Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté says conflicts between his office and the county commissioners are impeding progress on the jail. (Courtesy of Monroe County Government)
Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté is moving forward to improve conditions at the county jail regardless of whether the board of commissioners supports him.
That was the conclusion of a Monday letter Marté sent to the commissioners, calling it the culmination of months of stalled progress and insufficient collaboration.
“In my mind, this shouldn’t be this difficult,” Marté told Indiana Public Broadcasting, expressing his frustration over what he called a lack of assistance from the commissioners.
The letter was addressed to Penny Githens as president of the board of commissioners but also went to the entire Community Justice Response Committee, the advisory group discussing potential plans for a new jail.
Chief Deputy Phil Parker agreed with Marté.
“All we want to do is provide a safe, clean, humane environment for not just our residents of that facility, but for our staff,” Parker said. “For the life of me, I cannot figure out why that is not something — the easiest thing that you could possibly get behind.”
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In his letter, Marté said conflicts between his administration and the commissioners started shortly after he took office — such as when, in early January, Parker expressed concerns about the potential for the spread of MRSA or staph infection in a holding cell.
Those concerns and others were met with “resistance, dismissiveness, and indifference,” Marté wrote.
That, he said, is part of what prompted him and his staff to deliver a presentation last month to the jail advisory committee detailing how the jail has deteriorated.
“Our sincere purpose and belief was that, by doing so, the entirety of county government and the public would embrace our statutory and human obligation to improve the conditions for the staff and residents and support us in doing so,” Marté wrote. “What we found after this presentation was that nearly everyone who viewed it experienced the same shock and awe of the conditions as we did when we entered the jail for the first time.”
Clash over filling jail tech position
Marté’s letter delves into an ongoing struggle to hire a jail technician, which he described as a low-level position focused on sanitation and maintenance.
The job still hasn’t been posted because county attorneys, representing the commissioners, said the duties in the job description “encroach on the commissioners’ responsibilities,” according to Marté’s letter.
Parker said the commissioners believe the job responsibilities, as written, would overlap with those of ASI, the contractor handling some maintenance duties in the jail.
“This job has been stalled because we can’t get the commissioners to agree on a simple job description,” Parker said.
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Parker said contractors handle maintenance projects that require specialized skills, while the jail technician would handle general, day-to-day maintenance.
The sheriff’s office said it appreciates ASI’s partnership but urgently needs to fill the technician job.
“There is now not one duty in this job description currently being performed by ASI,” Marté wrote. “It appears to me it is your intent to not agree with the job description unless you unilaterally decide what changes are to be made and what the final document looks like. Frankly, that doesn’t sound like much of an ‘agreement’ to me.”
In the meantime, Marté wrote, duties a jail technician typically would handle have been performed by corrections officers and civilian employees.
A Monroe County Personnel Administration Committee meeting at noon Friday will discuss the wording of the job description.
Letter follows fallout between Sheriff, commissioners
Marté sent his letter just a few hours after a Monday evening jail advisory committee meeting adjourned. Tensions between Marté and the commissioners were on full display at that meeting.
During a back-and-forth between Marté and Githens, the two disagreed over what was shown in the sheriff’s presentation.
Githens cited, for example, “gunk” on the floors that she said was later determined to be shampoo. Marté questioned what led her to that conclusion.
“How does she know that when we don’t know what it is?” Marté said. “We never said we know what it is.”
Also, a slide in the presentation showing an out-of-service toilet covered by plastic. Githens said the toilet was unusable for only three days, and that it had been repaired before the sheriff’s office delivered its presentation.
But the sheriff’s office said the toilet was out of order for closer to three weeks. The three days cited by Githens, according to the sheriff’s office, is the amount of time it took for the toilet to be repaired after the presentation was delivered.
Read more: County ‘starting from square one’ in finding site for new jail
“When she made that statement, I felt I needed to correct that,” Marté said, referring to a comment he made at the Monday meeting while responding to Githens.
Also during that meeting, Githens pushed back on recent comments Marté had made about a lack of support from the commissioners.
Marté said he asked the commissioners to provide his office with cleaning equipment to sanitize the jail — but when those conversations stalled, he instead got the equipment from a sheriff’s office in another county. Marté said he was embarrassed to do so.
Marté’s letter also criticizes the commissioners for allegedly saying the presentation had blindsided them.
“It would certainly appear to me if the Commissioners value transparency, there should be no feeling of being ‘blindsided’ by a simple presentation of facts," Marté wrote. "The photographs don’t lie. It was certainly never our intent to blindside anyone, and certainly not our Commissioners, from whom we need support. We simply felt compelled to tell the full and undiluted truth to the public we serve.”
Read more: Conversation on community justice reform discusses plans for new Monroe County jail
Commissioners declined to respond directly to inquiries from Indiana Public Broadcasting but addressed the email during their Wednesday meeting.
Commissioner Julie Thomas said investing money in the current jail would detract from funds that could instead go toward a new facility.
Thomas also said she did not understand why Marté felt the need to send his letter.
"We’re all working together and we continue to work together, so I don’t really understand why we have to send emails when we can sit down and have a conversation," Thomas said.
She also said that it is the sheriff's responsibility to control cleanliness in the jail, not the commissioners'.
Commissioner Penny Githens similarly encouraged Marté to come to the commissioners directly, adding they are not trying to block his efforts.
"I applaud the cleanliness that Marté and his staff are trying to bring to the jail — the different attitude," Githens said. "I think it is more humane than what has been occurring recently, but we don’t have certain authority to do things. It's a little... it's hurtful to have these kinds of things said when I can’t push the button and make it happen."
