The following statement was read by City-County Councilor Jesse Brown, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America at a September 23 press conference calling for Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett’s resignation. With Brown’s permission, the statement is reproduced in full here.
Introduction
My name is Jesse Brown, and I am the district councilor for District 13 here in Indianapolis. I’m proud to fight every day to represent my constituents—even when that means fighting against bad behavior from people elected under the same party’s banner.
I am a proud socialist, which means that I believe that the working people of this city, state, and country must be in the driver’s seat of the economy and of our democracy.
But it also means that I expect leaders to serve the people and be accountable to the people. We currently have a mayor of Indianapolis who appears to feel that he is accountable to nobody. That is why today I am renewing and deepening my calls for the mayor to step down from his position and allow a true leader to lead.
Joe Hogsett has overseen a toxic stew of sexual abuse and harassment within his campaigns and his administration. He kept a known abuser, Thomas Cook, as his chief of staff for years, and then when he was finally forced to ask for Cook’s resignation, he kept a very cozy relationship with Cook and appears to have allowed Cook to send economic development deals to a person at the city he had a sexual relationship with for approval. Cook was then invited back to be in charge of Hogsett’s 2023 re-election campaign. I was told that Cook was the person to know if I wanted to work with Hogsett.
The women who have spoken to the media took great personal risk to their careers and mental health by coming forward to speak with the media about the open secret in the Hogsett administration. They had both previously come forward to warn Mayor Hogsett about Cook’s behavior, but did not feel that their concerns were taken seriously or properly addressed.
Since then, the city has confirmed that at least seven investigations into sexual abuse within the administration have occurred. The fact that Rusty Carr and Matt Pleasant, two high-ranking employees within the Department of Metropolitan Development that worked frequently with developer attorneys like Thomas Cook, have been implicated shows that there are deep-seated problems of sexual abuse throughout the administration.
Indianapolis needs a mayor who is disgusted and repulsed by sexual harassment and abuse, not one who tolerates it and covers it up.
I am eternally grateful to Lauren Roberts, Caroline Ellert, and the other women who have stepped forward to bring the sexual harassment and abuse of Thomas Cook forward into the public discussion. Certainly, the way that Joe Hogsett has coddled and protected Cook are reason enough for me to call for his resignation.
But Hogsett has been failing to lead this city for just as long as he has been failing to address abuse by his top deputies. It’s not only because of the sexual abuse and harassment from his office that Hogsett needs to step down.
I could speak all day about the disappointments, failures, and frustrations from this administration. But today I want to focus on four other important reasons that Joe Hogsett needs to resign immediately.
Toxic workplace culture
Dozens of City employees have signed an open letter on coworker.org, demanding that the city must dramatically change the top-down, toxic culture. I have spoken personally with current and former employees of Joe Hogsett who have described managers pointing in employees’ faces, shouting at them, belittling them in front of their peers, cursing at them, and threatening their jobs. Then, the same managers would turn around and pressure employees to spend their evenings at alcohol-fueled social events or campaigning off the clock to help Hogsett and his allies win re-election.
Both former employees and people working for non-profits and volunteer groups with relationships with the city have told me that any criticism of the Mayor or top leaders at all will cause top Hogsett aides to threaten to have the critics fired or their employers cut off from any City contracts.
I myself have had department heads and deputy mayors respond with aggression and veiled threats to my constituent emails or social media comments. It is incredibly clear that leaders within the administration, and most of all Joe Hogsett himself, are unwilling to receive any critical feedback and are unwilling to learn or grow from their failings.
Over and over and over again, Joe Hogsett has covered his ears and refused to listen to the critiques and suggestions of his own employees and partner agencies.
This is not how to run a workplace. This is not how to run a political campaign. This is not acceptable behavior in 2024, and it’s shameful it has gone on so long in the Indianapolis government.
Indianapolis needs a mayor who refuses to tolerate bad managers, not one that promotes and empowers them.
The way working people are treated in this city and in this administration
The wealth gap between rich and poor, and the gap between black and white household wealth are both growing wider in Indianapolis. In my zip code, 46218, we have the lowest life expectancy in central Indiana, years lower than in wealthy neighborhoods.
Yet the Hogsett administration is creating more poverty in the city. Many city employees, particularly women and people of color, continue to make lower than living wages, even years after the city embraced its Inclusive Incentives program and touted the Good Wages Initiative devised by EmployIndy. When Hogsett’s own employees cannot afford to raise their children, keep a roof over their heads, and provide for their basic needs, how can they take care of taxpayers and constituents?
Even while first year IMPD officers have received a 45% pay raise over the last five years, many city employees receive less than 3 percent raises for cost of living adjustments, while Indianapolis rapidly becomes less affordable.
I call on the city to help meet all of the needs of its employees. A municipal daycare option could help increase the availability of childcare for all Indianapolis residents while providing a helpful and important benefit to those serving the public for their day jobs.
The city of Indianapolis has committed to publicly own a hotel, but Hogsett has not offered any words of support to the hospitality unions who I’ve been arrested alongside in the fight for a union hotel in Indianapolis.
The Public Defenders of Marion County fought to win a union last year. Every worker deserves a union, and Hogsett should publicly encourage city employees and all Indianapolis employees to push for union recognition and representation. By the way, this would also give employees a vital tool to fight back against harassment and intimidation by managers.
