The City of Carmel infringed on state law while withholding public records showing it paid half a million dollars to a city employee in a settlement, according to a judge’s ruling in a legal battle between the city and IndyStar that began nearly five years ago.
Carmel was ordered to hand over the settlement agreements and disclose the complete monetary settlement amount in the agreements to IndyStar by Hamilton County Superior Court Judge Darren Murphy earlier this month.
The records showed Carmel paid $500,000, as part of a confidential settlement and release of all claims agreement, to a city employee who accused former corporation counsel Doug Haney of harassment. The documents don’t contain any details about the specific allegations of harassment against Haney, then the city’s top attorney.
The settlements note that both Haney and Carmel denied any wrongdoing and entered into the agreements “to avoid the uncertainty and expense of litigation.” Haney has not commented publicly about the allegations and did not respond to a request for comment from IndyStar for this article.
In addition to the dollars paid to the employee who accused Haney, the City of Carmel has spent more than $200,000 in legal fees associated with the matter, when including IndyStar’s attorney fees, which the city has been ordered to pay. Plus, the city agreed to pay for some of the employee’s professional memberships, and she was provided with additional professional opportunities as part of the settlement agreement with her.
“This ruling recognizes that such contracts or documents should be available to the public in order for the voters to be able to understand the actions and management of their elected and representative officials and the direct or indirect expenditure of public funds,” said Kyle Cray, an attorney who represented IndyStar in the case, via email.
IndyStar and the paper’s former Carmel and Westfield reporter Brittany Carloni filed the lawsuit in August 2022 after Carloni submitted a formal request to the Carmel government asking for the settlement records.
The request was sparked by a Carmel City Council meeting from the summer of 2021 during which members talked about an investigation into Haney, who was employed by the city for more than two decades before he resigned in December 2020.
During the meeting, some councilors said they’d been left in the dark about whether the city had resolved the complaint with a financial settlement.
Carloni sent a public records request for documents tied to settlement agreements with current or former city employees between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2021. About a month later, the city responded. It acknowledged that there were eight pages of records possibly related to Carloni’s request, but declined to provide those eight pages.
In October 2021, Carloni sent a formal complaint to the state’s former Public Access Counselor, Luke Britt. Under state records law it’s up to government agencies to decide if they want to publicly release personnel files, Britt wrote, but they have to provide records when compensation is involved.
But even after Britt’s opinion, which did not compel action like a court order does, the city continued to withhold the records. IndyStar’s lawsuit described the refusal from the city to disclose the records as “arbitrary and capricious.”
The court agreed with IndyStar’s primary argument that the settlement agreements were public record and not subject to the personnel file exception under the state’s Access to Public Records Act. The judge’s ruling stated the entire settlement agreement and the amount paid to the employee under the settlement agreement must be disclosed because of the strong public policy favoring public knowledge of direct and indirect expenditures of public funds
As part of the confidential settlement and release of all claims agreement, in addition to the $500,000, the employee that accused Haney of harassment was moved to a new position and Haney was to not contact or come within 100 feet of her for any reason. Her new position came with a salary of no less than $125,000, per the agreement with the city.
The city and the woman agreed that the terms of the agreement were strictly confidential, and the woman was not supposed to talk about it except for with immediate family or with a tax or financial advisor, per the document. The city also agreed to remove any negative employment document or record found in the woman’s personnel file created by Haney or any member of his staff.
Before the judge’s ruling in the case, back in 2021, some city councilors came out in favor of releasing the settlement records. During the August 2021 meeting, they debated whether to subpoena former Mayor Jim Brainard to force him to provide access to the settlement agreement.
They reached a 4-4 split council vote on the issue, meaning a subpoena was never issued. Councilors Adam Aasen, Jeff Worrell and then-councilors Kevin Rider and Miles Nelson voted to not subpoena Brainard. They said they wanted to protect the privacy of the employee who made the complaint.
Aasen, at the time, added his concern was that the city council should not break a legal agreement with an employee.
Councilor Tony Green and then-councilors Laura Campbell, Tim Hannon and Sue Finkam voted in favor of a subpoena to force the former mayor to provide access to the alleged settlement agreement. Finkam went on to take over as mayor for Brainard in 2024.
“It would be my hope that the administration release the information per the advisory opinion and the case law in every attempt to be transparent,” Finkam told IndyStar in 2022.
But once she took over as mayor, Finkam did not voluntarily release the records, and the legal battle continued until the judge’s recent ruling.
“While on the Carmel City Council, now-Mayor Sue Finkam called for public release of the agreement,” a city spokesperson told IndyStar via email. “Upon assuming office, her role with the city changed, and Mayor Finkam acquired an obligation to vigorously defend the agreement entered into by the previous administration.”
The city is looking forward to moving forward and continuing to foster a supportive workplace alongside its ongoing commitment to fiscal responsibility and transparent government, according to the statement.
Contact Jake Allen at jake.allen@indystar.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @Jake_Allen19. Click here to get Hamilton County news sent straight to your inbox and subscribe to the IndyStar North newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Carmel broke Indiana public records law over $500,000 settlement, judge rules
Reporting by Jake Allen, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
