AG’s office seeking more than $132K from Gary councilwoman who violated state law

A Gary city councilwoman has been ordered to reimburse the Gary Sanitary District more than $132,000 in wages for the time she illegally held two municipal positions simultaneously, and the Indiana Attorney General has begun efforts to secure the reimbursement.

Attorney General Curtis Hill announced Monday that his office is seeking recovery of those funds following a Nov. 30 Indiana State Board of Accounts report that charged Gary councilwoman Mary Brown with misappropriation based on the improper compensation she received for a position she legally was deemed to have resigned.

Brown was an employee of Gary Sanitary District from 1995 to Jan. 1, 2016, when, as a matter of law, she was deemed to have resigned her position. However, Brown continued receiving compensation for her government position until June 26, 2018, when she provided her resignation to the District. She was also elected to the Gary Common Council in 1999 and re-elected five times.

According to the Attorney General’s office, while Brown was serving her fourth elected term on the council, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law holding that “an individual is considered to have resigned as a government employee when the individual assumes an elected office of the unit that employs the individual.” Hill’s office said that law, passed in 2013, required Brown to resign from the Sanitary District when she was re-elected to the common council in November 2015.

Then on Oct. 14, 2016, the SBOA issued an audit report that found Brown was deemed to have resigned her employment with the Gary Sanitary District effective Jan. 1, 2016. Brown responded with a suit against Hill and the State Examiner in their official capacities in Lake Superior Court, seeking a declaratory judgment that she was not in violation of the law by holding both positions contemporaneously. However, the judge granted summary judgment in the state’s favor. 

The November 2018 SBOA special report found that Brown misappropriated $132,742.35 in wages, which she has been ordered to repay.

“No citizen is above the law, even if that citizen happens to be a public office-holder,” Hill said in a Monday statement. “You can disagree with a law. You can lobby to change it. But you cannot ignore or disobey it. In this case, we are taking action to make sure the law is upheld and that financial restitution is made for monies that were misappropriated.”

Brown’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment by IL deadline. The NWI Times reported that Brown argued the two jobs didn't pose a conflict because Gary and the Sanitary District are separate units of government.