Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Hogsett Turns To More Of The Usual Suspects For Top City Jobs

There's absolutely no reason to believe after nearly a month in office that Mayor Joe Hogsett has any intention of keeping his promise of putting an end to the downtown insiders who cheat the system and steal our tax dollars. Weeks into his administration, he finally got around to making a few key appointments that fail to impress.

For the important job as director of the Department of Public Works, he turned to a reliable battle ax that's bought and paid for by the contracting community. Lori Miser has had a revolving door relationship between city government and engineering firms for many years now. She did stints at Parsons Brinkerhoff and HNTB before she became administrator of the department of public works in the Peterson administration. She then went to work for a few years as executive director of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization before coming back and serving another stint at the Department of Public Works as director in the Ballard administration. She then headed back to work at HNTB as an executive vice president and now she's headed back to the same department she left twice before. And did I mention her husband works for the Jim Brainard administration in Carmel?

Emily Mack is coming aboard to head up the Department of Metropolitan Development. She worked as a planner at IHPC and neighborhood liaison in the mayor's office during the Peterson administration before going to work for Indianapolis Downtown, Inc. She then came back to work as a deputy director at the Department of Code Enforcement in the Ballard administration while it was run by Rick Powers, who actually lived up in the Chicago suburbs with his wife--unless he didn't reside with his wife--during the time he spent working in that position. Powers now works for INDOT at its offices on Lake County where he presumably still lives with his wife in suburban Chicago. Mack left the department and went to work for CORE Planning Strategies as a Business Development Director. Jason Larrison, a former state architect, will become the director of the Department of Code Enforcement. 

Another Bose McKinney lobbyist, Camille Blunt, will join Hogsett's administration to lead up lobbying efforts at the State House and the City-County Council for his administration. The former CFO for the City-County Council, who seemed in over her head in that job, is heading up the Office of Finance and Administration. We previously mentioned Hogsett's choice of an FSSA consultant in the Daniels and Pence administrations, Faddy Qaddoura, as his choice to serve as City Controller. As a consequence, nobody with any serious knowledge of city finances is minding the store. Finally, Linda Broadfoot, a marketing director for Well Done Marketing will head up the Department of Parks & Recreation. She formally worked at Keep Indianapolis Beautiful before going to work as the executive director of the IPS Education Foundation. 

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are getting emails saying our water is going to smell like chlorine for the month of February, and I certainly hope that doesn't mean that we're going to have issues like Flint, because nasty smelling water frightens people. Who runs our water dept anyway? We get bills from citizens energy, which used to be that horrible man Carey Lykins, who caused all our bills to triple. But is there a name of somebody in particular who has the responsibility to make sure our water is clean and safe?

Anonymous said...

Hey, Anon:3.22, you can call the crack team of octogenarians who staff the Indy Star's "Call for Action" hotline. I'm sure they'll get a handle on the issue. LOL!

Anonymous said...


And they laughed at me when I coined the monicker "Lying Joe Hogsett".

Anonymous said...

Anon 3:22, every year the water is treated with free chlorine for at least one month. This keeps the pipes clean. They used to also do it in the summer but it is my understanding that they now only do this different treatment once a year.

Anonymous said...

Why put someone with no parks experience in charge of parks?! Missed opportunity here to get parks back on track after the terrible Ballard administration. Yes, sounds like Hogsett will be no different than Ballard!

Anonymous said...

Who is Lying Joe appointing to be his watchdog for ethics and to enforce all that blather about running the crooks out of town? Sounds like he will need quite a few people on that Hot Line....

Anonymous said...

Gary, you were right about Joe Hogsett, and I sincerely apologize for being a skeptic. The new mayor's appointment of Lori B. Miser as Director of the Department of Public Works is absolute proof of his commitment to crony capitalism. Your description of her as "a reliable battle ax that's bought and paid for by the contracting community" is perfect. Under Greg Ballard, DPW executive Director Lori Miser concealed actions which, according to statute, required public hearings before the Board of Public Works. Indiana Code 36-3-5-5 mandates that the director of a department shall exercise the powers of the department, subject to the authority granted to a board in the department. Lori Miser disagrees.

Anonymous said...

Boring appointments. Uninspiring.

Anonymous said...

Hoggies investigation chief was in charge of the PAL Club- that's his credential?

Anonymous said...

When I read Lori Miser's name in our column, the status of Lying Joe Hogsett as Greg Ballard 2.0 is confirmed. Miser and her hubby sure do seem to be pros at sucking the big bucks from the overtaxed voters. Hasn't Lori Miser been connected more than once to questionable contractor deals? Yeah, I thought so.

As Marion County enters what is essentially Greg Ballard Term 3, the City will continue to see an utterly useless Council that should have been disbanded long ago and a group of mayor office cronies each working more to line pockets than to help County residents.

After that, watch for the uber-corrupt Marion County GOP to bring Ryan Vaughn back from the political safety of his Party-induced "isolation" with all his sky-high salary and perks to run for Mayor. Wait for it, just wait for it.