Monroe County election board dismisses complaint against assessor candidate Trimble

The Monroe County election board has dismissed an election-law complaint filed by incumbent county assessor Judy Sharp against her independent challenger, Lisa Jeneé Trimble.

At its Thursday (Sept. 3) meeting, the board decided not to hold a hearing on whether Trimble improperly offered property-tax advice in return for help collecting the signatures she needed to get on the ballot. The vote to dismiss the complaint was 2–1.

Dissenting was the Democratic Party’s appointee Penny Githens. Voting to dismiss were the elected county clerk, Nicole Browne, and Jack Schmidt, a proxy for Republican Party chair Danny Shields.

Also at its Thursday meeting, the board also formally accepted, then unanimously dismissed, a separate complaint that Trimble had filed against Sharp. That complaint reportedly ran more than 100 pages.

The result leaves the dispute between the two candidates to be settled at the polls on Nov. 3. Sharp, a Democrat who has served as Monroe County assessor since 1991, is seeking another term against Trimble, a former employee of the assessor’s office who qualified for the ballot as an independent.

Before the board took up either complaint, Shields yielded his seat over to Jack Schmidt, his proxy for that portion of the meeting.

Shields said he wanted the complaints handled without an argument about whether he had already taken sides. At the board’s Aug. 6 meeting, Trimble had accused Shields during public comment of targeting her candidacy and of showing up at an Ellettsville petition-signing event to see who was participating. Shields denied the accusation, saying he and his wife had gone to a restaurant in the same shopping center and that his presence was coincidental.

On Thursday, Shields said he wanted “the truth to come out” and the law to be followed, and that substituting a proxy would avoid claims that he was biased before the complaints were considered.

Sharp’s complaint against Trimble

Sharp’s complaint dates to April and stems from a Facebook post Trimble made while gathering signatures to qualify as an independent candidate.

In the post, Trimble offered to help property owners understand their assessments and the property-tax appeal process. The assistance, she wrote, would “come with a price”: one petition sheet containing 10 voter signatures, supplied in advance.

In May, the election board put off considering Sharp’s complaint because Trimble had not yet completed the process of becoming a candidate. Independent candidates for county office have to collect signatures to qualify for the ballot. Trimble ultimately submitted more than 797 signatures by the June 30 deadline, enough to secure her place on the Nov. 3 ballot.

The legal question centered on a specific part of election law: IC 3-14-2-1. That law makes it a Level 6 felony if someone “pays or offers to pay” someone else “any property based on the number of signatures obtained to place a candidate or public question on a ballot.” The statute also says that it is not unlawful to pay someone to gather signatures when the compensation is not tied to the number of signatures collected

Indiana criminal law defines “property” broadly enough to include labor and services. That raised the question whether Trimble’s offer of property-tax assistance qualified as something of value and, more specifically, whether requiring a petition sheet containing 10 signatures amounted to tying that value to the number of signatures collected.

At its Aug. 6 meeting, the board stopped short of either dismissing Sharp’s complaint or scheduling a hearing. Instead, on a 2-1 vote, it asked county attorney Molly Turner-King to seek additional guidance from the Indiana Election Division. Clerk Nicole Browne voted against the delay and favored dismissing the complaint right then.

The response that Turner-King got from the state did not produce a definitive interpretation.

Turner-King told the board Thursday that Indiana Election Division attorney Matthew Kochevar said there apparently is no court decision interpreting the relevant part of state law. Kochevar said the legislature added it primarily to prevent petition circulators from being compensated according to the number of signatures they produced. That scenario tends to create an incentive to forge signatures.

Kochevar also told the county that Indiana election law does not generally make it illegal to offer something of value to a voter simply in exchange for signing a petition. A county election board that does not believe enough facts have been presented to support a reasonable belief that election law was violated can decline to investigate further, Turner-King told the board.

That left the three-member board with essentially the same division it had faced a month earlier.

Browne said her position had not changed and that she did not support moving the complaint to a hearing. Democratic appointee Penny Githens said she still believed there was enough of a question to warrant one.

Githens said the issue was not an offer made simply to someone who personally signed Trimble’s petition. Instead, she understood Trimble to have offered her services to someone who went out and obtained a specified number of signatures for her.

“For me, it is a fine line here,” Githens said, because those signatures were part of what allowed Trimble to get onto the ballot. Githens moved to hold a hearing at which Sharp and Trimble could present evidence. The motion died for lack of a second.

Browne then moved to dismiss Sharp’s complaint. The motion passed, with Githens opposed. Following up on a question from the board at its Aug. 6 meeting, Turner-King told the board on Thursday that the dismissal does not prevent Sharp from taking her allegation directly to law enforcement.

Trimble complaint against Sharp

The board then turned to the complaint Trimble had submitted against Sharp on Aug. 6.

Unlike Sharp’s complaint against Trimble, the board had not previously taken the procedural step of formally receiving Trimble’s filing. On Thursday it voted to do so before considering whether there was a reasonable basis to believe an election-law violation had occurred.

Githens said that although it had been some time since she had read the entire filing, she did not recall seeing a citation to any specific election law that Sharp was alleged to have violated.

The filing included photographs, Githens said, but she could not determine who was associated with them, where or when they had been taken, or how they established an election-law violation by Sharp.

Browne moved to dismiss Trimble’s complaint against Sharp as well.

“We read it. We acknowledge it,” Browne said, before making the motion to dismiss without a hearing. Githens seconded it, and the board approved the dismissal unanimously.

Looking ahead

The election board’s actions Thursday do not resolve the broader dispute between Sharp and Trimble over the operation of the assessor’s office. Trimble, who previously worked in that office, has made several allegations about assessment practices and her treatment as a county employee. Sharp has disputed those claims.

The remaining case in circuit court is Trimble’s lawsuit against Monroe County auditor Brianne Gregory for wrongful termination from her position in the auditor’s office, where she started work after leaving the assessor’s office. A pre-trial conference for that case is set for Sept. 11.

In other business at its Thursday meeting, the election board took care of some routine issues related to the upcoming Nov. 3 election. Those included approval of an election worker list.

On Nov. 3 in the race for assessor, voters will choose between Trimble and Sharp.