Gov. Braun’s original pick for INDOT commissioner quietly exits

Just 11 weeks into the role, the Governor’s original pick for Indiana Department of Transportation commissioner, Kent Abernathy, a veteran of top jobs in other state agencies under two previous Republican governors, has unceremoniously been replaced.

Earlier last month, we noticed Abernathy’s absence at the transportation budget presentation before the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Given how much of the budget presentation focused on INDOT, the expectation was for Abernathy to be in the room to answer to lawmakers if needed. At Secretary of Transportation and Infrastructure Matt Ubelhor’s side at that meeting instead was INDOT Deputy Chief of Staff Andrea Zimmerman, and she kept her comments to a minimum.

Also, early into his administration, Governor Mike Braun (R) was looking to speak for his administration first before the various agency heads, so, at first, Abernathy’s silence wasn’t of note. But as time went on, he seemed to train well behind the scenes while some other agency leaders and secretaries took more time in the spotlight.

So, what happened? That’s a question that may not have a clear-cut answer. Last Friday – a few hours before the transportation and engineering community’s focus was on the Purdue Boilermakers’ Sweet 16 NCAA men’s basketball game downtown in Lucas Oil Stadium – a press release was sent out at 4:30 p.m. announcing Governor Braun’s new picks for INDOT commissioner and Indiana Office of Technology director. There was no mention that Gov. Braun had already filled the INDOT position in a then-trumpeted announcement. Indeed, there was no mention of Abernathy at all.

Back in January, the Braun Administration made Abernathy sound like a natural pick based on the administration’s business-friendly goals. He held a substantial background as a business consultant, military logistics leader, and corporate banker. He served in leadership positions in the Army, retiring as a Colonel. He was former Daniels Administration pick for Indiana Department of Environmental Management chief of staff, a role in which it often felt as though he was de facto commissioner. He was also the choice of former Gov. Mike Pence (R) for Bureau of Motor Vehicles commissioner after Gov. Pence kept him around a little longer at IDEM. INDOT’s social media page celebrated his appointment, citing his “strong background of state agency experience and military service.”

Abernathy didn’t just fit the bill; it was hard to imagine someone more qualified.

When Abernathy took over the BMV during Governor Pence’s administration in 2015, there was a concurrent announcement: the BMV owed Hoosier motorists more than $60 million in tax refunds, and he was tasked to sort out the legal, logistical, and political fallout.

Abernathy had been asking Gov. Pence for a challenge, so assigning him to address a problem that both officials believed could “span decades,” according to an interview at the time with then-WXIN-TV Indianapolis State House reporter Matt Smith, was an assignment he was eager to take on.

So, while Abernathy was staring down the road funding rat’s nest we’ve been chronicling for you since last summer, tough situations aren’t likely to scare him off.

Mid-States is Back Again

Looking at Gov. Braun’s list of must-haves for his administration’s transportation vertical, one project stood out – Mid-States Corridor.

The tension between Mid-States Corridor supporters and local property owners we’ve told you about for months has now culminated in a controversial lawsuit, Indiana Dep’t of Transport. v. LC Bar LLC, 19C01-2503-PL-000170, filed March 7 in Dubois County Circuit Court. INDOT sues 121 Dubois County property owners for refusing to allow Tier 2 environmental assessments on their land.

INDOT asserts that the denial of access is unlawful, and the agency has a right to enter the subject properties to conduct the survey. INDOT claims “Notice of Survey Letters” were sent out to affected residents back in July 2024, when Tier 2 work started. From August to September 2024, officials also attempted contact through telephone and in-person visits. During this notification period, INDOT alleges that all 121 defendants refused to grant access to their property. After obtaining police backing, officials tried visiting again in October 2024, but to no avail.

The department has also received a flurry of cease-and-desist letters from attorney Russ Sipes, whom long-time State Houser denizens may recall as the public face of Common Cause as a State House lobbyist in the early 1990s. We told you Sipes was becoming involved in our January 10 issue, as Property Rights Alliance (PRA) founder, ardent MSC opposer, and farmer Jason McCoy rallied the Dubois troops to explore legal options. The only obstacle was funding – Sipes would only represent PRA if they could come up with the cash.

PRA – which hosted an April 3 meeting to offer local residents an update on legal actions surrounding MSC – must have reached its donation goalpost, as Sipes is certainly in the mix now.

