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The little known Indianapolis Ethics Commission was created to safeguard Marion County residents from public corruption.
The commission is entirely appointed by Mayor Joe Hogsett, a Democrat who campaigned on ethics reforms in 2015 after he served as U.S. attorney.
But for a mayor who touted public integrity as a top priority, his ethics commission has been largely dormant. During Hogsett’s decade in office, the commission has met just once.
The lack of activity has become more conspicuous amid a string of ethics controversies that have dogged the mayor’s third term, including questions surrounding his campaign and the conduct of several of his top aides in city government.
The ethics commission is so little known that one of its own members didn’t know he was on it until contacted by IndyStar and Mirror Indy.
“It’s a big surprise to me,” said Andy Shank, a former investigator for the FBI, Indiana State Police and State Board of Accounts. He is listed on the city’s website as having served on the commission since 2024 despite never being confirmed to that role by the Indianapolis City-County Council, as required. “I didn’t know I was on the ethics commission. I’m quite offended.”
Shank said Hogsett shouldn’t “claim to be all about enforcing a new era of higher standards and (have a) board with members who don’t know they’re on it and never actually meet.”
The commission, created nearly two decades ago, has the power to consider ethical complaints against city staffers and people doing business with the city, review economic disclosures and ethics waivers filed by public officials, and subpoena witnesses and documents.
Under Hogsett, the only time it’s met is Aug. 25, 2022 — more than six years into his time as Indianapolis mayor. The commission did not conduct any official business at the meeting, and attendance was voluntary, according to Emily Kaufmann, the mayor’s spokesperson.
Asked in a recent interview why the commission doesn’t meet, Hogsett said, “I don’t determine the ethics commission’s calendar.”
“I can go check on that,” he added.
The group currently has no chairperson — and Shank isn’t the only person listed as a member whose appointment was never confirmed by the City-County Council.
Mark Bode, a former spokesperson for Hogsett, is also listed on the city’s website as a commission member whose term started in 2026, but the council has taken no action to confirm his appointment. Bode referred questions about his appointment back to the mayor’s office.
Sara Hindi, spokesperson for the City-County Council, said the governing body hasn’t received proposals from the administration for those appointees.
Kaufmann said the mayor’s office is looking into the issues regarding Shank and Bode.
“We are unclear as to why Andy Shank’s nomination was not formally communicated to him or the council at the same time, and are looking into this matter,” Kaufmann said.
Kaufmann emphasized that, unlike other city boards with regular meeting schedules, the ethics commission is an oversight board that meets on a case by case basis.
It “is not required to review or grant gift waivers, post-employment waivers, advisory opinions, and statements of economic interest,” she said. That’s the responsibility of Hogsett’s Office of Corporation Counsel, the name of the agency that houses the city’s attorneys, Kaufmann said.
She said the commission would only meet if the corporation counsel — who reports to the mayor and also serves as secretary of the commission — received and substantiated a written complaint filed with that office, and then only if the complainant requests further review.
Prior to filing a written complaint, city employees are advised to “seek the counsel” of city attorneys or the human resources department, according to the city’s ethics training materials.
It’s unclear how many ethics complaints have been made during Hogsett’s tenure.
In April, IndyStar and Mirror Indy requested copies of ethics complaints filed with the commission since the mayor took office in 2016. More than three months later, Kaufmann told reporters no such records existed.
Pressed by reporters, Kaufmann clarified that the city had not received any “actionable” complaints that had been forwarded to the ethics commission.
The news outlets previously reported that a city employee expressed concerns to city attorneys about potential favoritism shown by Hogsett’s former Department of Metropolitan Development Director Scarlett Andrews toward the clients of her then-secret romantic partner, Hogsett’s disgraced former chief of staff Thomas Cook.
Kaufmann said the Office of Corporation Counsel found “no record of an actionable ethics complaint” pertaining to that situation.
The city’s ordinance requires complaints be signed and include “the nature of the alleged violation, the date, time and place of each occurrence, and name of the individual charged with the violation.” Complaints missing one of these components would not be considered “actionable,” she said, noting the city’s lawyers routinely follow up with staffers whose complaints are incomplete.
Only actionable complaints would be sent to the other members of the ethics commission, she said. It remains unclear how many “inactionable” complaints the city has received under Hogsett. Kaufmann said that “it is difficult to quantify an answer” due to the “wide range of circumstances” in which individuals contact city attorneys.
How to file an ethics complaint
Anyone who has a documented concern or complaint related to city officials, appointees, or a person with a business relationship with the city can submit that information to the Office of Corporation Counsel by email, mail or fax.
A complaint must include:
- the details of the alleged violation
- supporting evidence to ensure it explicitly relates to the corresponding local ordinance and city policies
- contact information for the submitter, which is protected under Indianapolis’s whistleblower policy
📩 ethics@indy.gov
📮 200 E. Washington St., Ste. 1601, Indianapolis, IN 46204
📠 317-327-3968
Ethics complaints related to city-county councilors are reviewed separately by the council’s Ethics Committee.
‘The status quo isn’t working’
The Indianapolis Ethics Commission was established in 2008 as part of a package of reforms proposed by former Mayor Greg Ballard, a Republican who campaigned on updating and modernizing the city’s ethics code, which had remained unchanged since the 1970s.
