Council Republicans Vote Against Ordinance Ensuring Council Signatures Aren't Forged
11.6.2025 / News / Daisy Dale
MUNCIE, Ind. — In the November Muncie City Council meeting, once again with a vast set of items on its agenda, members voted 5-4 along party lines (five Republicans opposed, four Democrats in favor) against an ordinance ensuring that future items presented to the council are in fact signed by the council sponsor. The ordinance was created after Mayor Dan Ridenour’s Executive Assistant, Shareen Wagley, filed a resolution last month without its sponsor, Dale Basham, signing onto it. The signature on the document was the same one used from a previous resolution.
Resolution 17-25, a resolution on the financing of rebuilding Fire Station 5 which appeared at the last meeting on October 6, was identical to Resolution 16-25 that was withdrawn by its sponsor Dale Basham in their meeting the month prior. Basham at the October meeting was asked by another council-member, Billy McIntosh, about why it had reappeared. Basham told McIntosh and the crowd that it was refiled without his knowledge and that he didn’t sign Resolution 17-25.
After the fact, council-member Nora Powell decided to sponsor Ordinance 40-25 that would have changed prerequisites in city code to ensure the mistake wouldn’t happen again. As council’s attorney Dan Gibson explained, it would ensure that future ordinances and resolutions would be properly filed either by a council member or legal council, and therefore ensuring that signatures are valid from here on.
In a roughly thirty-minute discussion, Mayor Ridenour angrily confronted council and stated that Gibson gave the okay to refile and restamp the previous resolution. Gibson said his conversations on the resolution before the October meeting were purely about the timeliness of the item and did not relate to whether the signature was valid or not, and that he was not made aware that they were the same signatures from the previous resolution until the meeting. He then stated that in his email correspondence there was never any mention that the signatures were the exact same from the first resolution, and not authorized again by Dale Basham.
Gibson went on, “when anything is filed, for the last six years I’ve been doing this, when something has been filed by anybody, it is implied that it is done with the authority of the people that signed that. My office files ordinances all the time, I have contacted you, mostly because you’ve asked me to prepare something and that’s what’s being filed. I know that you’re the ones who signed that before I submit that. This is going to fix that, that we can apparently no longer assume that it has been authorized. It’s that simple.”
Members of council pressed Ridenour on the copied signature, and before the vote was finally made local podcaster Kristopher Bilbrey pressed the council to look into the incident with Shareen Wagley and to be proactive in their positions. While Ridenour put blame on Gibson, he took responsibility for Wagley’s actions after being pressed by the council and audience. When up for introduction, Ordinance 40-25 was voted down 5-4, along party lines with Republicans voting against and Democrats voting in favor. A back and forth between members of council erupted and Brandon Garrett, the District 3 Republican who voted against, said that his vote wasn’t against transparency but instead about the responsibility of members of council.
At the last part of the meeting Resolution 19-25, once again identical to Resolution 16-25 and filed properly, passed 9-0.