As they sat side by side at the Porter County Council meeting Tuesday evening, Auditor Karen Martin accused Councilman Jeremy Rivas, D-2nd, of verbally abusing a member of her staff the previous day and said she had filed a complaint with human resources.
She added that Rivas was not welcome in her office in the future without an appointment and her presence.
“Untrue,” Rivas replied. “The aggression was started by the auditor’s office.”
In the hallway immediately following, Martin and Deputy Auditor Ryan Kubal declined to give any details, stating it was an HR matter.
In a phone call after the meeting, Rivas said he was in the office at the staff’s invitation, and that Kubal is the one who started yelling at him when Rivas said he wouldn’t get behind raising taxes to fund budget shortfalls Kubal perceives for 2026.
“Ryan has no budget or financial background,” Rivas said. “As far as I know, he worked for a lawn care service before he came here, and now he’s the auditor’s budget and finance person. That’s why I wasn’t going down there and they insisted.”
Kubal has a bachelor’s degree in accounting with a minor in finance from Urbana University in Ohio and said he’s “a couple classes short” of completing his MBA at Indiana University Northwest. He was also chief deputy for former Auditor Bob Wichlinski from 2010 to 2013.
The auditor’s office wanted some of the council members to come in, Rivas said.
“What they’ve been pushing all along is telling a story that the council’s broke and we need to raise taxes,” Rivas said, adding Kubal even joked that they could call it “The Ryan Kubal Tax” and put the blame on him. “I told him, ‘No, we’re in good shape,’” Rivas recounted.
“Probably five minutes in, (Kubal) said, ‘Well, then this meeting is over,’” Rivas added. “It was actually him who started raising his voice. I was toward the door, and he was getting vocal and aggressive. It was offensive.”
The two men each say the other misunderstands the impacts of Senate Bill 1.
Kubal contends the county will bring in $34.4 million in tax revenues in 2026, while the projected budget is $53 million. That leaves an $18.6 million deficit that Kubal says could be partially filled by $12 million in collected fees, leaving a $6.6 million shortfall for the council to slog through during formal budget hearings that begin Sept. 16.
Rivas doesn’t dispute those figures, but says Kubal’s understanding of how long these shortfalls will continue is wrong. He said he has spent considerable time studying SB1 and reading everything he can on the subject. “We’re in 2028, going to be getting more revenue because of the change,” he said.
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Rivas explained that in his understanding of SB1, the county, come 2028, will be legally prohibited from distributing the $15.5 million in homestead credits to homeowners in the county as it has been doing with the Local Income Tax that is left over after the county pays its annual $3.5 million to the Regional Development Authority.
The county will also receive a $19 million economic development distribution, as cities and towns will no longer get an $11 million distribution from the county.
“We’ll get the full $19 (million) and the full $15 (million). Why can’t we wait two years for that? We have the reserves,” Rivas asked. He said the General Fund has been growing quite a bit because the county has been taking in more than it’s been spending.
Martin said the council has passed $900,000 in additional appropriations, year to date, on top of the $48 million 2025 budget. “We’re asset-rich and cash-poor,” she said of the $196 million Porter County Foundation balance.
“It was to be used for situations like this,” she said of the foundation funds. “The problem is, who would have thought SB1 would have come along?”
She said that Kubal and Chief Deputy Auditor Dave Wichlinski have also spent considerable time studying SB1 and watching videos and livestreams of how other counties are dealing with shortfalls in their budget hearings.
Kubal believes that the way SB1 is written requires the county to give the $15.5 million to the treasurer. “Even though we collect it, it would still not be available to us,” he said.
Rivas said he has no confidence in the competency of the auditor’s office and accused them of “really trying to throw a lot in the pile to make it seem insurmountable. They’ve been tossing out all kinds of crazy numbers.”
He said there’s been nine straight years of surplus in the General Fund. “We’ve never had so much money in the General Fund unallocated, money in the LIT.”
Porter County Human Resources Director Rhonda Young did not respond by deadline to a request for comment on the process when a complaint has been filed against an elected official.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.