More than a year after an outside investigator called for harassment complaints to be handled outside of the mayor’s administration, Indianapolis’ legislative body still hasn’t changed how the city deals with employee allegations.
It’s been nearly two years since widespread calls for reforms began, after IndyStar reported that three women accused Thomas Cook, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett’s former top deputy, of sexual wrongdoing.
Both Hogsett’s office and Indianapolis City-County Council members say concerns about victims’ privacy have held up reforms. The Hogsett administration, which has already made some changes of its own, opposes the idea of the council creating independent bodies to examine misconduct claims because of how public records laws could threaten victim confidentiality.
Multiple public records experts told IndyStar they believe a new city entity could keep victims’ names confidential under Indiana law.
While the legal complexity stalls council progress, employees are left reporting complaints to the Hogsett administration. Advocates for reforms and some city-county councilors say that’s a problem because the mayor has lost many people’s trust.
“I’m not surprised that the well-being of city workers is not high on [councilors’] priority list,” said Lauren Roberts, who has accused Cook of sexual abuse and sexual harassment. “I also find it pretty devastating that even the folks who have said publicly that they support survivors and really want to move these policies forward and do it in the right way, that they really aren’t taking any action.”
A small group of councilors has been working closely with a council attorney to ensure any policy will protect confidentiality “to the fullest extent permitted under Indiana law,” Councilor Dan Boots, who leads the HR working group, said in a June statement. Boots said the council plans to release a report with policy recommendations by the end of July.
“While this process may seem lengthy, our commitment to current and future city employees remains steadfast,” Boots said in the statement. “We want the city-county enterprise to be a workplace where every employee feels safe, respected, and supported.”
Why harassment reforms were recommended
IndyStar reported in July 2024 that three women accused Cook of sexual harassment, abuse or assault over several years. Two women who spoke on the record, Roberts and Caroline Ellert, said Hogsett could have done more to prevent the alleged abuse if he had acted sooner and provided safer ways for employees to report misconduct. (Ellert, who said Cook sexually assaulted her, declined to comment for this story.)
Cook previously told IndyStar he had “consensual relationships that violated a trust placed in me,” but denied using his professional role to further those relationships. Cook has not been charged with a crime, although a Marion County grand jury is investigating city development deals involving him, along with allegations of unlawful touching and communication.
In response to the women’s allegations, the council hired Chicago-based law firm Fisher Phillips for up to $450,000 to investigate the mayor’s handling of the claims.
Victims’ advocates largely supported two of the firm’s main suggestions in a May 2025 report. The firm said that to minimize political influence, the council should pass a law creating an independent human resources board to handle personnel issues, replacing the HR division that’s housed in the mayor’s administration. The firm also said the council should create an ad-hoc office of inspector general to investigate complaints on a case-by-case basis.
“Employees of the city need to believe that the people reviewing complaints are truly independent of the officials involved,” Emma Davidson Tribbs, a co-founder of the National Women’s Defense League who has advocated for Roberts and Ellert, said in an interview.
The council has discussed those policy reforms at only one public meeting, in October 2025, where city attorney Brandon Beeler cast doubt on how an independent HR board could protect victim privacy and council leaders declined to give a timeline for new laws.
Experts skeptical about risk of identifying victims
The mayor’s office opposes third-party review of complaints because it “would pose a threat of publicly identifying victims,” spokesperson Emily Kaufmann said in a June statement.
“There is no exception in the public records law … that would shield a complainant’s name from being disclosed if the City would send an HR file to a third-party,” Kaufmann said in a statement on behalf of the mayor’s office. “This would have a chilling effect on employees who wish to remain anonymous when making a complaint of bad workplace behavior.”
Public records experts said they believe an independent HR board could protect complainants’ identities with exemptions carved out in Indiana’s public records laws, which apply broadly to government entities.
Under the Access to Public Records Act, public agencies can choose to withhold many materials in personnel files. Requests for information must name a specific person, for starters, and the government must provide only basic information about that employee’s education, compensation and previous work experience, among other facts.
