(From left) Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté and Commissioner Penny Githens
(Lucas Gonzalez, WFIU/WTIU News)
Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté has again accused the county commissioners of being misleading during the planning process for a new jail.
Marté sent a lengthy email Monday to other members of the Community Justice Response Committee (CJRC), the group discussing plans for a new facility. In it, he broke down several concerns about a perceived lack of transparency from the commissioners.
Specifically, he alleges the recommendation of an architectural firm to design and build a new county jail was not unanimous, as stated at previous public meetings. He said state code may have been violated during the selection process.
CJRC members briefly discussed Marté’s email at the group’s Monday meeting, marking a return to a more argumentative dialogue that wasn’t seen at the group’s last meeting.
Marté’s email, which was shared with WFIU/WTIU News, says two representatives of the sheriff’s office who served on a firm selection committee — Jail Commander Kyle Gibbons and Assistant Jail Commander Matt Demmings — did not formally vote for DLZ, the firm commissioners have selected.
That contradicts a previous statement by Richard Crider, the county’s fleet and building manager, that the committee unanimously chose DLZ before presenting its recommendation to the commissioners.
“Kyle (Gibbons) indicated he had verbally voted for DLZ but did not submit score sheet while Matt Demmings neither verbally voted or scored, nor was he ever asked to do so,” Marté wrote. “Both were concerned and confused regarding the resolute statements of a ‘unanimous vote.’”
Ruben Marté at the April 3, 2023 CJRC meeting (Lucas Gonzalez, WTIU/WFIU News)
Commissioner Penny Githens brought up the email at the CJRC’s Monday meeting but opposed discussing it in detail. She instead invited the sheriff and other CJRC members to ask questions at the commissioners’ Wednesday work session.
Githens cited several parts of Marté’s email in which he requested the commissioners respond to his concerns and questions.
“It’s the commissioners who need to respond to this, in my opinion,” Githens said. “So that’s why it needs to be at one of our work sessions.”
But several CJRC members, including Marté and Monroe Circuit Court Judge Catherine Stafford, said they would not be able to attend the commissioners’ work session.
“I’m, of course, appreciative that I can watch those meetings after the fact, but that’s not the same as being able to participate in them as a member of this committee,” Stafford said.
Githens also said she didn’t want to discuss Marté’s message in detail because the commissioners’ administrator Angela Purdie, who is mentioned several times in the email, was not present. Purdie was the facilitator for the selection process.
Purdie told WFIU/WTIU News she plans to respond to Marté's comments at the Wednesday work session.
Penny Githens at the April 3, 2023 CJRC meeting (Lucas Gonzalez, WTIU/WFIU News)
Commissioners Githens, Lee Jones and Julie Thomas all voted to accept the committee’s recommendation of DLZ at a March 22 meeting. Crider said the committee’s selection was unanimous then and at least one other meeting.
“After (the March 22) meeting, I acquiesced to the reality that there would be no clarification, retraction or factual disclosure of the assertion that the committee’s work resulted in a unanimous vote for the selection of DLZ,” Marté wrote.
Crider said the selection committee’s decision was based on a scoring system and that each member participated in scoring and voting. Marté said Gibbons and Demmings told him they never completed a score sheet.
Marté also said the scoring process took place 11 days after interviews in the selection process, and that scoring sheets may have been disposed of, then recreated. That, Marté said, was based on an email from Purdie.
If the scoring sheets were disposed of, there may have been a violation of Indiana Code.
IC 5-15-6-8 states that any public official who “recklessly, knowingly or intentionally destroys or damages any public record” could be charged with a level 6 felony, unless the following criteria are met:
the commission shall have given its approval in writing that the public records may be destroyed;
the commission shall have entered its approval for destruction of the public records on its own minutes; or
authority for destruction of the records is granted by an approved retention schedule established under this chapter.
County Attorney Jeff Cockerill said the firm selection was atypical, as there aren’t specific steps the committee had to follow.
“(The committee) comprised of County Staff and the Sheriff, which would not be ‘governing body’ under the open door law, decided the proper course of the interview,” Cockerill wrote in an email.
Cockerill also noted that Gibbons verbally voted for DLZ, as noted in Marté’s email, and Demmings wasn’t present at the meeting when a vote occurred. Therefore, Cockerill said, previous comments that the vote for DLZ was unanimous are accurate.
“However, it would also be accurate to say that only five members approved the recommendation, but Mr. Demmings was not present,” Cockerill wrote.
As for the recreation of scoring sheets, Cockerill said those documents were requested to better provide transparency.
“If any recreation of the scoresheet occurred, it was to provide that transparency,” he wrote.
The commissioners plan to address the sheriff’s concerns Wednesday.
“I, for one, prefer to discuss things publicly rather than to litigate them through the press,” Githens wrote in an email to WFIU/WTIU News.
The commissioners also have been criticized by not collecting public input during the selection of an architectural firm.
Marté’s email referenced a comment on that topic made at the March 20 CJRC meeting by Seth Mutchler, a member of local advocacy group Care Not Cages.
Seth Mutchler at the April 3, 2023 CJRC meeting (Lucas Gonzalez, WTIU/WFIU News)
“I presume that members of the committee would be presenting to the CJRC in public for input and feedback,” Mutchler said. “It turns out, instead, they’ll be saying, ‘We made a decision without you. Here it is. Deal with it.’”
Also at that meeting, Mutchler called on the commissioners to delay their vote until the public could share their input.
Mutchler’s concerns were echoed Monday by Audrey Williams, a resident who spoke during the public comment period of the CJRC meeting.
“You don’t seem interested in public comment,” she said. “There are many things that people have been saying over and over and over again that you all are not listening to.”
The commissioners did not respond to follow-up questions from WFIU/WTIU News Tuesday.
Representatives with DLZ are scheduled to give a presentation to the jail committee on April 17, according to Cockerill.
