City, county officials testify in alderman’s hearing
It’s been a tough month for Sam Cahnman.
The Ward 5 alderman and attorney lost his re-election bid on April 7, and on April 16, he faced an extended hearing by the state panel that disciplines lawyers.
The allegations against Cahnman stem in part from his representation of Springfield blogger Calvin Christian in a handful of traffic cases, comprising what the government’s lawyer characterizes as a conflict of interest.
In August 2014, the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission accused Cahnman of three counts of violating the Illinois Supreme Court’s Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers. The ARDC complaint alleges that the alderman had a conflict of interest because he represented Christian in traffic cases, creating an opposing interest with his duties as alderman. If the allegations are upheld, Cahnman could face discipline ranging from a slap on the wrist known as “censure” to the loss of his law license. Cahnman has faced the ARDC before, previously receiving a censure in an unrelated allegation but beating a handful of other accusations.
The April 16 hearing on Cahnman’s current allegations lasted more than seven hours and included testimony from Ward 8 Ald. Kris Theilen, former alderman Tim Griffin, Springfield Police Chief Kenny Winslow, Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser, two retired judges and others. Cahnman himself took the witness stand for close to two hours.
The wide-ranging testimony covered everything from Cahnman’s character and reputation to how Sangamon County divides up fines in traffic cases. Christian’s dozens of traffic tickets and the “shredgate” incident, in which the City of Springfield was found to have shredded police internal affairs files to avoid fulfilling Christian’s public records request, factored prominently into the testimony.
In 2010, Cahnman represented Christian on nine traffic cases stemming from stops by the Springfield Police Department. In October 2012, Christian received two further tickets from Springfield police officer Mark Mitchell, who cited Christian for parking in a no-parking zone and for driving without a valid license. Cahnman agreed to represent Christian on both cases. Cahnman also represented a handful of other defendants on traffic cases in which the Springfield Police Department was the ticketing agency.
Christian has sued the City of Springfield at least three times: twice in the Sangamon County Circuit Court to compel the release of police internal affairs files, and once in federal court to allege harassment and civil rights violations by Springfield police. Cahnman only represented Christian in traffic cases, not in Christian’s lawsuits against the city.
In the April 16 hearing, ARDC attorney Gary Rapaport construed Cahnman’s position of “lawyer-legislator” as creating a relationship in which Cahnman must treat the city like his client. Rapaport also attempted to construe the City of Springfield is an “adverse party” in a traffic case when the Springfield police are the ticketing agency. If Cahnman has to treat the City of Springfield like a client and the city is an adverse party in Christian’s traffic tickets, then Cahnman could not represent both sides in those cases, Rapaport reasoned.
Bill Moran, Cahnman’s attorney at the ARDC hearing, scoffed at Rapaport’s assertion.
“Michael Madigan would be very surprised to learn that the State of Illinois is his client,” Moran said, applying Rapaport’s logic to the long-serving speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, who is also an attorney.
Rapaport told Illinois Times that Moran’s example “puts an artificial gloss” on his argument. He said he wasn’t arguing that a lawyer elected to public office takes that governmental body on as an actual client, but rather that the lawyer must treat the governmental body the same as a client.
To support his claim that the city is an adverse party in traffic tickets, Rapaport called Springfield Police Chief Kenny Winslow to testify at the April 16 hearing. Rapaport hoped that Winslow’s testimony would establish that the city has an interest in obtaining maximum fines and fees against defendants ticketed by Springfield police officers. The plan appeared to backfire, however, as Winslow testified that the city’s primary interest in issuing tickets is public safety, not revenue generation.
The City of Springfield’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget contained more than $115 million in revenue, while traffic tickets brought in $495,000 – less than a half percent of total revenue.
However, Winslow’s testimony was not entirely a bust for Rapaport. Winslow testified that he was “shocked” when he learned that Cahnman represented Christian in traffic tickets written by Winslow’s officers.
“I was dumbfounded, to be honest with you,” Winslow said.
Moran scored solid points in his crossexamination, asking in several ways whether Winslow ever felt that Cahnman was attempting to use his position as alderman to influence cases or affect the outcome of Christian’s lawsuits against the city. Winslow repeatedly answered no.
