A fixture is something you bolt to the wall and leave there. Stephanie Ball says she’s one.
“A fixture in South Bend Democratic Party politics,” according to her campaign website. Ball offers that to voters as a reason to make her clerk of the St. Joseph Circuit Court, the office that keeps the county’s court records and runs its elections.
So let’s take Ball at her word and have a look at the fixture.
Ball has worked on campaigns for former State Sen. Cleo Washington, former Gov. Joe Kernan, and Common Council members Oliver Davis Jr. and Karen White. Ball served as secretary of the South Bend chapter of the Indiana Democratic African American Coalition. Ball’s website lists all of this, proudly.
Then there’s the side of Ball’s résumé that pays her bills.
From 2003 to 2011, Ball worked for the Housing Authority of South Bend, a public agency, according to her LinkedIn profile. Then the South Bend Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit that reported $1,468,253 in government grants on its 2024 federal tax return, about 31 percent of its revenue.
Then the school board. Ball ran for the District 4 seat and lost. In 2019, the board appointed her to that same seat anyway, by a 4-2 vote, after the member who held that seat left to become city clerk. Ball later won the seat outright in 2020 before ultimately losing the seat again in 2024.
A loss like that might slow some people down.
A fixture just looks for another seat.
Two years later, Ball is now on the ballot for county clerk.
And what does the fixture do for a living these days? Ball is program manager of the South Bend Financial Empowerment Center. The city calls the center “a City program.” In January 2024, the city asked its Redevelopment Commission for $350,000 to run the place for two years, and the request spelled out what the money would buy: one full-time FEC program manager and two financial counselors. The city says the commission approved the money. A nonprofit, Near Northwest Neighborhood Inc., runs the center and employs the staff.
What does the center do? Free counseling on debt, credit, and savings for anybody in South Bend who walks in.
In January 2024, a debt buyer called Midland Credit Management sued Ball over a credit card. Ball never answered the lawsuit. The court entered a default judgment that March. When I checked the docket Thursday, the balance was $5,785.05, and the court’s records showed zero payments.
I called Ball on Thursday to ask whether she had paid anything on the judgment. She didn’t answer and she did not call back. She didn’t call back on Oct. 6, either, when I asked about her state tax warrants.
Fixtures, apparently, do not return a reporter’s phone calls.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
