MORGAN COUNTY — Thomas Hall caught her by surprise.
“I didn’t know I had an opponent!” said Melissa Greene on Monday, then asking if she could hear Hall’s name again.
Until July, Greene was uncontested for the Morgan County Council District 2 race following her victory in the May primary. The incumbent Republican was running for the seat unopposed until the Morgan County Democrats caucused in Hall on July 1.
The county council race will be one of the few contested races at the local level during next month’s general election, along with some school board races, town council races, township seats and of course, the battle for the Superior Court 1 judge’s seat.
Hall, a Martinsville resident, previously ran to be the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives District 4 seat during May’s primary election. Eight Democrats were vying for the seat, and Hall finished the race in eighth place with 7.14 percent of the vote.
Greene, a Republican, joined the county council in 2021 via caucus. She was later elected to the position in 2022, and defeated Trudy Ellis in this year’s Republican Primary election.
Candidate backgrounds
Hall has lived in Morgan County most of his life, growing up in Paragon. The Greene family has deep roots in Morgan County as well, and Melissa Greene is part of the sixth generation of her family to settle here.
Hall works at UPS, and is a Teamster shop steward, meaning he is an elected union representative. Greene is a pharmaceutical sales manager in the mental health therapeutic area.
Hall has a 5-year-old daughter; Greene has four adult children, and she is married to Kevin Greene, the Martinsville City Fire Chief.
Data center concerns
Hall told The Correspondent on Friday that he decided to join the county council race because he opposed some decisions the council had made regarding the Google data center campus currently under construction in Monroe Township.
Particularly problematic for Hall was the council’s May 2025 decision to approve a resolution granting Google real property tax deductions of 50 percent for the next 10 years.
“The county council was wrong to give the data center tax breaks,” Hall said.
Greene said her decision to vote for Google’s tax abatements was the “hardest” she’s made as a council member, and the weight of the vote left her “sleepless.”
She said she voted to grant Google the abatements because she believed that without the abatements, the company would have moved to Hendricks County instead, and with it, all the property tax revenue that Morgan County would have accrued. Greene added that she believes residents’ taxes will go down “in the long run” as a result of Google’s approval to build in Morgan County.
The county anticipates receiving about a million dollars in tax revenue from the data center in its first year of operation.
Ultimately, though, Greene did say she had some regrets.
“We could have asked Google for more,” Greene said. “But I wasn’t part of that negotiation.”
Greene said in hindsight, she could have pressed the Morgan County Commissioners to negotiate a better deal for the county. She added that it was “not (her) decision” to bring the data center to the county in the first place, but instead the commissioners.
Hall was very critical of county decisions regarding Google’s data center in his interview with The Correspondent, calling the project his “biggest concern.”
“No one in the community asked for this,” Hall said.
Competing visions
Aside from concerns about the data center, Hall cited bringing down the cost of living — particularly the cost of childcare — as a goal the county should pursue.
“Democrats are more pro-family than the Republicans,” Hall said. “Our policy goals are to bring down childcare costs and raise wages for working parents.”
Hall said the county council — whether he has a seat on it or not — should work with the county commissioners to reimburse residents for some of the costs associated with childcare, and said the county should work to create a version of Bloomington’s Warehouse, a publicly-funded Christian nonprofit that offers free recreational programs for children and adults.
Greene, meanwhile, defended her record as incumbent in her conversation with The Correspondent, saying the council is “more fiscally sound” now than when she first arrived and that one of her priorities as a council member was to make sure county employees were well-compensated for their work.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” Greene said of the council.
Greene also touted her history of having open conversations with the public, regardless of where they might live in the county.
“Just because I’m running in District 2 doesn’t mean I’m not going to hear your voice,” Greene said, adding that she’s had many conversations with people not in her district about a variety of issues, particularly Google’s data center. “Everyone has a voice with me.”
Early voting has already begun for the 2026 general election in Indiana. Election Day is Nov. 3, and polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 6 p.m.
