Years before Mayor Joe Hogsett faced criticism for his handling of harassment allegations against his former top aide, his administration was on the verge of releasing an audit of the city’s human resources division.
That audit was supposed to come out in 2020. But then it was delayed, Mirror Indy has learned.
Now, as the Hogsett administration and the City-County Council consider whether to overhaul many of the city’s human resources processes, the release of the report is getting pushed back again.
The latest delay is due to “recent events in summer 2024,” according to the head of the city’s Office of Audit and Performance, which oversaw the audit. He declined to answer follow-up questions about his remarks. But summer 2024 is when Mirror Indy and IndyStar published investigations detailing allegations of harassment and abuse of power against Thomas Cook, the mayor’s former chief of staff and campaign manager.
It’s unclear what is in the audit and to what extent it could have prevented or resolved the issues that have been uncovered since 2024. Mirror Indy requested a draft copy of the audit, but the Hogsett administration declined to release it.
When asked by Mirror Indy if Hogsett, a Democrat, was aware of the audit, a spokesperson said the mayor “does not participate in the City-County Audit Committee and does not oversee these reviews, as they are intended to be impartial.”
“As the dates referenced related to this audit predate some significant policy changes, I think it’s reasonable to infer the analysis and recommendations would have been outdated and largely irrelevant,” Aliya Wishner, a spokesperson for Hogsett, told Mirror Indy in an email.
Still, six members of the City-County Council contacted by Mirror Indy said they were unaware of the audit, and four of them said they would have liked to have seen it before paying a law firm $450,000 to investigate the Hogsett administration’s handling of the harassment allegations.
“This is absolutely alarming that it’s taken this long. This has been drawn out even by government standards,” said Brian Mowery, one of two Republicans on the council’s Investigative Committee that hired the law firm to conduct the probe.
The report from that firm, Fisher Phillips, recommended that the council enact a sweeping change to the human resources division by making it independent of the mayor’s administration.
Other human resources processes have been undergoing changes. Hogsett, for example, signed an executive order extending sexual harassment training to all employees in addition to supervisors.
His administration also worked with the City-County Council and several city departments to develop an online tool where employees can anonymously report workplace abuse.
An independent reporting tool is one of the changes demanded by Lauren Roberts and Caroline Ellert, who were two of the women to publicly describe allegations of harassment and abuse at the hands of Cook.
They issued a letter in August 2024 calling for widespread changes to the city’s process for reporting sexual harassment.
They also recommended hiring third-party experts to conduct a formal, independent audit to identify any problems with the city’s sexual harassment policies.
Roberts and Ellert declined to comment for this story.
Years of delays
The human resources audit faced its first delay in 2019. The human resources director was granted an extension to allow staff to focus on the annual open enrollment period for city employees, according to a 2020 preliminary report.
It was delayed again the following year “due to HR’s inability to provide requested documents in a timely manner and in accordance with established deadlines,” according to the report.
It’s unclear specifically what the audit is examining, but a scope of work said it is a routine audit “based on the annual risk assessment that was performed by the Office of Audit and Performance (OAP) and deemed necessary by the director of OAP.”
The scope includes both operational and administrative activities that occurred between January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2018, the report noted.
That period, which began a year after Hogsett took office in his first term, overlapped with Roberts’ repeated attempts to inform Hogsett about Cook’s alleged behavior during the 2015 mayoral campaign. It also coincides with a time period when Ellert said she was harassed by Cook while she worked as a city employee.
Get the backstory
In its 2022 annual report, the Office of Audit and Performance said the audit would be complete in 2023.
In its 2023 annual report, the office said the report was completed and “issuance is pending.”
It was delayed again in 2024.
Wesley Jones, director of the Office of Audit and Performance, said in an email that a process began in 2024 to reevaluate the audit to see “how it could be most useful to HR given the numerous external inquiries they have undergone.” He said that process “remains underway and the report is not a final product yet.”
Jones did not provide Mirror Indy with an estimated completion date.
Wishner, Hogsett’s spokesperson, said the audit “is a standard administrative review conducted as part of OAP’s function to evaluate City-County operations, promote accountability and recommend improvements.”
Councilors unaware of audit
Councilor Crista Carlino, a westside Democrat who previously led the Investigative Committee, said the committee likely could have benefitted from reviewing the audit had it been released.
“I think that would have been an interesting facet of the investigation,” Carlino told Mirror Indy. “I would have liked to have known about that.”
She has since stepped down as the committee chair after calling for Hogsett’s resignation and for leadership changes on the council.
Councilor Michael-Paul Hart, who leads the Republican caucus, said any information contained in an audit would be useful as Indy leadership examines the human resources processes in other cities as potential models to replicate here.
“Having this report on Indy’s approach to HR would be very convenient when we start looking at other cities,” Hart said.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy’s Emily Hopkins contributed reporting.
Peter Blanchard covers local government. Reach him at 317-605-4836 or peter.blanchard@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @peterlblanchard.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