INDOT, represented by Deputy Attorney General Edward Satchwill, alleges that the letters are an attempt to stall the project and that Sipes “knows that these Letters are legally ineffective, and he knows that Defendants do not have the legal right to refuse INDOT access” because he has “publicly acknowledged” that INDOT can seek a court order to get access to private property, so he’s said by the State to be purposely slowing down the process.

At a December 2024 public meeting we wrote about in a December issue, Dubois County Free Press reporter Matthew Crane did quote Sipes as hypothetically asking landowners “What happens when [Dubois County Circuit Court] Judge [Nathan A. Verkamp] has a hundred hearings to schedule just for people to come in and be ordered to let surveyors on their property along with his regular schedule?”

The defendants’ list is chiefly comprised of independent homeowners and farmers in the Jasper and Huntingburg area. Bartelt-Klosterman Farm owner Tom Bartelt tells Crane that “he can recognize the irony of his family’s farm being honored by the Indiana Department of Agriculture while being sued by the Indiana Department of Transportation.” Bartelt was at the State House just a few weeks ago to accept his Hoosier Homestead designation from Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith (R). He explained that the Mid-States Corridor would slash diagonally through his farmland, necessitating the demolishment of several buildings (although not Bartlet’s house, which he describes as the only unaffected building). After his award ceremony, he tells Crane that he asked Sen. Darryl Schmitt (R) of Jasper, a fellow local farm owner, to tour the Bartelt-Klosterman farm to view what Bartelt would lose if MSC plows ahead.

Now, how does this potentially relate to Abernathy and his fate?

Why Not Abernathy?

One thing we can surmise about Abernathy from his bone fides is that he’s accustomed to being in charge. He may have held concerns about the project’s environmental impact, considering his previous involvement with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. As chief of staff at IDEM, he specifically managed water, air, and land quality regulation and outreach initiatives. The position was vacant for years before Abernathy was appointed, but one can guess why the sudden urgency arose to get it filled.

A few weeks before he stepped up, various environmental groups called upon the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to chastise and correct the IDEM’s water pollution control programs. Abernathy’s resume is covered in “fixer” positions, positioning him as a man who solves systemic problems; gets things done – but he’s mostly been left to fix things his way.

While we can’t say that Mid-States Corridor is directly related to Abernathy’s resignation, we can assume that MSC’s timely completion and the INDOT lawsuit are in the suite of actions Governor Braun isn’t willing to compromise on.

We doubt that Abernathy would have been hired if he wasn’t on board with the idea of the Mid-States Corridor, but if he wasn’t too keen on entering a legal battle with more than a hundred private property owners as a means of resolution, that, perhaps, would be an irreconcilable difference.

In a 2015 profile by the Current in Carmel Managing Editor Ann Marie Shambaugh, Abernathy said this about managing complex, messy operations: “You’ve got to take a very systematic approach to it. You can’t overreact, and you can’t underreact, but you’ve got to have a very progressive way of making change.”

Your favorite transportation newsletter also picks up some vibes about personality conflicts between some of the principals in the cabinet silo as well as 206 . . . with some frustration privately evinced about what some perceived as Abernathy’s propensity to over-complicate scenarios (and what others saw as him needing to fully explain the issues, options, and consequences to those not in the daily loop). We couldn’t see them sharing a stool at Harry’s Chocolate Shop during next year’s iteration of the Purdue Road School.

Why Quist?

Gov. Braun swiftly appointed Abernathy’s replacement: former INDOT Deputy Commissioner of Capital Program Management Lyndsay Quist.

Quist’s background, while perhaps less extensive than Abernathy’s, shares some similarities with her predecessor. Both have experience in the military – Quist worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the New Orleans District in Louisiana after graduating from Purdue University. Both transitioned into transportation-related leadership. The majority of Quist’s experience is within INDOT; she’s worked as the Capital Program Management director and the managing director of project delivery before her position as deputy commissioner. She is still affiliated with Purdue, serving on the Executive Board of the Joint Transportation Research Program.

Quist’s presumed camaraderie with INDOT affiliates (we’ve only heard kudos on her elevation to the top spot from those in the industry), coupled with her military background, implies a willingness to work well with others in the Braun transportation vertical.

That may be exactly what Gov. Braun was looking for in Abernathy. The Governor is coming into office with a well-formed list of priorities for the Crossroads of America. We know Secretary Ubelhor is a proponent of the Mid-States Corridor – and he’s still in office.

Perhaps Abernathy’s departure is just an example of him following his “motto to live by,” according to Shambaugh: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”