On February 25, WCIA reported that Champaign Mayor Jerry Schweighart had backed out of a debate scheduled with opponent Don Gerard for March 7. The debate was to be organized by the Illinois Student Senate. In order to prove their case that the Schweighart campaign had committed to attending the debate, the ISS posted an email chain detailing communication that traced the scheduling from confirmed to cancelled. The initial email was sent to jerryschweighart@ci.champaign.il.us, but the initial reply and all subsequent replies were from a City of Champaign secretary.
Numerous commenters on this site, Halfway Interesting, and also on Facebook and Twitter, questioned the legality of a city employee scheduling the mayor’s campaign appearances. Not exactly Watergate, but I thought it was worth following up on, especially in the wake of Judy Erwin’s resignation from Chicago mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel’s transition team under fire for what sounded like very similar allegations, albeit under the State of Illinois’ jurisdiction.
I emailed the Illinois Attorney General’s office on March 2, giving a general description of the alleged violation with no identifying details and asking whose jurisdiction it would be under. I received two emails in reply; the first, on March 4, was from Public Affairs Officer Joseph Brown, who said he’d forwarded my inquiry to the Public Integrity Bureau and suggested I contact my local state’s attorney. In reponse to that email, I emailed Julia Rietz’ office on March 5 with details of the allegations, including a link to the emails which the ISS had posted on their website. Secondly, on March 10, I received an email from Assistant Attorney General Mary Bucaro, who responded as follows:
“In your correspondence you raised concerns about a mayor directing government employees to schedule campaign events on city time. I would suggest you contact the city attorney. You can ask the city attorney whether these actions violate a city ordinance prohibiting political activity at work and identify the consequences of such behavior.”
I emailed the City of Champaign legal department on Friday, March 11 with more or less the same request I had sent to the State’s Attorney the previous week. I also followed up my previous email to the State’s Attorney’s office with a second email requesting comment and/or interpretation. In the meantime, I did a quick search of local ordinances. The relevant portions of the Champaign Code of Ordinances is below:
Sec. 2-107. – Prohibited political activities.
(a) No employee shall intentionally perform any prohibited political activity during any compensated time, as defined herein.
…
(15) Prohibited political activity means:
a. Preparing for, organizing, or participating in any political meeting, political rally, political demonstration, or other political event.
m. Managing or working on a campaign for elective office or for or against any referendum question.
…
(5) Compensated time means, with respect to an employee, any time worked by or credited to the employee that counts toward any minimum work time requirement imposed as a condition of his or her employment, but for purposes of this division, does not include any designated holidays, vacation periods, personal time, compensatory time off or any period when the employee is on a leave of absence.
To date, I have received no replies to these correspondences, neither from the State’s Attorney nor the City Attorney. I will update this post as soon as I hear something, though.
UPDATE (8 a.m., 3/16/11): It’s probably bush league for me to mention this, but I still haven’t heard anything from the City Attorney’s office (or the State’s Attorney’s office, for that matter). I know how it is when you get digits; two days is the industry standard, but waiting six days is the money. However, they could just wait six weeks, and tell me they found my email when they were cleaning out their wallet.
UPDATE (8:30 a.m., 3/17/11): WCIA reported as part of their debate coverage last night that “The city attorney says no rules were violated.” I’ve emailed the city attorney asking for clarification.
UPDATE (4 p.m., 3/17/11): City Attorney Fred Stavins stated, “I took a look at the ordinance and [the city employee’s actions] didn’t seem to fit real nicely in there. It [accusation of a campaign violation] seemed like a political act.” Well, I guess that’s one way to interpret it.