Wayne County’s commissioners say that removing from the coroner’s fleet a Chevrolet Tahoe that Coroner Brent Meadows drove to an out-of-county job was a decision based on policy and liability alone.
Meadows responded to the Jan. 14 decision by posting a Facebook statement the next day, indicating he believes commissioners are targeting him. Commissioners then provided Western Wayne News with their response to his post.
“In conversations with Commissioners, Mr. Meadows was personally directed to not drive his county-owned vehicle to his Union County side job,” commissioners wrote. “He deliberately ignored those directives on at least two occasions.
“While he might view the Commissioners’ action in pulling his county-owned vehicle as punitive, the reality is that such was necessary to limit the county’s potential legal liability for allowing the coroner’s excessive personal use of a County-owned vehicle.”
Despite being the executive arm of county government, commissioners have no authority to discipline or punish elected officials, including Meadows. They enact policy, enter contracts and own equipment, including the county vehicles. In this instance, they unanimously voted to stop Meadows’ behavior by exercising control over the vehicle, which was the only one of the three coroner vehicles not equipped to transport decedents.
Commissioners responded to Meadows’ claim that upon taking office he was told that he “could use the vehicle at my pleasure, drive it to my full time job.” Their statement said, “Neither the Commissioners nor anyone on the Fleet Committee had any conversation with Meadows authorizing him to drive the County car for personal use, including to and from personal employment.”
In his post, Meadows claims he’s not being treated as a first responder, despite Indiana law classifying coroners as first responders. Commissioners said that because Meadows is not free to leave his other job while there “as a first responder,” the claim “that he is ‘on call’ for his duties as Wayne County Coroner while in the course of his Union County employment is patently untrue.”
Meadows said he’s being targeted because “the commissioners asked me to remove an employee they had personal objections to. I asked for a legitimate, job related reason and was told the concern was solely personal. Certain commissioners shared that if I did not comply with their demand, things would start to become difficult in my office.”
The commissioners’ statement indicates that a county employment file for a candidate Meadows wanted to hire listed the person as “not recommended for rehire” after previous county employment. Human resources and commissioners informed Meadows of the designation in the employment file, but Meadows chose to hire the person, anyway.
“That is the end of that issue,” commissioners wrote, “and the remaining allegations stated by the coroner in his social media post related to this issue and his attempt to link it to other perceived adverse decisions, actions or just perceived attitudes of the Commissioners impacting the coroner’s office are beyond fact-based refutation and, in the end, are nothing more than false, self-serving matters of speculation by Mr. Meadows.”
A version of this article appeared in the January 28 2026 print edition of the Western Wayne News.