To counter Rapaport’s assertion that the city is an adverse party in traffic cases, Moran called Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser, whose office prosecutes traffic cases, to testify at the hearing.
“Does the fact that a Springfield Police Department officer made the arrest or wrote the ticket make the City of Springfield a party in any of your cases?” Moran asked.
“I don’t know,” Milhiser said hesitantly. “I don’t think they’re necessarily a party. I mean, a party would typically be the People of the State of Illinois through the state’s attorney’s office. That would be the plaintiff or the prosecuting entity. The defendant would be the defendant in the case.”
Moran asked whether the city would be more appropriately categorized as a witness in such a case.
“I think that would be correct,” Milhiser answered.
If the city is a witness rather than a party to traffic cases, it would undercut Rapaport’s argument that Cahnman represented both sides of Christian’s cases.
Rapaport also presented testimony from Ward 8 Ald. Kris Theilen, former alderman Tim Griffin and Springfield attorney Jon Gray Noll, who represented the city in a lawsuit filed by Christian. Their testimony established that some members of the Springfield City Council were surprised to learn that Cahnman represented Christian in several traffic tickets. Theilen and Noll both testified that they warned Cahnman about conflicts of interest regarding Christian.
Noll testified that he tried to meet Cahnman in private and explain that some of the traffic cases in which Cahnman represented Christian had become part of Christian’s federal civil rights lawsuit against the city. Noll said Cahnman didn’t respond to his attempts to meet in private and, after a very brief conversation between the two lawyers, Noll told the city council about Cahnman’s representation of Christian.
Christian’s “shredgate” lawsuits against the city apparently didn’t create a conflict of interest for Cahnman because the alderman didn’t represent Christian’s interests in those two lawsuits. However, some of the traffic tickets in which Cahnman represented Christian became part of the federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, meaning that if Cahnman took part in the city council’s deliberations on settling the federal lawsuit, Cahnman would have been representing both the city’s interests and Christian’s.
Cahnman maintains that he didn’t know that any of the cases he represented for Christian were part of Christian’s federal lawsuit. Cahnman said that when he learned of the potential conflict during a city council meeting, he immediately withdrew from representing Christian and recused himself from any further city council discussions on the federal lawsuit.
Moran asked Noll during his testimony whether there was any indication that Cahnman previously knew about the potential conflict raised by Christian’s federal lawsuit, to which Noll replied no.
Cahnman testified that he didn’t respond to Noll’s request to meet in private because he had assumed Noll wanted to discuss something else. Cahnman said he had been a vocal opponent to Mayor Michael Houston’s policy of keeping all documents in Christian’s federal lawsuit under tight control. Cahnman said he thought any conversation about that policy should be held in public.
A major component of Cahnman’s defense is that he had researched conflicts of interest for lawyers when he was first elected to the Sangamon County Board in 2002. He said the Illinois Association of County Board Members referred him to a pair of opinions from the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, which he believed to say it is not a conflict of interest for a county board member to represent clients in the county where he or she serves.
When Cahnman was later elected to the Springfield City Council in 2007, he reasoned that if it’s not a conflict of interest for a county board member to represent clients in that same county’s circuit court, it would be even less perilous for a city council member do to so. State circuit courts and county boards are both considered part of county government, while cities are distinctly separate.
Rapaport sought to discredit Cahnman’s reliance on the two attorney general opinions, pointing instead to an Illinois Supreme Court opinion from 1990 in which former Chicago alderman Edward Vrdolyak was censured for representing clients in worker’s compensation claims against the city while he served as an alderman. Moran noted that one of the attorney general opinions upon which Cahnman relied came after the Vrdolyak case.
This is Cahnman’s second time facing an ARDC inquiry. In 2014, the Illinois Supreme Court censured Cahnman for misleading a judge about how the he obtained a copy of the judge’s calendar. Cahnman had also been accused of soliciting prostitution from an undercover cop in 2012 and having inappropriate contact with a prisoner at the Sangamon County Jail in 2002, but those allegations were not upheld.
The ARDC panel overseeing Cahnman’s hearing consisted of two attorneys and one layman. The panel will decide on the case within 90 days.
Cahnman appeared confident at the April 16 hearing, even joking about losing his seat on the city council.
“That’s what happens when the other guy gets more votes,” he said.
Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].