Jamie Munks
The State Journal-Register
Springfield aldermen remained split Tuesday on how to handle 15 complaints to an interim inspector general of wrongdoing in city government.
Aldermen at next week’s Springfield City Council meeting are poised to debate that and vote on a resolution recommending Mayor Jim Langfelder’s administration review the complaints and take action, which could mean referral to an outside agency or internal discipline.
Langfelder’s controversial proposed appointment of former Ald. Gail Simpson to the city’s ethics committee, which was created to oversee the inspector general post, also will come up for a vote next week. If approved, Simpson would serve as the public member on the committee, which currently counts the 10 aldermen and the mayor as its members.
The resolution, which Ward 1 Ald. Chuck Redpath and Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin are co-sponsoring, aims to speed the handling of the 15 cases reported to Hillard Heintze LLC, the Chicago firm the city contracted with for $79,000 earlier this year. The firm acted as the interim inspector general, taking some of the 15 complaints during the terms of the contract and fielding the remainder of the calls after the contract expired. Some of the cases may be nearly a year old.
When the city council, which has since seen some turnover due to the April city elections, voted to establish the inspector general post and ethics committee about a year ago, the independence of the role was a major concern. That re-emerged with the proposed resolution because it directs the mayor and the city’s top attorney to review the cases and refer them to the state’s attorney or the Human Rights Commission, depending on the nature of the complaint.
The ethics committee voted to send two ordinances to the full city council for a vote: one to address the cases that Hillard Heintze dealt with during the terms of the contract and another to deal with the calls the firm took after the contract expired.
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McMenamin, one of the resolution’s sponsors and another holdover from the last council, said the reason for the resolution pushing ahead the cases is because there was never a proposal to fund a permanent inspector general position in the current fiscal year’s budget, beyond the Hillard Heintze contract that expired Feb. 28. And with the age of the cases, some of the evidence is getting stale, McMenamin said.
The city council will begin holding hearings on the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget Jan. 19. The city’s fiscal year begins March 1.
“I brought this resolution because I think we can trust the administration to divide these out to the right people, make sure they get to the right people,” Redpath said. There was no intent to sidetrack anything to do with the process. … They’ve sat too long and we’re doing a disservice to the people that filed these.”
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Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 