City-county councilors are considering changes to their code of ethics following reporting that spotlighted concerns in Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration.
The council’s ethics committee met July 23 to discuss potential amendments to the council’s code of ethics.
Among the changes being considered include:
- Requiring councilors to disclose stocks or ownership stakes they own in companies that do business with the city or lobby the city
- Preventing councilors from signing nondisclosure agreements related to city projects
- Requiring councilors to disclose travel, meals, or entertainment they receive that’s funded or provided by companies or organizations doing business with the city or lobbying the city
- Requiring councilors to disclose their annual salary, consulting or contracting profits, as well as any fringe benefits
- Creating an easily searchable database of financial disclosures
Some of those recommendations were put forward by Councilor Jesse Brown after reading Mirror Indy and IndyStar’s “Mr. Clean” investigation, which examined whether Hogsett followed through on promises to prioritize government transparency and integrity.
The suggestions were also based on feedback from constituents in Brown’s district, which includes parts of downtown and the near east side.
“I think ethics and transparency are at the top of mind for a lot of constituents,” the Democrat said.
Recent reporting from the news outlets also revealed that the city has an ethics commission that has only met once during Hogsett’s decade-long tenure as mayor. The commission is different from the council’s ethics committee.
The mayor appoints all five members to the commission.
What does the council’s ethics committee do?
The committee, made up of three Democrats and three Republicans, considers changes to the council’s ethics policies and handles ethics complaints and violations pertaining to councilors. Due to its narrow scope, it does not meet on a regular basis.
One resident attempted to file ethics complaints against a councilor, only to learn that only councilors can file such complaints.
Megan Lapa, an eastside resident, tried to file a complaint against Councilor Michael-Paul Hart, a Republican, alleging he omitted information about his employer from his disclosure forms.
What’s in the council’s ethics code?
Being a councilor is a part-time position that pays a $31,000 annual salary. As a result, many councilors have full-time jobs outside of public service.
All 25 councilors are required to submit annual ethics disclosure forms that include their employer, their spouse’s employer, financial interest in companies that do business with the city, gifts valued over $100, and board memberships.
Councilors updated their ethics code as recently as 2024, after IndyStar reported that councilors’ employers received city contracts worth millions of dollars.
Part of that update originally included a stipulation that councilors disclose stocks they hold in companies, but that proposal did not make it into the reform package, in part over confusion as to whether that would include investments in mutual funds and blind trusts.
“I think it would be prudent if we just clarified that it’s individual stocks,” said Councilor Josh Bain, a southside Republican who worked on the 2024 ethics reform package.
What’s next?
Democrats on council have already proposed establishing a one-year cooling off period for senior city officials. The announcement came the same day Mirror Indy and IndyStar published a story in which ethics experts questioned former chief of staff Dan Parker joining an Indianapolis engineering firm shortly after leaving the city.
Councilors on the ethics committee did not discuss the one-year cooling off period, as that falls outside the purview of the committee.
The committee is expected to revisit their conversation around ethics disclosures at its next meeting, which has not yet been scheduled.
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Peter Blanchard covers local government. Reach him by phone or Signal at 317-605-4836 or peter.blanchard@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @peterlblanchard.
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