The City-County Council’s ordinance gave the commission jurisdiction over elected officials, employees and anyone with a business relationship with a city agency. It’s unclear if, or how often, the commission met during Ballard’s tenure.
Joanne Sanders, a former Democratic city-county councilor who worked on the original proposal, said it’s unfortunate the commission has been largely inactive since its creation.
“I guess that falls on the leadership of the council, but it also falls on the mayor’s office,” Sanders said.
The intention of the group was to serve as a check on the executive branch, but that function was quickly watered down. Instead of appointees coming from both the mayor’s office and the City-County Council, the council changed the ordinance and gave appointing power for all members to the mayor’s office.
That makes it difficult for the commission to hold public officials accountable, said Julia Vaughn, director of Common Cause Indiana, a government accountability group.
Vaughn, who testified in support of the original proposal back in 2008, was disappointed to learn the commission has only met once in the past decade.
“While we supported an entity to serve as the regulatory body for ethics in city government, the structure of the commission doesn’t lend itself to vigorous enforcement of ethics laws,” Vaughn said. “The status quo isn’t working.”
The mayor’s office and his Office of Corporation Counsel have significant latitude over the entity, when it meets, and what it investigates.
Related
Mr. Clean
Mirror Indy and IndyStar investigate ethical concerns within Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration.
The group functions much differently than the Indiana State Ethics Commission, which holds monthly public meetings, issues advisory opinions about ethical issues involving state employees, and reviews potential waivers of state ethics rules.
Just this year, the commission issued an advisory opinion about whether a former state employee’s new job would trigger the state’s cooling-off period.
The group also recently fined a one-time member of Republican Gov. Mike Braun’s own administration — former Secretary of Public Safety Jennifer-Ruth Green — after the Braun administration accused Green of violating the state’s rules regarding political activity, ghost employment, misuse of state property and retaliation.
The ethics commission levied a $10,000 fine against Green after she admitted to violating Indiana’s ethics code as part of a settlement.
Meanwhile, ethics issues in the Hogsett administration have gone unaddressed by the body.
For example, IndyStar and Mirror Indy reporting revealed that Cook, the former chief of staff, and several top former city attorneys took jobs with law firms that do business with the city, but only some of them sought ethics waivers from the city’s Office of Corporation Counsel. None of the waivers were reviewed by the Indianapolis Ethics Commission.
Nor was the issue of Cook working with Andrews, a top city official with whom he had a secret romantic relationship, to cut deals for his law firm clients involving millions of dollars of city incentives.
Recent reporting from the news outlets also found Hogsett’s campaign acted behind closed doors to advance the interests of his political donors and that his top aide, former chief of staff Dan Parker, directed city staff members to sign up public servants to campaign for the mayor. A legal expert contacted by IndyStar and Mirror Indy said some of the examples could constitute violations of state and federal laws.
Shank said the Indianapolis Ethics Commission “is the body that should be policing these things.”
“If the city’s ethics are in disarray,” he said, “the board is the one supposed to answer to that.”
‘Functional in name only’
Most current and former members of the dormant Indianapolis board didn’t respond to questions from the news outlets.
However, one current member, Shane Hatchett, confirmed the board hasn’t met in years and that he plans to let his membership lapse for that reason.
Hatchett said there’s a “significant gap in the commission’s ability to do what it was created to do.”
For example, Hatchett said he doesn’t believe several of the ethical issues revealed in IndyStar and Mirror Indy’s reporting would fall into its jurisdiction, absent a complaint being filed that pertains to a specific violation of the city’s ethics code.
Hatchett also noted matters over two years old are specifically carved out of the commission’s jurisdiction. That blunts its ability to review issues that occurred during Hogsett’s first two terms in office.
“As someone who’s keenly focused on good governance and how best to promote transparency and accountability, I can’t help but note that this group is functional in name only,” Hatchett said in a statement, “and the City-County Council would be wise to review it to ensure it’s matching their goals and expectations for the kind of oversight and accountability they hoped to achieve when it was first established.”
Shank, who led the police investigation into corruption at the Indianapolis Land Bank that ended up being one of Hogsett’s flagship cases when he was U.S. attorney, said that case helped build Hogsett’s reputation as a champion for public integrity, leading Common Cause Indiana to award him the moniker “Mr. Clean.”
“He campaigned on my case,” Shank said. “There was a political cartoon in the Star about Joe pulling the FBI truck up to (the City-County Building) and cleaning house. It truly puts such a bad taste in my mouth.”
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations. Sign up for our free newsletters.
Hayleigh Colombo is an investigative reporter for IndyStar. Contact her at hcolombo@indystar.com or @hayleighcolombo on X.
Emily Hopkins is a senior reporter at Mirror Indy. You can reach them by phone or Signal at 317-790-5268 or email at emily.hopkins@mirrorindy.org. Follow them on most social media @indyemapolis or on Bluesky @emilyhopkins.bsky.social.
Peter Blanchard covers local government. Reach him at 317-605-4836 or peter.blanchard@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @peterlblanchard.
