Trimble clears signature hurdle to make independent run for Monroe County assessor

Lisa Jeneé Trimble has submitted enough signatures to have her name appear on the Nov. 3 ballot as a candidate for Monroe County assessor, unaffiliated with any political party.

The deadline for submitting signatures was noon Tuesday (June 30). Trimble submitted several sheets of signatures ahead of Tuesday, but added several more on Tuesday morning.

The county assessor is responsible for determining the value of real and personal property for tax purposes.

According to Monroe County election division staff, Trimble turned in at least 915 signatures, which could be verified as Monroe County voters. That’s about a hundred more than she needed.

Under state law, for a countywide Monroe County office, an independent candidate needs petition signatures from registered voters equal to 2% of the total votes cast in Monroe County for secretary of state in the last secretary-of-state election. In 2022, that Monroe County total was 39,884, so the threshold was 797 signatures.

The final step for Trimble to become an official candidate, according to election division staff, is to file her CAN-20 form, which is the one that independent candidates have to submit.

Once the final paperwork is filed, the Monroe County election board might now take up the matter of an allegation that was filed against her by incumbent assessor Judy Sharp. Incumbent county assessor Judy Sharp prevailed in the Democratic Party’s primary over Bob Nyquist with 8,048 (66%) of the vote.

In a letter to the election board, Sharp wrote that she was made aware of a media post by Trimble offering her services in property tax matters “in exchange for signatures allowing her to be on the ballot” as an independent candidate in the fall. At a meeting on May 15, the board decided to table the matter and not to deal with it unless she actually became a candidate.

Trimble’s response to the allegations was: “I do not represent taxpayers at their local or state appeal hearings. There is not a law against telling people how to read their property record cards or explaining to them how to file an appeal, or explaining the local & state appeal process. Everyone has these rights. I did [not] violate any local, state or election laws.”

The legal backdrop to Trimble’s independent campaign for Monroe County assessor also includes two lawsuits that she filed last year after working for county government.

Shortly after Trimble turned in her final batch of signatures to the election division on Tuesday morning, she sat for a 10 a.m. deposition in the lawsuit she filed against Monroe County for wrongful termination.

Trimble is a former employee of the Monroe County assessor’s office and later the auditor’s office. Her litigation has centered on claims that she raised concerns about county assessment practices and then faced retaliation.

One of Trimble’s lawsuits, which named a long list of county officials and departments, was dismissed in its entirety. That complaint included allegations involving workplace harassment by the assessor, inaction by employee services and the county legal department, defamation by the auditor, misuse of authority, false claims about county equipment, health impacts, and failure to investigate complaints in a timely way. Special Judge Luke Rudisill concluded in January that Trimble’s amended complaint did not state a viable legal claim.

But a second lawsuit, tied to Trimble’s May 2025 termination from the Monroe County auditor’s office, was left in play even if its scope was sharply narrowed.

Rudisill dismissed Monroe County government and the Monroe County commissioners as improper defendants. He also dismissed county auditor Brianne Gregory as a defendant in her individual capacity, concluding that the allegations against Gregory involved actions taken in her official role as auditor. The result was that the only remaining defendant is Gregory, in her official capacity. Most of Trimble’s legal theories in that second case were dismissed, including claims based on negligence, bullying and harassment.

But Rudisill allowed one claim to proceed: wrongful termination. Trimble alleges she was fired in retaliation for reporting to the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance what she believed were violations of Indiana law related to property assessments. The judge did not find that Trimble had proved retaliation, but ruled that, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, she had alleged enough to continue under a narrow exception to Indiana’s employment-at-will doctrine.

Indiana law generally allows employers to terminate at-will employees for almost any reason, or for no stated reason. But courts have recognized limited exceptions, including situations where an employee alleges they were fired solely for exercising a statutory right, such as reporting suspected misconduct.

Rudisill noted that the statute protects reports of suspected malfeasance, not only misconduct later proven to be true, and declined to treat as decisive a DLGF finding that Trimble’s allegations were not substantiated. The case now continues on that single wrongful-termination theory. The next event on the docket is a pre-trial conference set for Sept. 11.