Interview: Local investigation reveals more misconduct inside city government

A joint investigation by Indy Star and Mirror Indy reveals Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration potentially overlooked conflicts of interest that were tied to more than $80 million in city-backed development deals.

WFYI’s Abriana Herron spoke with Mirror Indy reporter Peter Blanchard about what he and the team uncovered during the investigation.

This interview has been edited for style and clarity.

Abriana Herron: What first prompted you and your team to dig deeper into the Hogsett administration?

Peter Blanchard: Last year, several women came forward to describe accusations of sexual harassment and abuse of power against Thomas Cook, who was Mayor Joe Hogsett’s Chief of Staff from his first term in office to around 2015, until the end of 2020 when he left city government. That was the first time that those allegations were out in the public.

And in the course of that reporting, we learned about Thomas Cook's actions after he left city government and began working for this law firm in the private sector, and that's when we began to hear from sources about this relationship Cook had had that had led to him being asked to resign from city government.

It was a prohibited relationship with a subordinate. Her name was Scarlett Andrews, and after Cook left city government and became a partner at this law firm, he starts signing up big name developers who are seeking taxpayer incentives for development projects, and meanwhile, the person that Cook had a relationship with, that led to him resigning was Scarlett Andrews. She, at the time, was working in the Department of Metropolitan Development, which is the agency charged with awarding those incentives.

And after he leaves the city government, she gets promoted to lead that department. So pretty quickly, starting in 2021 and going through till the end of 2023 you have a situation where Thomas Cook is on one side of the negotiating table, representing developers. You have Scarlet Andrews representing the city, and you quickly have an appearance of a conflict of interest.

Herron: Your investigation found that Mayor Hogshead ignored potential conflicts of interest involving millions of dollars of city incentives. What were some of the most surprising or revealing things uncovered during your reporting.

Blanchard: One of the striking things about this was the fact that this relationship between Thomas Cook and Scarlet Andrews, the mayor, became aware of it in October of 2020 when a report was filed to the HR director notifying them about this relationship, which was in violation of city-county policy. The HR director did an investigation, and they recommended that Cook be terminated and that Scarlett Andrews not be promoted.

The mayor, however, decided to hire outside legal counsel, and they came to a different conclusion, recommending that Cook be allowed to resign and that Scarlett Andrews be promoted to the Department of Metropolitan Development, the director position there. So that was a surprising find.

I think also, I think just the amount of incentives, we only knew about a couple projects that Cook was involved with. But as we did more research and started requesting more public records, talking to more sources, we discovered the scale of the incentives that were being awarded to Cook's clients.

And, all told, during that three year period when Andrews was director of the Department of Metropolitan Development and Cook was an attorney at Bose (McKinney &Evans), more than $80 million in city incentives were recommended or awarded to clients of Thomas Cook.

Herron: So how will you and your team continue to follow this story?

Blanchard: This first story was really the first in a series, and we're calling the series Mr. Clean, and that's because way back in 2013 when Joe Hogsett was US Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, a good government group called Common Cause Indiana gave him the award of Mr. Clean, and he got this award for increasing prosecutions against public officials accused of corruption.

And another thing he did after that, when he was running for mayor, was he promised to beef up the city's ethics code, and hold public officials accountable who use their position for personal gain. And what we found in that investigation is that t appears that the mayor hasn't necessarily lived up to that promise. And so I think what you're going to see in our future reporting is more concerns about ethics. And potentially flouting of the ethics code by members of the Hogshead administration.

Anytime there is an appearance of impropriety, and anytime there's a conflict of interest that involves taxpayer dollars. We think the public has a right to know about it, but time will tell, and we're going to continue to do our reporting and gather the facts and come up with our results.

Herron: What kind of response have you seen or heard from the public since the story was published?

Blanchard: Several city county councilors have criticized the Hogsett administration for basically allowing this to happen. It's unclear at this point whether council is going to take any action. Last year when the sexual harassment allegations emerged against Thomas Cook, the council hired an outside law firm to conduct an investigation that ended up being a costly investigation, nearly half a million dollars, and many councilors were disappointed with the outcome of that. So it's not clear to me that there's an appetite to go that route again.

However, we have already seen one councilor, Republican Michael Paul Hart has called for the mayor to resign in the wake of our reporting, and that's now five out of the 25 city county councilors have called for the mayor to resign in the past year or so.

Herron: Is there anything you would like to add?

Blanchard: This was an investigation Mirror Indy did in partnership with Indy Star, and this investigation would not have been possible without that partnership. So I just definitely want to give kudos to my reporting partner Tony Cook, as well as Indy Star editor Kaitlin Lange on the Mirror Indy team. We had Emily Hopkins working on our side, and then Jordan Smith as well for Indy Star, and Ryan Martin, who is now the Executive Editor Indy star, was involved in this investigation early on.

Herron: Thank you so much.

Blanchard: Thank you.