Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Brandon Herget, director of the Indianapolis Department of Public Works, will vacate his role in December after nearly two years in the job.
Herget began the year-end report to the Indianapolis City-County Council Public Works Committee on Thursday evening by acknowledging “the elephant in the room.”
“This will be my last committee hearing serving as the director of the Department of Public Works,” he said. Later he added, “It’s bittersweet, but I’m incredibly proud of the work that this team has done and incredibly grateful for the opportunity.”
The DPW is the city’s largest department by budget and second largest in terms of workforce. A city spokesperson told IBJ that Herget’s successor will be named after the outgoing director’s last day, which is slated for Dec. 2.
Herget told IBJ that he wants to spend more time with his family, including his four-year-old son.
“The demands of this job are 24/7, and the department and the city deserve a director who’s able to put in that time,” Herget told IBJ. “Unfortunately right now I cannot.”
He joined the city-county in 2019 as policy director for the council, a role he held for more than three years. Mayor Joe Hogsett tapped then-DPW director Dan Parker to become his chief of staff in 2022, after which Herget took on the leadership role.
Zach Adamson, a former councilor unseated in the 2023 primary election who now works as the DPW council liaison, presented Herget with a street sign bearing his name.
“I know you’re leaving us to spend more time with your family, which we love but still hate at the same time,” Adamson said, “But we want to thank you and thank them for sharing you with us for all this time.”
Prior to his work at the city, Herget worked for state and national Democrats.
As a regional field director for the Indiana Democratic Party, he helped get Joe Donnelly elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. As deputy state director for Donnelly’s office, he worked with the Indy Chamber to expand a micro-loan program through the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Herget was named in 2023 to IBJ’s Forty Under 40.
He called his time as director “an absolute privilege.”
“It’s one that I haven’t taken lightly, and I hope that I leave the department in a better place than I found it. That was always my goal,” he said, “I’m confident that the team will continue to execute on what our constituents expect from us in the weeks and months ahead during the transition.”
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Hopefully, the city gets a competent new director for DPW. As a department, it has been very poor at planning and executing road projects in recent years. Case in point: the West 30th Street White River bridge rebuild which was supposed to take a couple of years. It was recently announced that it will be a four year project. Various excuses were given, but the bottom line is that an important transportation link will now be closed for four years.
The extension of the project is an outcome related to its funding mandates, not poor planning.
Public infrastructure projects take years to plan, design, fund and build. The scope morphs as design advances and pre-construction work is performed. Conditions of existing structures and soils, environmental issues, permitting issues, and funding each affect the timeline. None of this has to do with who the director of the department is at any given time.