the rot at the heart of the city’s administration. But Thomas Cook is just the tip of the iceberg.
Dozens of staff people at the city have begun organizing to ask for an end to such unacceptable practices as shouting at subordinates and intimidation, as well as proposing common-sense and widely utilized methods such as “360 degree reviews” that give subordinates more ability to share information about their supervisors.
And many people are telling me they expect multiple other news stories to drop, possibly as soon as tomorrow, about yet more abuse within the administration.
To the best of my knowledge, I am still the only elected official in the state who has called for Hogsett’s resignation.
I’ve received quiet support for my stance behind the scenes from people at the local level and at the state level, and many people have made public statements calling for accountability - which is certainly appreciated and a step in the right direction.
But others have mostly said that they want to get all the facts before jumping to any conclusions.
I think that’s a valid point - which means we need a full investigation of city leadership to determine who else besides the Mayor knew about and covered up these abuses.
Last Monday, the City-County Council took two extraordinary steps. First, Democrats proposed a resolution that would help strengthen the city’s HR practices in a few important ways - most importantly, we would move sexual harassment and intimidation investigations from HR to a separate branch that doesn’t report up to the Mayor.
Next, Republican Councilors brought forth a resolution calling for an investigation into Joe Hogsett’s administration, and asked at first for the resolution to be entered into Final Action - meaning it would immediately call for an investigative committee to be created. In fact, the text of the proposal asked for the investigative committee to be created and staffed by tomorrow, with its first meeting occurring this Tuesday.
Some of my peers on the Council asked to send the proposal to a committee for amendments rather than take this expedient action. I disagreed and insisted that delays to the investigation only made it more likely that records could be destroyed. Though Monday’s meeting was long enough as it is, I would much rather have debated amendments openly in front of the public, passed them, and moved forward quickly with the investigation.
As of Monday, the investigation and HR proposals were both sent to the Rules committee, which did not have a meeting scheduled until late September, as the IBJ reported. Some of us Democratic Councilors were able to insist that we needed a faster timeline, and so a new Rules Committee meeting was scheduled for this coming Friday, August 23rd, in the City County Building.
Though I remain insistent that we should have proceeded with the August 20th timeline for the Investigation Committee’s first meeting, I want to make the best of a bad situation. We have the opportunity to amend the investigation committee’s authorizing mandate, and I have heard several good ideas for potential amendments. These ideas include:
1. Expand the scope of the investigation beyond Thomas Cook to focus on all reported abuse, intimidation, and harassment within the Hogsett administration.
2. Insist that the committee hire a third-party legal team to assist with the investigation. This legal team should be based somewhere outside of Indiana and the team should have no financial, personal, or political ties to the Indiana Democratic Party or Joe Hogsett.
3. Offer a method by which other victims of harassment or abuse can make themselves known to the third-party investigators without publicizing their names and specific experiences.
What else do you think the investigative committee should do? How would you amend this resolution? Please feel free to write me back here via email, but I also encourage you to attend the Rules Committee meeting on Friday evening as well. I’m a firm believer in transparency and public accountability, and the best way to ensure that is to be present in the room as these discussions are happening.
I’m glad that the Council is taking firm steps towards accountability and justice - we have an important role to play in holding the executive branch of local government accountable.
But there is additional reform that needs to happen immediately, and the Council does not have the authority to insist on this reform.
Horrifyingly, victims of the abuse have stated that they reached out to leaders not just within the Hogsett administration, but to other elected officials in the city, and to leaders within the Indiana Democratic Party asking for help for years, but never received it.
Under our State laws in Indiana, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have very few checks and balances upon them. The law and state code assumes and understands that the parties, as lower-case-d democratic organizations, can and should be policing themselves and holding their officials accountable.
The law provides very few remedies for poor behavior by party leaders - because they are democratically elected and they should therefore be responsive to the wishes of their members.
Thankfully, our gubernatorial candidate, Jennifer McCormick, issued a strong statement very early on. This statement called out Hogsett’s administration by name and put the focus where it should be: on systemic solutions.
One important systemic change is to demand that our party leaders take these allegations seriously and weigh in on the side of justice.
Myla Eldridge, the Chair of the Marion County Democratic Party, offered a statement that praised the victims from coming forward, but to quote Mirror Indy, “She stopped short of criticizing the Hogsett administration for its handling of the allegations.”
Mike Schmuhl, the Chair of the Indiana Democratic Party, has not made any public statement about Hogsett or Thomas Cook at all. I find it especially infuriating that a man operating within the sexism that is rampant within our party is not standing up and speaking out.
Men absolutely have a role to play in ending sexual abuse and harassment. After all, men represent 99% of those victimizing workplace associates, of any gender. Men should not only stop harassing and abusing people - but we must also call out other men and demand that they change their unacceptable behavior and take accountability for their wrongs. For the most powerful man in the Indiana Democratic Party to remain silent while his female colleagues take political heat for telling the truth is absolutely immoral and reprehensible in my book.
Republicans are running an adjudicated rapist for President. Democrats must prove once and for all that we are different. We must become the party of justice, accountability, and equality. Our leaders need to lead us in that direction or resign and let new voices do so.
In love and solidarity,
Jesse