Monroe County sheriff: Commissioners try to delay jail progress to 'tag along' on trips

Tensions between Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté and the Monroe County commissioners over a new jail continue to boil.

Marté’s frustration with stalled planning for a new jail surfaced in a recent email that made clear he’s moving forward despite a nearly two-month delay requested by a county commissioner.

What commissioner Penny Githens described in a March 8 message to the sheriff as “a breakdown in communication between the two of us” happened after Githens emailed jail project manager Scott Carnegie, from DLZ architects, two days earlier.

In that March 6 message, Githens told Carnegie she was “disappointed” to learn that he, jail transition team director Cory Grass, county maintenance director Richard Crider and others had made plans to fly to Atlanta in early April to visit manufacturers of jail cells and doors — without consulting the commissioners.

“It was doubly disappointing,” she wrote, that the trip commenced on a Wednesday when the commissioners have their regular meeting.

She also wasn’t happy that a May 1-2 van trip to Chicago to visit a detention furnishings plant was planned without commissioners’ input. Githens wanted the trips delayed in order to accommodate her schedule.

The sheriff balked.

“I would very much appreciate having these trips scheduled any time beginning Friday, May 10, 2024, but not before,” Githens wrote in a March 6 email to Carnegie which copied Marté.

The sheriff wasn’t happy. His March 7 email response to Githens noted her timeframe for the trips would begin three days after the primary election, where she has two opponents on the Democratic ticket.

Postponing the trips so Githens could go along would delay jail planning progress by weeks, which would be “not practical or acceptable,” he said.

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The email correspondence detailing Marté and Githens’ disagreement was obtained by The Herald-Times through a public records’ request.

Marté told Githens his transition team members will proceed with programming, furnishing and design decisions now, before land is bought or a building designed.

“Anything we can do ahead of site selection will be something already accomplished … thus improving the eventual timeline for the facility," he wrote.

“This is the work of the transition team. It cannot be scheduled around the availability of a gaggle of individuals who are not centrally necessary for gathering this information. DLZ was selected to lead this project, Cory Grass is the transition team director, and they must be allowed to move without encumbrances and delays to accommodate those just wanting to tag along.”

He said the jail planning process is in the three-month pre-design phase, “yet you audaciously suggest to DLZ to delay this phase by nine weeks.”

The visits will stay on schedule, Marté said in his response to Githens, “so that the sheriff’s office will not be participatory and complicit to the delay you have requested.”

Communication breakdown: 'Help me understand'

Githens responded by email the next morning with a message that started with, “I see that once again there has been a breakdown in communication between the two of us.”

Githens wrote that despite her request the trips be rescheduled, “I am fine with others reporting back on what is seen on these various trips."

She claimed to have “no idea exactly where you are in the planning,” and asked that monthly updates be provided for the public and to “help me understand why deciding on things like furniture choice or the type if steel cell is critical at this stage.”

She said it’s an upcoming annexation lawsuit that caused her to ask the trips to Atlanta and Chicago be postponed, not the election.

“As an FYI for you and your staff, I have been listed as a potential witness in one of the local annexation suits.” She said the court hearing scheduled to begin April 29 could last as long as two weeks, “meaning until May 10.”

The emails show receipts for four $314 roundtrip Southwest Airlines tickets for the April 2-3 trip to tour the Steel Cell of North America plant and the Titan Steel Door & Frames facility. The travelers are Grass, Crider, sheriff's deputy Michael Ruiz and county commissioner Lee Jones.

County council member Marty Hawk said Marté is right to stand his ground to keep momentum going.

“You can hardly blame the sheriff’s department,” she said. “You hire experts who know about these things and have them travel around and get information to report back. I don’t see why there needs to be a big group going.”

Hawk said she has a different concern: money. How much will the jail cost and where will the funding come from? County attorney Jeff Cockerill has said a 400-bed jail could cost as much as $75 million.

“You can’t move forward with a project like this until you know how much money is out there,” Hawk said.

Still no jail site identified after years of searching

It was late in 2022 when city officials blocked the commissioners’ attempt to purchase land for construction of a new jail on the southwest edge of Bloomington, on Fullerton Pike.

That summer, then-county attorney Margie Rice, now working for Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson, said she was confident the site for the new jail would be identified by the end of 2022.

Had that land or another site been selected, county officials would have spent 2023 planning the new facility and construction would have started this year.

Instead, no site has been identified and no land purchased. The commissioners recently axed plans to build on the former Thomson manufacturing plant site on South Rogers Street.

They currently are looking at property just west of Bloomington at the intersection of Ind. 46 and Hunter Valley Road.

And a recent timetable proposed by jail architect DLZ says now that the planning has begun, it will be another 44 to 50 months — sometime in 2028 — before a new jail is completed and occupied.

It was just last month that county commissioners’ President Julie Thomas reiterated the importance of moving ahead quickly. “There is a human cost to delaying the project that cannot be ignored,” Thomas said.

Kick-off meeting gone awry

Neither the sheriff nor anyone from his department or the jail attended a Feb. 28 justice center kickoff meeting organized by the commissioners. Chief deputy Phil Parker said they wanted no part because the public and county council members weren't notified it was happening.

A four-page agenda, prepared by DLZ, included discussion of the project's scope, inmate programming, building a transition team and a schedule of how long each phase of the 44-to-50-month project will take.

"We felt it was important the council and the public be included in that meeting based on what was on the agenda," Parker. "There are key stakeholders who should have been invited."

Commissioners' administrator Angie Purdie said there was no legal requirement to give public notice of the meeting.

"The meeting did not require notice as it was an administrative meeting as allowed for county commissioners," Purdie said. She cited Indiana law that says the public notice required for most government meetings doesn't apply when the county commissioners are conducting "routine activities reasonably related to the everyday internal management of the county."

Thirteen names are listed on the meeting's attendance sheet; those who came put their initials by their name. All three county commissioners, Purdie, Cockerill and two of the three DLZ employees signed in. Sheriff's office representatives Marté, Parker, Grass, Ruiz and jail commander Kyle Gibbons did not.

"I don't care what the law says," Parker said. "We didn't go to that meeting because this should all be talked about out in the open."

Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Monroe County Sheriff, Commissioner clash over jail progress delays