City mulls tab for ethics
Slowly, complaints of misbehavior within Springfield city government are working their way through a fledgling system designed to handle ethics complaints.
The city has spent $79,000 on a consulting firm that last year recommended that an independent office be set up under contract to receive and investigate complaints. The consultant, Hillard Heintze of Chicago, says that it has received 15 complaints since setting up an interim inspector general’s office in January.
Eight complaints came in after the city’s contract with Hillard Heintze expired; the firm has said that it has not been given sufficient funds to investigate the other seven. The city council last year created the inspector general’s office but did not fund the office when it approved a budget for the current fiscal year.
While city council members and the mayor have discussed the complaints in executive session, most recently during a Nov. 17 meeting of the city’s ethics committee that includes the mayor and five members of the city council, the nature of the complaints as well as the names of targets and complainers are secret under the ordinance that created the inspector general’s office. Mayor Jim Langfelder said that the committee heard an overview of the seven cases launched before the contract with Hillard Heintze expired, but no details, including the names of the accused.
Hillard Heintze says that it needs between $70,000 and $90,000 to complete investigations into the seven complaints received before the firm’s contract with the city ended. The company says that it will need between $85,000 and $110,000 to investigate the other eight complaints.
Ward 10 Ald. Ralph Hanauer said that he’s concerned about green-lighting investigations into the eight complaints that Hillard Heintze received after its contract with the city expired.
Such practice, he suggested, might set a precedent for other companies to start work on city projects absent funding. Hanauer, one of six aldermen who were not on the council that created the inspector general’s office last year, said that the price tag is an issue.
“I’m concerned about the amount of money this contract’s going to take,” Hanauer said.
In the end, the committee forwarded the matter to the full council, which must approve any expenditures for an inspector general.
Ward 6 Ald. Cory Jobe, who sponsored the ordinance that created the inspector general’s office and the ethics committee, said last year that the annual cost could run into the six figures. The city needs a way to ensure honest government, he argued during the committee meeting.
“Yes, we knew it was going to cost a lot of money,” Jobe said. “But do we want open and transparent government, and at what cost? When we go around and we campaign and knock on everybody’s door across this city every four years and say ‘We’re going to be the most honest, upfront elected officials,’ we’re all part of that.”
Springfield is the smallest city in the state to create an inspector general’s office. The city’s version operates in strict secrecy, with the ordinance that created the office barring any release of information unless required by law or if needed to investigate an allegation. Such secrecy is typical for inspectors general in Illinois, but practices in other states vary. Records of ethics investigations are public in Florida, for example. The ethics commission in Alaska that handles complaints against state legislators publishes online reports of investigations even when charges are dismissed. In California, complaints of unethical conduct by legislators are public records; in Colorado, the Independent Ethics Commission makes public its records of investigations into alleged corruption and unethical conduct by state and municipal employees unless complaints are deemed frivolous.
Ward 8 Ald. Kris Theilen said that there might be merit in making some things public, particularly if sensitive material is redacted, at the conclusion of investigations. But confidentiality is important, he said in an interview. Complainants who work for the city need to be able to file complaints without fear of retaliation, he said.
“If it were public, I don’t know that I’d ever make a complaint to start with,” Theilen said.
Jobe said that records should be made public. “I think that’s the point of the ethics committee and the investigations,” Jobe said in an interview. “We all make mistakes. The point is to make sure that government’s running in an honest, transparent way. I don’t know what the end game is, in terms of how we disclose this information.”
Noting that the city received seven complaints before the contract with Hillard Heintze expired, Jobe also said that he believes the inspector general’s office has been a success.
“Clearly, the exercise is working,” Jobe said.
“Clearly, it wasn’t a waste of taxpayer money. … The result is, we now have seven cases.”
But Langfelder, who opposed the creation of the new inspector general’s office last year before he was elected mayor, said that there may be a less-expensive way to handle complaints than establishing contracts with outside companies. Some complaints, he suggested, could be handled internally. He said he’d like to have something in place by the end of the year.
“What we need to do is make sure it’s workable,” Langfelder said. “As far as spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fine tune this, I think we can find a way so it won’t cost so much.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].