An independent HR board could also meet in an executive session to discuss personnel matters, circumventing the Open Door Law that requires government meetings to occur in public.
If investigative documents related to harassment complaints were prepared for or discussed in an executive session, the identities of the accusers and the alleged perpetrator could likely be withheld, multiple experts told IndyStar. Public agencies can generally keep a personnel investigation under wraps unless the employee is terminated, suspended or demoted, at which point they must provide a factual basis for the decision in response to a request that names the employee.
“While I think protecting complainants is justifiable, that seems to me to be unrelated to the question of whether creating an independent board is a good idea,” Gerry Lanosga, an Indiana University professor and member of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government, said in an email. “So perhaps the stated concern is a fig leaf for some other reluctance to create an independent authority.”
Asked for an interview, the office of Indiana’s Public Access Counselor Jennifer Ruby declined to comment and referred IndyStar to the state’s handbook on public access laws.
Hogsett administration has made some reforms
Although the reforms are hung up, the Hogsett administration made multiple reforms in the months after Roberts and Ellert went public with their allegations.
Hogsett issued an executive order in August 2024 requiring all city-county employees to complete annual harassment training. Before, only supervisors had to complete such training every two years, Kaufmann said.
In October of that year, the city contracted with Speakfully to serve as a third-party reporting platform, where employees can anonymously call or file online reports of harassment and workplace misconduct. The city also formed internal working groups to create a safer workplace culture, Kaufmann said, which has led to initiatives to improve internal communications across departments and promote career development.
Councilor Crista Lee Wells, who chaired the investigative committee that hired Fisher Phillips and called for Hogsett to resign after the report came out, said she’s been “disappointed” to see the council’s lack of progress.
“It feels like it’s been a year of sweeping it under the rug and finding any and all issues to distract us from doing this hard work,” Wells told IndyStar, “whether it be our infrastructure deficits, urban forests, violence, housing, data centers.”
In a June 1 interview, Boots also attributed the delay to the need to do more legal analysis while balancing other city issues.
“I hate to use this as an excuse, but we are part-time councilors trying to squeeze all that in,” Boots told IndyStar on June 1. “And then we get something like fiscal, road funding, data center stuff, that tends to always push things off of the front-burner.”
‘Change is not an urgent priority’
Tribbs and other advocates say it’s important to have a transparent system that’s open to public view, so employees and constituents can see that it’s working. Tribbs has suggested an annual report that shows how many harassment complaints have been made and how many have undergone a full investigation.
“One of the reasons that we’re in the situation we’re in is because so much of this lacked transparency and was not open to public knowledge and review,” Tribbs said. “There is a balance that has to be struck between protecting those involved and also showing how the process can be working.”
Over the past two years, councilors have repeatedly acknowledged that Roberts, Ellert and other women shared their stories at great personal cost. They have said it’s the city’s responsibility to use their input to create a safer workplace.
To Roberts and other advocates, however, councilors’ words are undercut by the delayed reforms and other dealings with Cook’s accusers. They point, for example, to then-Council President Vop Osili’s decision to order Roberts to be forcibly removed from the council chambers while she contested the Fisher Phillips report in June 2025. Osili said in a statement two days later that he “failed” Roberts and regretted the trauma his decision caused.
Tribbs said that no matter how busy councilors may be, their slow pace sends a message to city-county employees, as well as the women who went public with their allegations against Cook.
“Every month of delay matters,” Tribbs said. “It sends a very clear message to employees who may be experiencing harassment today that any kind of meaningful change is not an urgent priority.”
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Email Indianapolis City Hall Reporter Jordan Smith at JTSmith@indystar.com. Follow him on X @jordantsmith09 and Bluesky @jordanaccidentally.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: A year later, Indy council’s harassment reforms stalled over victims’ privacy concerns
Reporting by Jordan Smith, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jordan Smith, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