For that matter, in the private sector, Starbucks workers in my district have fought to be recognized as a union store—the Mayor has remained silent about their struggle rather than celebrating and praising these workers taking matters into their own hands to fight against corporate greed and poverty.
Indianapolis needs a mayor who stands with workers, not one who exploits them.
Lack of vision and leadership
Joe Hogsett has run an administration that has consistently failed to meet the political moment, leaving constituents in the lurch.
When Republicans at the Statehouse attack Indianapolis, prevent us from governing our own city, and year after year attack the democratically-supported public transit system, Joe Hogsett hides.
When IMPD attacked peaceful protestors in 2020, starting a riot that left peaceful protestors gassed with expired chemical weapons, innocent people dead and property damaged, Joe Hogsett was nowhere to be found.
When reckless driving and road rage has injured thousands and killed hundreds of people on our streets over the last several years, Joe Hogsett has not even offered a comment, much less provided policy and leadership to put an end to the crisis. Over one hundred pedestrians and cyclists were struck by cars in Indianapolis in August—seven people died. But the Mayor still has no plans, no ideas, and no resources to offer to help save our lives. As the grassroots activists leading the charge on finding a solution repeatedly asked him and his top deputies to meet and discuss how we could achieve Vision Zero, the administration left their calls and emails unanswered, even on email chains including city councilors like me. Now, after the Council has passed an ordinance requiring the Mayor to allocate funds and personnel to the problem, the Mayor has done the very bare minimum required under the ordinance, all in the context of a totally inadequate budget for maintaining our streets and roads.
Our Office of Sustainability is deeply underfunded and treated like a joke, even while climate change begins costing Indianapolis tax dollars every year through flooding and extreme weather. The former director of this office left city employment due in large part to Hogsett’s mismanagement, but even before she left, she oversaw a department that was tiny compared to those of peer cities. While our electric utility company AES has overseen the most horrible and poorly-managed rollout of billing software that I have ever seen, our mayor was not on the front lines fighting for justice for people facing electricity disconnects and fraudulent bills. He ignored the issue, as he ignores the massive threat of climate change.
And now that the federal government’s pandemic response funds have dried up, Hogsett is deeply cutting the budgets for the most transformative and innovative public safety and community health programs, all while giving another record budget to IMPD, funding make-believe officer positions that even the Chief of Police admits will never be filled rather than putting the money where it can best protect constituents – in the Clinician Led mental health response teams and the Gun Violence Reduction Strategy.
Joe Hogsett has overseen a homelessness crisis that has only gotten worse. Deeply desperate people are living in tents and cars all over my district and the entire city. People are sleeping on the streets and sidewalks. Meanwhile, the mayor has provided nothing but lip service while 500 evictions are being heard in our small claims court every week.
While our public housing agency, which was described by one federal official as “possibly the worst-run public housing agency in the country” fell into ruin, Joe Hogsett did nothing. Tenants at the Lugar Tower in my district are dealing with broken elevators, a trash chute backed up several floors high, and disgusting floors that have not been cleaned in weeks. Joe Hogsett has remained silent, allowing the abuses at the IHA to continue.
But Hogsett isn’t always so late to the conversation. When billionaires toyed with our city to ask for tax dollars to support yet another sports team, Joe Hogsett sprang into action. He traveled across the country multiple times to pursue a Major League Soccer team that very few people in Indianapolis care about or asked for.
Indianapolis needs a mayor who can show up for the hard conversations, not just for ribbon cuttings and public praise.
Recent behavior
Joe Hogsett has admitted to trying to stay out of the public eye due to the way reporters have followed him to ask him questions about the calls for his resignation and the shock at the sexual abuse in his administration.
Hogsett has doubled down in his defense of his own actions, and very belatedly instituting the bare minimum of reforms within his administration. In the private sector, years ago it became the norm to require sexual harassment training for all employees. In the Hogsett administration, it took multiple front-page media stories to make this change. Hogsett has refused to meet directly with members of the City County Council, speaking to us only through his attorneys about this matter. The Mayor has insisted that a 2017 investigation of Lauren Roberts’s complaints happened, although he refuses to provide any proof and although Lauren herself has stated that she was never interviewed or even contacted by the Mayor. In a press conference, Hogsett stated that his supposed discipline of Thomas Cook consisted of a verbal conversation. An informal discussion between friends is certainly not the appropriate level of disciplinary action for the grave misdeeds that Thomas Cook has allegedly committed.
Most of the Mayor’s activity since July can best be described as working hard to protect himself, not his employees and certainly not the women who have come forward asking him for more.
Of course, this focus on protecting himself did not prevent him from standing on stage in front of a crowd, swaying back and forth and joking in an affected accent about how he is running from things a few weeks ago at a concert.
The total lack of leadership displayed by the Hogsett administration is not a joke. It isn’t funny.
Indianapolis deserves a mayor who puts the needs of victims and his constituents above protecting himself.
A moment of crisis for our country, state, and city
The United States is currently facing down the escalating genocide in Gaza, in the West Bank, and now in Lebanon. Republican politicians are doing their best to instigate pogroms against immigrant communities and many of our Democratic leaders are remaining silent about all of the above. We, the people, are told time and again that we should focus our energy on local issues. Well, here we are.
The city cries out for leadership, but Joe Hogsett has proven time and again that he is drunk behind the wheel. Our sitting mayor is not up to the challenge facing our city. For the good of the city of Indianapolis, Joe Hogsett must resign.
